Lynn Good. Connie Lau. Bethany Owen. Maria Pope. Patti Poppe. Pat Vincent-Collawn. And that’s just the chief execs of investor-owned electric utilities who are women. Distinguished women head up public power and rural cooperative utilities — like Paula Gold-Williams at CPS Energy, and utility associations — like Joy Ditto at APPA — and utility regulatory commissions (too many to list here).
Our industry and the communities we serve enormously benefits from the leadership these talented women provide, and from the many thousands of women that are making their marks and climbing the ladders at their organizations.
Just consider the immeasurable loss — to our industry’s performance in the public interest — if only men were allowed to assume positions of authority.
And, to think, that a hundred years ago to the day, our democracy excluded every woman in America. It’s thus a good day to consider how enriched our democracy and society became when the nineteenth amendment took effect on August 26, 1920.