Footsteps Through the Field

With so much change ahead, leveraging lessons from the past isn’t always easy... or even possible

I bought my first pair of steel-toed boots from the men’s section of Sears, in the only style they carried small enough for my feet. As an engineering intern in college, I walked onto my first power plant construction site, immediately in awe of the massive equipment towering before me. The triangles and circles from the white board diagrams of my thermodynamics class came to life, as three-dimensional machines that whirled and groaned and delivered electricity to power the neighborhood surrounding us. The experienced crew on site taught me more mechanical and electrical theory in one summer than I had learned in three years of engineering school.

After college, I upgraded to waterproof boots that went halfway up my calves for an assignment in the mud, building a utility tunnel 100 feet underneath the streets of Manhattan. A crane lifted me up in a basket and down the narrow tunnel shaft to get to the underground site. I quickly learned the importance of following the safety rules and trusting your colleagues to take your life into their hands. To this day, I walk around grates on a sidewalk to avoid a potential hazard, not wanting to find out how deep the holes they are covering might be.

I traded boots for high heels as I moved into the office and up through management positions. I missed the camaraderie and unifying purpose I had in the field, based on accomplishing daily tasks together in all weather conditions. But I found a new rhythm and built relationships working across departments to achieve strategic goals, like building renewable energy and installing EV chargers.

Today, I step into new shoes once again, as Southern California Edison’s executive VP of Operations, which includes building, operating, and maintaining the grid, generating and delivering clean power, serving our customers, and keeping our employees and the public safe.

Sometimes when taking on a new role, we have the luxury of following in the footsteps of the people who were here before, or maybe updating their playbook. Not anymore. For those of us in the energy business today, we have unchartered terrain ahead of us. Meaning we have the chance to create new solutions, from which those who follow in our footsteps may benefit.

We face the worsening impacts of climate change and must urgently redesign how energy is harnessed across our entire economy. We can’t retrace history or rely on what we learned in college so many years ago, since things have changed dramatically. We are writing a new chapter for the energy business and our environment. And that’s as exciting for me as it is daunting.

I’m grateful to every person who taught me about a piece of equipment on our system and every colleague who had my back, and made sure I went home safely at the end of a shift. Now, I’m the one responsible for the safety of many others, and that is the most important personal priority I have.

I hear the voices of my predecessors and mentors echoing in my mind, sharing the lessons they learned the hard way. I see the road ahead, and also the wide-ranging possibilities to explore. And I know we have the talent, dedication and potential to reach the future we talk so much about. We’ll just have to take it one step at a time.?