American Electric Power
Nick Akins is Executive Chair of American Electric Power.
In honoring Kuhn with Public Utilities Fortnightly's highest award, named for the extraordinary industry leader of a hundred years ago — Owen Young — we salute the man behind the transformational "Power by Association." We do this not alone. What follows are the voices of a dozen of the industry's top leaders of the twenty-first century, about Kuhn's accomplishments, and the man himself. Including four utility Executive Chairs, three utility CEOs, four retired utility CEOs, and Kuhn's longtime key associate at EEI, David Owens.
PUF's Steve Mitnick: When in your career did you begin working with Tom Kuhn and his team at EEI? Talk about a couple of those experiences.
Nick Akins: I was Executive Vice President of Generation when I started to go to EEI meetings with Mike Morris, who was Chair at the time of AEP. We had other leaders, such as John Rowe [former CEO, Exelon Corp.] and Jim Rogers [former CEO, Duke Energy].
A lot of discussion around clean energy was occurring then. Jim was probably out way ahead, some would argue too far ahead, of the group, and Tom was masterful at bringing people from across the industry together.
I saw his ability to do that right off the bat. You had to be a special person and leader and have the gravitas to be able to bring a bunch of type A personalities together.