Retired APPA CEO
Only two have received Public Utilities Fortnightly's highest honor, the Owen Young Award, named after the utilities industry's leader of the early twentieth century who distinguished himself in world affairs, and who also helped found this magazine. Retired Edison Electric Institute executive vice president David Owens was the first to receive the Owen Young Award, in June of 2017. And retired American Public Power Association CEO Sue Kelly was the second, in January of 2020. There's not yet been a third.
It is hardly a surprise therefore that the PUF team thought to call Kelly when seeking to do a portraiture of another successful and acclaimed industry leader for these pages. In her six or so years leading public power's association, she served simultaneously as a vibrant voice for the two thousand-plus government-owned electric utilities and as an inspiration to thousands of women and men throughout the utilities industry.
Kelly began her retirement in early 2020 intending to travel extensively, an untimely plan considering that the pandemic started then too. Forced like most of us to park ourselves inside, she stuck around to join the Board of Trustees of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation — affectionately known as NERC — in February of 2021.
Law Firm Years
After seven straight years of higher education, earning her bachelor's degree at the University of Missouri — Columbia and her law degree at George Washington University, she became a lawyer in 1980 gravitating toward utility regulatory law. For Kelly this was an extension of her education:
"When I was in private law practice, as people came to me, they brought me their problems. I tried to help resolve those problems as efficiently as possible. I represented them in proceedings. And when you do that, you do administrative hearing work and settlement work. You really do develop a set of skills, which is thinking on your feet, communicating clearly, writing (unfortunately) lengthy legal documents, but trying to do that in a succinct and clear way."
Successful at the law firm, she nonetheless was challenged with having adequate time for both her family and professional career. And eventually with being a lawyer in a law firm as opposed to being one within an organization:
"I dealt with clients. Every time they picked up the phone, they were thinking in the back of their mind, my gosh, she's charging me for every seven and a half-minute interval. Because that's how I made my money."
Trying Associations
Leaving the law firm culture behind her in 1995, Kelly joined the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. The convenient acronym this time, NRECA. It was there, at the association for the nine hundred rural electric cooperatives, that she found a new comfort zone:
"At a trade association, you're no longer billing by the hour. You can really build deeper relationships with people. And I was doing more policy work. My job was translating inside the beltway to outside the beltway and back."
Anyone who has worked with Kelly or has listened to any of her many conference speeches knows of her wit and insightful commentary on the big issues the industry faces. She inevitably boils down the complexities of utility regulation, policy, and strategy in digestible rhetoric:
"Because my members were cooperatives, they had specific issues, specific concerns. I had to take that and try and translate that into FERCese. And try and figure out what policies would help advance their cause."
At a Small Firm
As the twentieth century came to a close, and the twenty-first began, she was back at a law firm. Albeit a smaller firm that allowed her the flexibility to sufficiently invest in her family life as well as her professional life. Though Kelly continued without a pause to build her experience and reputation as one of the most influential utility regulatory lawyers:
"So much of Washington is trying to minimize harm. If you can make a positive win, that's great. But a lot of it is the bullets you're able to dodge. Or the way you're able to shape a policy to ameliorate some of the things that could have been really bad."
APPA, for Good
Opportunity then knocked, to rejoin the association world. This time it was the association of public power utilities:
"When APPA came along in 2004, and wanted me to be their general counsel, I agreed to do that. I really had liked the in-house counsel experience. I liked knowing who my client was. I like building deeper relationships. I liked emphasizing the policy."
From 2004 to 2014, Kelly served as both APPA's general counsel and its senior vice president of policy analysis. It was a great run that made her an even more prominent player in federal regulatory decision making particularly:
"In ten years of general counsel, I grew into being an advocate. And again, trying to understand what my members needed and translating that into policy. I got a lot of great experience. I was able to testify before the House and the Senate. I was able to appear a lot before FERC."
At APPA, opportunity knocked once again, unexpectedly as it often does:
"My daughter graduated, and our stepdaughters were out in the world. The CEO job came open. I'll be honest, the CEO before me, Mark Crisson, said, "I'm probably going to retire in the next few years. You need to think about whether you want to apply for the job. And I said, oh, I haven't really thought about that. You think I can do the job? And he's like, yes. I think you're capable of doing the job. But you have to want the job."
Kelly became APPA's CEO in April of 2014. There were challenges and there were constraints. But she put all her passion into this new responsibility:
"We were a small and leanly staffed organization. We looked over at NRECA and EEI and all their bodies and money. And we just didn't have that. Our members were units of state and local government."
No longer a lawyer at a law firm or within an organization, Kelly realized she faced a steep learning curve:
"CEO is a very different role for a couple reasons. One, you are responsible for the actual organization, the budget, the employees, the building, the lease space. I traveled a huge amount. To stay close to them [the members]. And try and make sure I understood what their needs were, what their concerns were."
Her travels that first year were indeed epic. The frequent flyer miles must have accumulated to a huge number:
"My first year, I really made a great effort to get out and see as many people as possible. But then when you get invited back the next year and are asked, 'Oh, will you come back and do our conference again?' You're going to say, well, no, I did you once? You really can't do that."
She continued:
"I needed to think about this. Because these things take a toll on you. I loved being with the members. It was the getting to the members and getting from the members. Driving ten o'clock at night on snowy roads in rural Minnesota. You're thinking, am I going to end up in a ditch?"
On Plan
She started out her term as APPA's CEO with the formulation of a strategic plan. Then it was time for the "roadshow":
"Doing that strategic plan, we came up with six strategic priorities. I had those 'tattooed on my arm.' I mean, the first couple years I was there, it was all about, let's pursue those priorities.
And part of my going out on the road was to say, this is what your leadership at the association has said we are to concentrate on. I wouldn't want to use the word 'selling' that plan. But explaining the strategic plan to everybody."
Kelly emphasizes that given the pace of change in the utilities industry, there's a finite shelf life for strategic plans. APPA's initial plan, therefore, was for no more than three years into the future:
"We tweaked some stuff, then we extended it for a further two years. It ended up being a five-year plan, but it was really a three and two plan."
Advice
What advice would Kelly give to those that are at an early stage in their careers in the utilities industry or even at a mid-term stage?
"This job is not about me. This job is about what my members want and how can I help attain that for them. You sometimes hear this embodied in the concept of servant leadership.
If I had an admonition to a new leader about how to succeed, I think that's what it would be. It's not about you. It's about what you can do for your constituency to help them succeed."
What makes her such an effective communicator? If you have sat in the audience for an address by Kelly, you know that one powerful tool she employs with affect is humor:
"Humor is a great way to get a message across and get people to remember what you have said. If you can get them laughing with you, but also thinking about the deeper implications of what you're saying, you get a lot more mileage out of that than you do preaching at them."
Our conversation with Kelly then turned to a huge driver of change in the utilities industry, climate change and the challenges of combatting it:
"Climate change was a difficult issue for our membership. As a national membership, we have red states and blue states. We have a lot of political people, a lot of city council members. And so, politics is right there. I mean, right there.
That last national conference speech [of mine] was my way of saying, we have to come to grips with this. Because the political environment here in Washington is changing. We have to be able to have a position. Or we will not be able to try to shape the developments in a way that will work for public power."
As we have described, Kelly's career consisted of a few promising and timely doors that opened and that she walked through. Nothing was preordained:
"I may not be the right person to give career advice. There are some people who have a plan. You know what I'm saying? In the course of their career, they know they want to be a lawyer from age twelve. And they know they want to do this by thirty and this by forty. That was not me.
I made a series of career choices that were dictated by what I felt I needed at the time. What was most important to me at any moment. And a number of those choices involved accommodating raising a child and raising two stepchildren, along with my husband."
Be Flexible
As many leaders have told us, flexibility is a key ingredient in leadership:
"If I were giving advice, I would say, if you try to over plan and program, you may find yourself in a cul-de-sac. If you keep yourself flexible and think about what you need for the next three to five years, and keep yourself open to new opportunities, you may actually end up farther."
We'll accord Kelly the last word. Here's her core advice for coping with the rapid pace of change that our industry is now experiencing:
"This is a time when you have to be more flexible. And more willing to modify your assumptions and relook at things, than at any time in the past. The amount of change that's going on — I know this sounds like a trope — but it happens to be true. You cannot come in with preconceived notions and assume that the next two years, your program makes sense anymore.
"You have to be more inclusive, more thoughtful, more willing to change your assumptions. And to adopt and adapt to these new factors and new people and new technologies. And incorporate them in what you're doing and move forward, hopefully together."
