THERE’S NO SHORTAGE OF JOBS IN THIS SPHERE, AS THE U.S. DEPENDS EVER MORE HEAVILY ON A CONSTANT SOURCE OF POWER.

 

FROM MANAGEMENT ASSETS FOR A SMARTER DISTRIBUTION GRID, TO DESIGNING AND MAINTENANCE OF NATURAL GAS FACILITIES, CREATING A DATABASE NECESSARY FOR TECHNICAL SALES OF ELECTRICITY, RESTORING POWER TO CUSTOMERS AFTER A POWER OUTAGE, DEVELOPING ECONOMIC PLANS FOR SUPPLY-SIDE AND DEMAND-SIDE RESOURCES, AND RUNNING THE PROJECT ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT FOR CIVIL ENGINEERS—WOMEN IN THE UTILITIES AND ENERGY ARE SOARING TO NEW PROFESSIONAL HEIGHTS. READ HOW THESE FIVE WOMEN—MELANIE MILLER AT DUKE ENERGY, JANEYURA AT PACIFIC GAS & ELECTRIC, LISA ROUSE AT FIRST ENERGY, MARLU DEVERICK AT DOMINION RESOURCES, AND ELAINE CHASSE AT PUBLIC SERVICE ENTERPRISE GROUP—ACHIEVE SUCCESS IN THEIR FIELD.

 

PUBLIC SERVICE ENTERPRISE GROUP: TACKLING CIVIL ENGINEERING PROJECTS

Elaine Chasse says she always had an interest in road and bridge construction, so, when it was time for her to choose a major at Rutgers University, her parents suggested she look into civil engineering. She did just that.

 

“I interned two summers at PSE&G in their field location in Somerset (New Jersey) and I interned at the New Jersey Turnpike Authority my junior and senior year to fulfill that roadway construction aspect of my interest,” she says. As a PSE&G intern, she worked in a mapping group, helping to organize overhead and underground circuits and to identify any damaged areas or areas that needed repair.

 

Graduating in 2008 with a degree in civil engineering, Chasse became a full-time PSE&G employee. She was hired as a project engineer in the asset management group, performing inside plant work, substation, and switching station engineering. “I handled the drawing reviews and approvals for all of the civil engineering projects for substations and switching stations.” Looking to make the most of her experience at the company, she joined TYPP (The Young Professionals of PSE&G), a networking group whose members have one thing in common—their age. They represent all areas of the company.

 

Wanting to move from a technical track to a management track, Chasse earned an engineering man agement degree from the New Jersey Institute of Technology in May 2013 and moved into a supervising engineering position. She now handles the entire project engineering department for civil engineers and the entire review process for the drawings.

 

Chasse is a member of PSE&G’s women’s networking group, which does “lunch-and-learns.” She says she is also an “unofficial” member of American Society of Civil Engineers, attending its networking groups and events, where she can meet fellow civil engineers across multiple industries.

 

DUKE ENERGY: MANAGING THE GRID

Determined not to follow family members, including her father, into the engineering profession, Melanie Miller chose instead to pursue a career in medicine. She enrolled in a pre-med program at East Carolina University and graduated with a degree in exercise physiology. But, before entering medical school, she changed her mind.

 

She applied to and was hired by Duke Energy as associate distribution engineer; with her pre-med degree, she had a solid foundation in physics, math, and chemistry. In that initial role, she says, “I was out in the field working with customers, designing the electrical systems going to either their residences or to commercial or industrial buildings.”

 

While working full-time at Duke Energy, she enrolled at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, where she studied engineering part-time at night. In 2004, she received her degree in computer engineering with a concentration in electrical engineering.

 

From her initial position at Duke Energy, Miller moved into a distribution planning role. “I was responsible for designing and maintaining the distribution grid from a substation all the way out [to the customers].” While earning her MBA from Wingate University, she moved laterally into a business consultant role, where she added an understanding of the business side of the company to her operational experience. She received her MBA in 2007.

 

She moved onto designing Duke Energy’s first solar sites, where her technical background enabled her to design the systems to connect to Duke’s distribution grid and make certain that all the processes, procedures, and asset management systems were in place. This position was followed by a promotion and a move into the emerging technology office where, as a senior project manager, Miller “was responsible for a project in our Duke Energy Carolinas footprint where we installed everything from battery storage systems to new communication nodes, line sensors, home energy management systems, smart appliances, and electric vehicles.” The project, she adds, allowed the company to look at what the distribution grid will look like with the addition of those new technologies. Today, Miller is a technical manager, although she is still classified as an engineer.

 

With several networking opportunities available at Duke Energy, and with limited personal time in which to participate, Miller says she’s chosen to attend the Working Moms Café Group lunchtime get-togethers, where members talk about the stress that having children puts on a woman’s career and how to maintain a life/work balance. She is also a member of Society of Women Engineers and attends their local meetings, as well as meetings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

 

PACIFIC GAS & ELECTRIC: EMPLOYING A VARIED SKILL SET

Born and raised on the West Coast, Jane Yura came east to attend Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she graduated in 1977 with a mechanical engineering degree. “I was really interested by the wide range of applications, from highly technical fluid dynamics modeling to the mechanical design of machinery and engines,” Yura explains. She also completed a Stanford University Executive Program in 1995.

 

Because of the variety of engineering jobs it offered and wanting to work on projects that she could oversee from design through operation, she knew she wanted to work in the utilities industry. “Additionally, there were exciting projects on new sources of energy generation (geothermal) and interesting re search and development work,” Yura adds.

 

She interned for PG&E, spending two summers in operations, where she did drafting and mapping work for its electric and gas facilities, and one summer in design engineering, where she did natural gas pipeline design work, including stress calculations. The internships, says Yura, taught her what to expect in the workplace, how engineering is actually applied, and the diversity of work available both out in the field and in the corporate office.

 

Degree in hand, Yura came onboard full-time at PG&E in July 1977 as an entry-level engineer in a one-year rotational program. The rotation allowed her to learn about various functions, including engineering design, planning, operations, and maintenance of natural gas facilities.

 

From that entry-level engineering position, Yura has expanded her expertise and knowledge base, holding a minimum of 16 different jobs and multiple short-term job rotations. “I went on to become a design engineer, a supervising engineer, a manager of engineers, director of engineers, and then director of an operating division,” she says. From operations, she joined the finance organization and became director of budget for the company.

 

Yura moved into PG&E’s regulatory area next, becoming director of analysis and rates, then its vice president, and then to gas operations as vice president of gas asset and risk management, a position she holds today. “My primary responsibility is to understand our gas distribution and transmission assets (including pipelines, compression and regulation stations and underground storage facilities), their characteristics, their condition, their risks, and develop the short and long-term work plan to manage those assets (design, installation, maintenance frequency, and operations) and their risks,” she says.

 

Within PG&E, Yura is the executive sponsor of WSTEM (Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), a group that encourages girls to enter the STEM fields, recruits new college grads into the company, and provides career support for PG&E women. On an industry level, Yura is a member of SWE and on the operations management committee of the American Gas Association.

 

FIRST ENERGY CORP.: MAINTAINING RELIABLE SERVICE

As a child, Lisa Rouse thrived on learning new things. “I would shadow my dad as he worked on machines or put together projects,” she says. In high school in North Canton, Ohio, she decided she would study engineering. Once she got to the University of Akron, she chose electrical engineering, which, she learned, could be a good base for any of the other engineering disciplines.

 

Rouse had two co-op assignments while at college. At GE she worked with engineers to perform power studies for industrial customers, installing equipment to determine if their electrical protection was appropriate, studying and making recommendations on the quality of their internal electrical system. The second co-op, at Ohio Edison, was in marketing first, where she developed a database necessary for technical sales of electricity, and then in telecommunications, where she analyzed and did field investigations of microwave circuits.

 

Rouse’s first position after graduating cumlaude in 1989 was as designer engineer with Florida Power & Light, where she designed commercial and residential projects, and did utility relocations and reliability projects.

 

When Rouse returned to Ohio in 2002, she wanted to work for Ohio Edison (now First Energy), where she’d had a positive co-op experience. She was hired as a dispatch engineer in the regional distribution operations center (RDO), which monitored, moved, and controlled the electrical load on distribution (neighborhood) circuits and was also responsible for switching the flow of electricity so line work and storm outages could be completed safely. “I was responsible for planning, scheduling, coordinating, and monitoring the various phases of our work in the field in order to maintain reliable service,” she explains.

 

Rouse was promoted to regional dispatch manager in 2003, with responsibility for distribution operations, including re storing power to customers after a power outage. She worked closely with line and substation groups to resolve issues and develop new processes as well as managed the hiring, training, development, and performance of technical employees.

 

Today, Rouse is director of outage management. “As director, I am responsible for an organization that provides support to the RDO by ensuring standardized processes and procedures are developed and followed,” she says. “My organization also is responsible for providing accurate reliability monitoring and reporting, supporting regulatory reporting for all of First Energy and for supporting and co-owning systems related to outage management.” She is also involved with power restoration during major outages and storms.

 

As director of outage management, Rouse must look at a situation, see the big picture, and decide on an appropriate strategy. “I never pretend to know it all,” Rouse admits. She surrounds herself with people who have strengths that complement hers. She acknowledges that the best changes she’s made have been “the direct result of employee innovation. You have to be approachable and a good listener to encourage employees to bring those ideas to you.”

 

Although Rouse must be available around-the-clock to deal with events that result in power outages, she still finds time to attend the activities of First Energy’s Women’s Club.

 

DOMINION RESOURCES: KEEPING TRANSMISSIONS UP-TO-SPEED

It was in middle school in her native Lima, Peru, that Marlu Deverick’s career actually began. A simple power system she built as a science project to explain the flow of electricity had such a positive impact on her that she decided to follow in her father’s footsteps and become an engineer. She enrolled in the National University of San Marcos in Lima; during her second year there, she moved with her family to the U.S., where she entered Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) to study electrical engineering.

 

An internship at the former Qimonda North America, a semiconductor fabrication facility, gave her the first opportunity to do engineering work. There, her involvement in a Six Sigma project helped her understand the potential efficiencies that can be made to improve processes.

 

After graduating from VCU in 2008 with a degree in electrical engineering, Deverick was hired by Dominion Resources as an Analyst I in its integrated resource planning department. “I forecasted long-term locational marginal prices for transmission load and generation buses (nodes) in the company,” she recalls. Deverick also supported the development of the integrated resource plan, the least-cost economic development plan for supply-side and demand-side resources, which is required by the state regulatory commissions of North Carolina and Virginia.

 

Two years later, Deverick became an Engineer I in the circuit calculations group at Dominion Virginia Power, and two years after that was promoted to Engineer II. Now, she is a settings engineer working in the transmission reliability department, where she is responsible for the development of protection relay settings for transmission lines and transmission-level substation equipment. Deverick is a company representative at the North American Transmission Forum, a group that promotes the highest levels of reliability in the operation of the electric transmission systems. She also enrolled at VCU to earn her MBA and expects to earn a second masters degree, this one in power engineering from Virginia Tech.

 

Deverick represents Dominion at several career fairs. “The last career fair I participated in was the Telemundo Multicultural Career Fair in September 2013,” she says. “My fluency in Spanish helped in that regard.” She is also a member of Dominion’s Toastmasters group, which she jointed “to meet other people in the company and polish my presentation skills.” Deverick also volunteered to be a 2013 United Way Ambassador, which provides her with experience in organizing fundraising activities, and joined the North America Transmission Forum to learn about other utilities’ practices.