 Corporate support for HBCUs has really galvanized over the last several months in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and racial unrest throughout the United States. Luckily, some of these corporations have stepped up in major ways, in major financial ways to support historic Black College and universities and their students. Dominion Energy, based out of Virginia is one of those companies with one of the largest gifts to HBCUs this year, more than $25 million in corporate support for campus expansion and scholarship for students. Also a $10 million scholarship fund that HBCU students will be available to apply for in pursuit of their academic dreams. Joining us today to talk about this programming are executives from Dominion Energy, Ed Bain, the president of Dominion Energy in Virginia and Carlos Brown, the senior vice president, general counsel and chief compliance officer for the company. Good morning, gentlemen. I appreciate your time so much this morning. Hey, good morning. Good morning. $25 million to 11 HBCUs in your service area. I think the major question is, well, we know it's a big deal. We know that the students in the campuses appreciate it in great measure. I think that a lot of folks would want to know how does this kind of initiative get started? What is the conversation like in the executive brain trust in working with the community in identifying ways, specific ways that the money or the financial support can be best used to help. And we'll start with you Ed on that conversation because we know it's a top level conversation but it takes a lot of influence from folks throughout the company, throughout the organization, throughout the community to say this is how you best make it work. Yeah, so I'll touch on a couple of points and then of course Carlos can add to it as well. But we've been on a diversity journey for I would say at least 15 years. I've been with the company over 25 years. I've been an executive with the company the past 11. And so we have senior leaders who understand why diversity and inclusion are important from a business perspective, from a community perspective. And the benefit, one of the great benefits of that is on the senior leadership team to have folks like Carlos and I to be involved in those conversations and the decision making. And so as we saw the things that were happening in the community and across the nation this late spring and summer, we just felt like that we needed to do more. We needed to take action. And our CEO and others were very supportive of that. And so that's how this support for HBCUs and the significant contribution started. I started with conversations with our CEO and Carlos and various and I and some others. So we're very proud. We've been supporting HBCUs for the past 40 years. But this is definitely the most significant contribution that we've made. Yeah, I'll just add, I mean, it really is, it sounds like a colloquialism, but it starts at the top. And the weekend, I believe it was the weekend after George Floyd's death, you know, our CEO, Tom Farrell, text it. I mean, I remember I was walking through Home Depot and I got a text and it was Tom just checking it. And I think, you know, it's likewise. It had similar communications and we all knew that this was different and we need to do something different. And I believe it was maybe that Monday morning, Tom asked for Ed and Darius and myself to gather with him and he just said, look, I want to do something transformational, something that is significant. And all the folks on HBCU Promise, what we have to recognize is that we, our first commitment this summer was a $5 billion to support social justice initiatives at large. That was our first move, but what Tom came to us and said after we made that, we said, look, I want to do more. There's something, I wanted something that's going to be transformation, that's going to be game changing because these struggles have persisted too long. And we can do more as a leader in our community, especially a company of our nature where we are a public service entity. We have to do more to take a stand to try to change this dynamic. And he put the three of us together to say, look, let's come up with something. But I will say, Tom was initially the one who said, let's focus on HBCUs. We had a long standing relationship with Virginia Union uniquely, but it goes, but Hampton as well, Virginia State. But we had a long standing relationship where the Virginia Union president had been on our board of directors going back into the early 80s, I think maybe even the early 70s, a series of them. And Tom was very aware of that. And we have maintained that our Chief Operating Officer, Diane Leopold, currently serves on their board. Their former board chair was our lead director at that point. And so we had this long relationship. Tom said, look, I'm taking HBCUs, but I want you guys to work on this. And it was one of the greatest privileges of my career to be able to work on this initiative with Ed and Darius and several others. We were able to pull them folks across the footprint and across the company to really hone in on what schools we want to focus on and have a rationale, right? Why these 11 versus others? I know that there are a lot of great HBCUs all across the country that are doing great work and that we admire and appreciate, but we want it there to be a nexus between our company and those institutions either because of our alumni base, I mean, I mean, our employee base, we're the alumnus of those schools, but where have we recruited? And or where do we want to recruit, right? Where do we want to go and get talent to improve our workforce diversity and just to make us the most competitive and sustainable energy company in the country? So all those things were factors. I'm glad you said that because it brings up a point I want to talk about. The energy industry has really, really tight connections with a variety of workforce development initiatives. You can be a lineman and that's technical training. You can get great training for that at a community college or you can go and become a senior vice president and general counsel or president of an energy company and that requires more of the traditional liberal arts education. When you think about the ways that you guys looked at the institutions with whom you wanted to partner, are there specific, I know you mentioned alumni, so obviously there are people involved, but what are some of the, I guess, the programmatic things that you look for in an educational partner that presented themselves as ideal for this particular initiative for HBCUs? Yeah, so I mean, you're exactly right. There's a very diverse set of skills and educational needs that an energy company has and that's continuing to evolve as we move to a cleaner energy grid and more modern energy grid. Those skills that we need continue to evolve from what they may have been 25 years ago to what they are now. Now, do we still need linemen? Do we still need engineers? Do we still need accountants? All those things are absolutely right. And so, as Carlos mentioned, as we thought about the relationships that we had on a number of different spectrums, we wanted to make sure that we deepen those. And so, to give a few examples, Carlos talked about the Virginia Union relationship, but we also have Virginia State who sits right down the road from us and we've worked very closely with their business school and we've worked very closely with their engineering school and so very targeted in those areas. North Carolina A&T, they were the only school that we included from North Carolina. We have a smaller service territory footprint there and employee base, but North Carolina A&T is a place that we've historically had a very strong relationship with and quite a few employees that are there. And I mean, let's face it, you wanna go get minority engineers, North Carolina A&T is one of the best places to go in the country. And so, our investment there is very targeted to the engineering school. And so, if you look at the states that we donated to in the schools, it was based on where do we operate and strengthening those relationships from a workforce perspective and alumni perspective. When you guys personally think about the investment of HBCUs and you guys were both educated in Virginia, Virginia Tech, University of Virginia respectively, but like a lot of folks there, they have at least a passing knowledge of HBCUs. Some of us even who didn't graduate from HBCUs have family friends who graduated from HBCUs. Can you guys talk about your personal investment and your personal knowledge base? Carlos, I'll start with you. That makes it that much more of a palatable partnership to you and more passionate for you. Well, yeah, that's a great question. So, I was able to share one of the things we did is we actually did a panel and we met with each of the universities and their leadership and talked about the grant program. One of the things I was able to share with when we talked to Norfolk State was that in my family, I'm from Southeast Virginia, Chesapeake, every person in my family that had gone to college with the exception of my one aunt who went to the University of Virginia in the late 70s, had gone to Norfolk State. And so essentially I am the product of an HBCU. My aunts and uncles, cousins, the reason I knew about college, the people that came home and talked to me about some of the things they don't teach you in grade school were my aunts and uncles that went to Norfolk State. And so I clearly stand on the shoulders of that HBCU legacy. And again, it was a great pride for me to be involved in an effort to support those schools that were so instrumental in creating an educational and social economic opportunity for people like me and Ed who were able to go to other institutions. The other thing I'll add is that, we do have the additional $10 million that is a scholarship one. Part of the rationale for that was that for generations, because of Missouri discrimination, African-American students were not able to attend PWIs. And when we looked at our alumni base, what we discovered was that right now, we are recruiting the majority of our African-American employees at Dominion actually have come to attend non-HBCUs. And so we said, we wanna make sure we're providing some resource for those African-American students underrepresented minority populations to gain access to the techs and UVAs and the Harvards and the VCUs and the University of South Carolina as well. And so that's part of why we did that separate scholarship form was because we recognize that there's a large population of our students or our employees who attend those other institutions. And that's okay because that's part of what our interest is for, right? Is that opportunity to have equal access to all the opportunities? And so if you're blessed to attend an HPCU, and that's great, but if you don't attend an HPCU, we wanna support you in that effort too. The issue was how do we help provide an educational opportunity ladder for diverse students, especially African-Americans? Hey, Jared, let me add to that. Not all get into trouble. So, you know, I was first-generation, my sister and I are first-generation college kids and our family, so I'm not really any legacy there. But my wife went to St. Paul. So, you know, I got to live that HPCU experience through my wife, but also through her family, her dad went to St. Paul's, her uncles went to Virginia State. And so on my in-laws, very deep roots from HPCU perspective, and just having the conversations and going and having those experiences, just know the rich history there, the product that HPCU has put out and it's how it's so critical to our communities and to our company going forward. And that's a critical point, man, because actually what you guys are doing in no small measure is making sure that another HPCU in Virginia doesn't wind up like St. Paul. They aren't disappearing. It's particularly with funds that go to expand the campus that support tuition, which powers a lot of these campuses. So it's an amazing thing. And I will give you guys out of here on this last question. You had a 40-year relationship with Black colleges in the state, 40 years of relationship with HPCUs in your service territory, 40 years of relationship with customers all throughout this region. Are there ways that you think about this expands? How do we do more? As Carlos said, we think about how do we do something more? The keyword transformational, how do you even get more transformational than this? Because this is a pretty substantive thing. Or is it that you maintain at a very high level? Yeah, I'll just speak briefly, like Carlos finishes out. I believe that through these investments, HPCUs and the students will demonstrate how you leverage these things for the good of not only HPCUs and students, but the companies and the communities as we go forward. And so I think not only for us, but other companies who've chosen to do the same thing, they will see tremendous value, exponential returns, and they will want to do more. I firmly believe that. And so I don't believe it's a maintain or this is over or go back to what you're doing. I believe folks will see, our company will see, we will see that these investments are truly critical for our success, our community success, our nation's success going forward. Yeah, I'll just echo that. And one of the things that we looked at when we did this, because when we went in with our ass, and because Tom didn't give us room, so we shopped for the moon. And we thought, well, hey, baby, he gives us half. But we show the economic impact. That's right. I mean, HBCUs are typically some of the largest employers of African-Americans. HBCUs not only help lift their students out of poverty or low wealth communities, but it also helps lift communities because it provides jobs and other educations. And so, and then they become customers, right? Of Dominion Energy, of Dominion Energy Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, what have you. So we believe this is just, we are doing well by doing good and that this will yield benefits for us from a workforce development perspective and diversified our workforce from creating economic activity within our regions, creating centers of excellence. One of the things we're looking at doing is partnering with Norfolk State and Hampton and Virginia State to develop a Clean Energy Sustainability Center as we look at, you know, greening our business and so forth and leveraging all those talents. So we're thrilled, and I think that it was one of the universities, I think A&T that quickly realized that there's opportunities for us to deepen this relationship, right? That, you know, we were fortunate that it was announced that we're gonna be the name sponsor of their, in their air building of their laboratory floor. But they're like, you know, the building's available, right? So they gave great opportunity for us to come back and we're excited. I mean, the entire company is excited about this. We've had employees who've been employees for 40, 50 years. We've had alumni retirees call back and say that this was one of their proudest moments in the company's history. And so I think everyone believes that this is something that we want to grow and go deeper into. Well, brothers, I gotta say, this is an amazing, you know, I've been doing this for more than 10 years and this is one of the first conversations where I've had where executives have really drilled down to the elements of HBCU support where you're talking about engagement with employees who are alumni, where you're talking about educational access and you guys get it. And I think that people nationwide, when they watch this, they will see that Dominion Energy truly is a corporate example, not just how you can provide support for HBCUs, but how to get it, how to think about it. And so I appreciate your time this morning. Thank you so much. If people wanted to support Dominion Energy's efforts on behalf of HBCUs and your other philanthropic support measures, because you do more than just education, you do more than just HBCUs, how can folks learn more about that, learn more about Dominion Energy and a lot of its corporate outreach effort? Well, we have our sustainability report that we have published on our website that has more information than anyone could ever want on what we do in this space. And so checking that out, we spend over $40 million a year, where I said we invest more than $40 million a year in our communities through various philanthropic efforts. And this is over and above that, by the way, just so you know, this is not a part of that. This is over and above that bad initiative at this point. And if they wanna support, what I would say, just send them a note or a letter to call the contact center and just say, I just want to pass along how much we appreciate what Dominion Energy's doing. We share that information with our board, we share it with our shareholders. And it encourages, it supports the initiative, the work that folks like Tom and Carter and Jim Chapman and Ed and others are doing to help us be transformative in this effort. So that's how they support Dominion Energy. They wanna support HBCUs, go give the HBCUs and encourage their companies to do the same. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. We appreciate you gentlemen. Thank you so much. Thank you.