 Good morning everyone. It's wonderful to be here with all of you. In this session we're going to be talking about the role of leadership and how corporate leaders can advance the cause of social equity and environmental justice during the energy transition. Now for some of us, advancing social equity and environmental justice have been a lifelong passion and a mission. Well for others of us, the tragic events of the past year have ignited or reignited a passion for and commitment to making our country fairer, more equitable. A country where everyone gets a fair chance at a good life and make sure that pollution burdens don't disproportionately fall on low income and communities of color. No matter where we are on this journey, we all agree the time has come for change. We need to do better and each and every one of us has a role to play. Corporate and government leaders can help us do better in so many ways. They can create the opportunity and an environment for difficult conversations to help advance these issues. They can create policies and incentives to align business objectives with advancing the cause of social equity and justice. They can work directly with communities to break down barriers that get in the way of progress. And they can encourage and create the opportunity for employees to develop and put into action new approaches for advancing these issues. And they can make sure their hiring practices and employee advancement result in a diverse workforce. In today's conversation, we're going to learn about four amazing women leaders and how they're advancing social equity and environmental justice in their organizations. First, we have Paula Gold Williams, former president and CEO of CPS Energy Gas and Electric Utility that provides services to nearly a million customers in the San Antonio area. And in addition to her role there, she also serves on a broad portfolio of boards and committees, and is the immediate past chair of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce. So welcome Paula. Thank you for joining us today. So next we have Tracy LeBow. She is the administrator and chief executive officer at the Western Area Power Administration or WAPA as it's known. And she's held this position since August of 2021. So WAPA is one of four federal utilities that markets and delivers low cost federal hydropower from 57 hydroelectric plants across 15 different states. Before joining WAPA Tracy was a political appointment appointee in the Department of Energy from 2011 to 2014. So welcome Tracy. And next we have Carla Peterman, currently the executive vice president for corporate affairs and chief sustainability officer for Pacific Gas and Electric, a utility that serves northern and central California. And earlier in her career, she served the six year term as a commissioner at the California Public Utilities Commissioner where she did an awful lot of things, including leaving the adoption of the first ever utility scale energy storage mandate in the country. And also investment in the adoption of electric vehicle charging infrastructure and implementation of California's renewable portfolio standard. And prior to that she served in the California Energy Commission. So welcome Carla. And finally we have Kathy Zoey, who is the CEO of EVGO, a public fast charging network with stations across the United States. And she brings decades of experience and clean energy, including investing and working policy communities. And earlier in her career she served in the Obama Administration as the assistant secretary and acting under secretary at the Department of Energy, and she oversaw investment of more than $30 billion in clean energy infrastructure. And in the 1990s she was chief of staff for environmental policy in the Clinton White House, and she pioneered the Energy Star program while at EPA. So welcome Kathy. So anyway, an incredible group of leaders here. And the way the session is going to work is I'm going to ask a series of questions to the panelists. Then we're going to open it up to questions from all of you. So please do send in your questions. And this is a really great opportunity to hear firsthand from people rate women who have so many experience and so many different ways. So, so please do get us those. Okay, so we're going to start so question number one. So, I think that every one of us has a personal story, or an aha moment, when we realize that we simply have got to be doing a better job. We need to do a better job eliminating the injustices that some people feel place every day, and we have to do a better job, making sure that everyone has a chance for a good and healthy life. So I'd like to just start by asking each of you, what were your aha moments and what's your personal story, and how have these shaped the lens through which you look at social equity and environmental justice and what does that mean to you. So I'd like to start with Paula. So, thank you for joining us. Emily, thank you so much and very nice to be with all of you today and such an important topic. Look, I think what I would start by saying is, I'm a student of the industry and I'm actually an accountant by education and training and not an engineer. I've always looked at my opportunity to lead an organization and energy as luck to a great degree I've made a lot of choices I come from, you know, a background where there wasn't privilege. You know, overall, and I think a lot of times when people think that they're, they're talking to CEOs that that they don't, they don't know, and actually, I do know from that experience and it's always with me. I would say that my whole life has been these micro ahas that I have been dealing with and just some quick revelations. When we were initially coming out of the recovery period over under Obama, and we had, you know, given to us access to weatherization funds. It was initially through our owner and then ultimately, you know, we had the ability to to go weatherize homes. And, you know, just to understand that we needed more programs where we could get enough assistance to really do a full service in homes that that had, you know, they needed assistance and we also work to make sure that we did the installation ourselves. We brought in people that help us do that but the, the, the knowing that we were helping making people's homes tighter and really realizing that they would normally not even a rebate program wouldn't wouldn't have helped them at all. So we really began to understand that every time we did something we needed something for every economic part of our community, and we needed to find as many things that could speak to people who just wanted to also participate if they want it. Everybody wants to make a difference in energy everybody wants clean air. And so accordingly you have to really be thoughtful that that when you're doing it. You're looking for as many places to go in parts of town where they wouldn't normally even raise their hand let alone be able to access these programs and then the last piece I would say what we did last year is we created an outbound call group that is still in effect. And what we ended up really realizing is that most of time utilities are actually responsive they restore power they do all these things, but we really changed our position and started calling customers very much focusing on customers from an economic standpoint. You know they lost their jobs they've lost family members, and we finally decided that it wasn't even about all of the energy we wanted to find them programs through the United Way the food bank all those things, and a utility company historically wouldn't get into that. And it's the best place for employees to be they feel so much more helpful they feel they're more mission driven, and the fact of the matter is a community can't really thrive if you really have people suffering. And so, so you got to do more. Okay. All right, well, well thank you. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a really proactive approach to engagement with people instead of sitting back and waiting till you know it's clear that there's a problem that that you're trying to get out of that and that sounds really wonderful. So. Okay, well let's move on to Tracy. Great, thank you. That's a great and it was a great, it's a great question Sally, because I think it can lead us into a lot of different areas I think I've had a couple of a house throughout my career and continue to have them. And, but I think part of it, one of my initial ones early on in my career, and actually right after I'm law trained, I've always gravitated towards law and justice issues and natural resources and how those the how those issues play out, you know, in communities, both negatively and positively. And part of what I think informed that and my natural gravitation towards that was, I am a Native American, I'm indigenous to the United States. I am a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe in South Dakota, a tribe that was, you know, had some of their lands inundated to make way for hydroelectric development. And some, you know, and so a lot of the impacts, both really very positive, and some of them related to, you know, the impacts on environment lands, homelands, having to relocate and so forth. Was something I heard from, I can't even, I actually don't remember when I first started hearing about it. It affected both my parents. And so I've always been hearing about those types of issues from very early on. And when I was getting ready to graduate law school, and I stopped one of the, when I started entering into the professional, my professional career, I started, you know, thinking to myself and looking at, you know, looking at those and, you know, in the business and being a student of that of leadership and how people successful people operate and move around in the, in the business, you know, is very, you know, very, you know, aggressive, talk, you know, loud, a lot of very focused on, you know, performance and very, you know, individually focused where I was coming from a culture and community and a family that was very, very high value put on humility and very high value put on, you know, service to community thinking your world for you is, you know, your, your, your extended family in your community. And, you know, so it was it was attention early on, you know, in my career to kind of sort through how do I show up in a professional workplace and stay true to what you know I the way I have been raised in my whole world view. And, you know, that indigenous, indigenous, very particular indigenous world view that is, you know, very thinking along, you know, seven generations ahead, very focused on, you know, extended familial type of relationships. I am glad to kind of see these days, and particularly right now that I feel like the industry is more accepting of that, and embracing it and seeing the value of those types of approaches to how we develop our people how we develop our business and what success means. And I think that that's been a ha throughout my career that I don't feel like it has to be an either or I feel like there's a way to, you know, to respect and and incorporate a lot of those values into how we lead. And now here I am at Western area power, who, you know, we are very, very public service oriented, our workforces incredibly passionate about the communities that we serve. And that what we provide low cost hydro power to low cost clean energy to and how that is real a real building block for a lot of very rural and a lot of disadvantaged communities throughout our 15 state footprint. And so that resonates very deeply with me. And I'm just so proud and thankful to be working at a place that and with people that it means just as much. Thank you. Thank you. So Carla, maybe we'll move on to you. Sally. Well in terms of my own personal story. I got interested in energy first from an interest in environmental justice. I went to historically black college and took environmental justice course and very much thought I would be an environmental attorney was very moved by efforts to close power plants deal with local air pollution. And then I had a professional aha moment in graduate school where I started learning about economics and energy and I said, Well I could have a more of an impact, or just a different type of impact. If I'm involved in the production of energy itself. If we can design energy systems in a way that are more just and equitable at the onset. That is an easier process than after the fact, trying to dismantle an energy system and deal with consequences because at that point already suffered the community impacts. So, in that I pursued this current energy and working in utility regulation now out of utility, and I've always been struck by the fact that we are trying to solve a very complicated things that really seem hard to solve all together safety reliability, clean particularly in California and affordable. And so there have been times where my career where I felt pretty helpless, and it oftentimes frustrated when environmental justice advocates would say, But you need to do more, but you need to do this and I think, Oh, if they only understood how technically hard this is and how what we're already doing is on the cutting edge, you know, then they would give us they would understand more. And then at the aha moment I had related to that was I was in a community workshop at one point, and we were talking about what it really means to have a community centric ESG focus policy. And the comment was, first of all, you can't do it at the end you've got to build it into the beginning. And then also the community members are experts in their community. They don't need to be experts on the technical system, they don't need to be experts in energy. Their job, their job is to bring forward and represent what is happening to them and their community. And it is, it is core to my job to integrate that. And so that stopped me from feeling frustrated or helpless and more so feeling empowered that I have this awesome responsibility and opportunity to take that input, take that expertise, combine it with technical expertise and economic expertise to deliver. The last aha moment I wanted to share was, when I was a regulator, a member dealing with a rape case, where community members came forward and said, five dollar a month rate increase was too much. And I thought, okay $5, you know, that's a latte, but it's like these folks aren't buying latte, you know, people were very compelling and saying this for me is a choice it's a choice between this or food. This is a choice between shelter. And it really struck me just the perspective there that every increase matters for someone. And just how important it is to make sure we've got that safety net to make sure that everyone can access these essential services. And again that even if it's hard, it's my job to keep trying to do better and better each time. Okay, great. Thank you. There's a lot to unpack in all of these remarks. We could talk about this a lot. Maybe we'll get back to some of these things. So, so Kathy, how about you? Yeah, look, I, what a great forum and a great conversation just so far. I'm like, I'm absorbing it all. In my part, I studied geology and engineering, and that back then I was, it was very rare to be a woman in energy, I spent my career in energy, and I never actually really thought much about it. Like I was the oldest of three daughters I had no brothers so I always had to do the things that traditionally in my vintage, the boys would have to do so, and my father said off you go. I was unconscious of it actually particularly about about women about the potential bias against women in energy until I got to Silicon Valley. In government it felt fine at the utility world it actually felt pretty okay in Silicon Valley. When I arrived after I left the Obama administration, it felt still quite there was a lot of unconscious bias. So when I moved to Evie go what I have tried to do is, is ensure that we actually open the aperture and take and embrace the points of view of everybody and again I think we're going to get to it and further in this conversation but I'd love to actually talk a little bit about the journey that Evie go was on to try to get eliminate unconscious bias and to enable electric for all because it's a wide spectrum of activities and it is indeed a journey. Thank you. Yeah, and you bring up the issue of women in clean energy and we heard a number of different takes on that. I think that, you know, adding sort of an aha moment for me, because I also was not terribly sensitized to, you know, some of the issues of all different kinds of people but one of the things that would always frustrate me is to be standing next to a man and have everybody walk right by me all the dignitaries walk right by me and walk up to the man right next door and say, hello, and it's like, well, you know, I'm here too. And yeah, and that's just a very little tiny I think sliver into what it feels like to be disregarded and just intentionally overlooked so there's a lot of work to do in that regard. So, so I want to move on now to to solutions to you know how how you as corporate leaders can can make a difference and you know, I think, having heard your backgrounds and you're running these large and complex organizations. Can you talk about some of the specific things that you've done to try to create an environment where social equity and environmental justice are central to the way you go about doing your business. And I think we'll start with Tracy. Thank you. Certainly thank you. I think on the people side, one of the one of the very intentional things that this organ is that our organization did a few years ago was, you know, of course, like everyone else we're looking at, you know, we were hearing about diversity inclusion and you hear it all the time. And they had a very intentional conversation about how that looked for us. And the decision was made consensus decision was made that we're going to start we're going to stand up an inclusion and diversity committee. Now that doesn't sound like a like, okay fine, reverse the word, the words. And it was very intentional that we focus the focus out the gate was on inclusion. I think the diversity part of it was for us almost a little bit of a given that we knew we had to do work on the inclusion part of it. So since then we have been, we have been training to unconscious bias, very, you know, throughout the entire organization, and, and we're still doing that work. We feel like we still got work to do on the inclusion part of it, before we start tackling equity, and, you know, and, you know, in the next year or two. Of course, it's on our mind. We work with communities across our 15 state footprint. We have over 700 customers that we sell wholesale hydro to. So we're just in we have an all of our folks are throughout all of those communities so it's not, you know, we're not sitting in, you know, one spot, and, and not living, but we are living in those communities so that perspective that our folks bring back every single day is just critically important we want to make sure that we have those voices in the room. We've also started doing blind application processes for some of our leadership programs. And so that's been really interesting to see how that's played out it's played out very positively. It has changed the amount a number of women that are, you know, being selected into some of our training and leadership development programming. And then last I think for our, you know, turning in looking a little pivoting a little bit towards the equity part of it because we are I mean we are paying attention to it. But I don't think we've settled on exactly you know what our priorities are going to be in that. But we've got a bit you know we've got a bit of equity built into kind of baked into our organization in the sense that you know this are 17,000 miles of transmission that we own and operate maintain it was originally built to take hydro into kind of those last miles into those very rural communities that desperately needed you know low cost power to really help them establish a more sustainable economy. And that's something you know we picks very very seriously and very committed to, to maintaining maintaining that low cost, and to provide those that value to our to those, you know those those those rule and disadvantaged communities. Thanks, Sally. Yeah, maybe just to follow up a little on that. I mean, I think it's people don't really know that there are still people who lack access to electricity in this country. And, and particularly on, on Native American lands and, and, and, you know, I think that's just, it's crazy. We should do better than that. And, and it sounds like, like you're trying to do that. And, and are you, are you making progress are you confident that we're going to get there. I am, you know, and the department writ large, right is has has been focused on that I mean Congress very intentionally passed the Energy Policy Act in 2005 to establish programs and funding and authorities to, you know, to really assist in those areas and not to just run, you know, run poles and wires out to homes but really to, you know, help provide that type of, you know, technical assistance and funding to those rural communities, indigenous communities throughout the US to help them develop, you know, community power projects, you know, residential type of projects and clean energy. So I think, you know, we are making progress up on that for sure. You know, but it is the irony of it, in terms of US history that a lot of the oil and gas production that happened in, you know, throughout last century, a lot of the coal production. And, and was, in fact, you know, in those territories, and, and largely exported, right. And so, not that that value chain not really captured in those communities. And one of the exciting things about, you know, the, you know, the current approaches is to really try to, the whole equity conversation is really as we approach this, you know, push on infrastructure and clean energy, let us find a way to make those investments in those native communities. And so we're very excited about that. Yeah, well, that's great. That's great to hear. So, so Kathy, I know you're doing a lot of exciting things you want to talk about your programs. So, so if you go tends to be a very mission oriented place we attract people who not only want to have a good job in a growing industry that who want to help address climate change. And that, I think that empathy for the environment extends to empathy for humanity and I don't that that may sound Polly Anish but what's it was interesting and challenging is the tragic events of George Floyd's murder there was a lot of people across the organization were quite upset legitimately. So what we did is we did a survey so what can we do about this we're an action oriented place what can we do. We had the vast majority of people across the ego said here are my thoughts here's what I did we put those into we created a bunch of working groups that touched on training and unconscious bias recruiting more effectively to take advantage of diverse points of view and helping the organization grow advancement within the organization. Once people were there because it turns out that across the top of the organization were pretty monochromatic. And we need to do better than that. People also said how can we be more engaged in our communities, like literally we even go as you know our headquarters in it is in LA how do we get more involved with disadvantaged communities and communities of color. And then how can our business be truly about advancing electric for all. So each of those had specific action plans were were employee led. And we have integrated all of those actions into our okay ours our objectives and key results so we measure our progress in each of those areas, quarter by quarter so let me give you an example on the electric for all. When we cite charging stations like the one behind me, we actually put them through an EJ screen. The EPA has come up with an environmental justice screen and we make sure that we are not just putting charging infrastructure in wealthy white neighborhoods. And that's part that is now a core part of our business. And we you know as we extend across the country. We have adopted some local community charities that are that our folks are getting involved in, even and even though we're national we do these things. So, there is just a variety. For me. We need to grieve and discuss things when they happen badly but we need to then turn those into progress and action. And I would say as I say it's a work in progress. We are not perfect it's going to be continuous improvement we're going to measure though our progress and I'm and I'm really proud of the widespread employee engagement across even though that's that's great to hear, and how do your employees respond to this. But they, everybody responds really really well unless they have to co chair a committee and they say they don't have time for it. But no but that's really practical every like as I say, like in 80% of folks put up their hand and say I want to be on that task force I want to be on that task force. But there is there and when we did the we did some training on unconscious bias, it was a hunt it was mandatory training, but we had total commitment in the breakout sessions and and again, this is, there were people that were moved to tears that was extremely constructive and very showing vulnerability in a work setting that so I say I just continue to be buoyed by the acknowledgement that we need to all continue to work together to make this better. Okay, thank you. Well, PG&E is a large company, we have 25,000 employees and 15,000 contractors, and we serve 16 million people and so what's awesome I think about being at a utility is that we represent the communities that we serve in, you know we're actually living them our customers as well as coworkers. And so our purpose statement at PG&E which we find this year is delivering for our hometowns serving the planet and leading with love. And it's the leading with love part that people are a little surprised about to hear from a utility. And we talk about that a lot what does that mean when you live with love. It is starting from a place of commitment of recognizing that we are imperfect in many ways we are most imperfect in our relations of people we love the most, but we stick with it and we work through things. So we start with that framework and we've been working with all of our coworkers about what does that mean in terms of our engagement with our community. What does that mean in terms of our work on safety environment social justice. So we're doing some of the things that others have raised as well targeting screens our projects targeted work with our charitable, but one thing I wanted to highlight is our work on psychological safety. The importance of constantly talking with our coworkers about what a psychologically safe environment is where you ask questions where you speak up where you raise issues, where you challenge each other. Because if you don't feel psychologically safe, then we're not going to surface when we don't see ESJ being appropriately treated in our work and managing an external oriented organization and I've got the reps who are in the field who are working with our tribal partners for example, to manage communities, having them feel safe to raise issues and say to the engineer you know what, I get it we got to do this reliability, but we didn't co create this the way we should have with our community is first and foremost, a matter of really important. And then the other thing I wanted to say is like putting resources added me Kathy got on this but with my organization I have an environmental social justice manager, who's full time job is working to make sure we're working appropriately with the communities. We have an environmental social justice policy, we just developed our human rights policy. So it's also putting in so much people don't people want to do the right thing they don't know what that means. So it's starting to give that guidance from the, from the top down as well so psychological safety allows for our co workers to bring their perspective to this and so it's ground up, and then having these policy statements at the highest C sweet level, really give that direction that this is a priority for our company. Thank you. You know, I like that you talk about a psychologically safe environment. And what I also think about is just trust, you know, to have a safe environment you have to trust people and, and actually this is the second time in your remarks that you sort of brought up this idea of what, what to me underpinned it was trust you mentioned that, you know, when you were working with the communities, it's the community's job to advocate for their concerns and bring forward their concerns and, and it's your job to bring forward those technologies and support, but for that to work in the end of the day there really has to be trust on both parts. And, you know, I think the question is how do we create this more trusting society that is trustworthy and trusting. Well, you know, I gotta say to when being a utility and being in government, these are institutions that have been around over 100 years. And so there's a long history of circumstances where we haven't had trust right and we talk a lot about how the trust bank is easy to withdraw from and hard to add to. And so first and foremost, I think she's acknowledging where you haven't done right, you know, we're owning, owning, owning our history and owning our desire to do better. So most people just want to hear from you that you understand that things haven't been going as well as they should have right. And then I think it's just showing up demonstrating saying, like, you know, the listening learning responding I mean I love it when we get what might be an issue that's a small issue, right, but we're able to fix it because you never know who you're fixing it for right that person, go tell their neighbor and they tell their neighbor and their neighbors the mayor who knew right and so I just think it's a long, it's a long term commitment and that's why we have love as a part of our mission which is like we are in it for the long term because we want to serve people for the next hundred years and so I just think you have to have that mentality. Yeah, thanks I think that's so important. Okay, Paula, on to you. Okay, so a couple of things that I would share it in and it may sound counterintuitive so I have served this community I'm born and raised in it. And when I became CEO as an African American person. In reality, it kind of felt like the reverse racism conversations will come, you know, we're kind of an undercurrent right. Okay, here we got an African American leader she's going to be talking about diversity inclusion what does that mean does that mean quotas, you know, and the conversations, although, you know, would touch on these aspects or people get going to get potentially either awarded jobs or contracts with us, and they won't necessarily be the best performing entities and I, I, you know, I think the art for me has been in the conversation, and to look past this, the fears of what those unintended consequences are and then when people would say well, is it possible that we didn't pick the best candidate that are the best vendor because you know, we, we were looking for a diverse vendor and I, you know, just having the conversation with people that that again that's an unconscious bias. Let's have a conversation about that we put people up against the same criteria all the way around but I think what we really had to be honest about was, why did even our pools, not reflect diversity in our selection. And, and that taking that extra time to look for more candidates in the organization or more candidates in your community, or more companies and we're in that process can we find more companies that can do this work. Now there is an element when you're utility you're not doing, you're not doing a lot of general work in some cases you might you're in for us we're the only utility in town. And so also encouraging people to get into aspects of what we do and now we've had to go a bit further in the education process when we're dealing with vendors. Let's tell you what our business is. Well there's talk to you about where our business where our industry is going. Are you interested in doing work with us and being in the space, and really learning more about how to expand your business model to, to affect us and benefit us. And so the art of conversation has been I think the real key for us. And I still believe that we're on this learning journey to make that happen. And again, the last piece I will say, and you can't talk enough about it you can't you can't try too hard. It's something that you have to have all the time I love Kathy's comment about blind, you know, blind application processes and, and we've done that to teach and it's interesting people go I didn't realize I was looking for someone who was reflecting both my background and my values. And, and really not looking for the essence of their technical ability and their character. So I would tell you this is a journey that CPS Energy has been on we have a very diverse team here. We try a lot of things we move people out of their expertise into other roles. We call them executive and residence programs or interim programs. That way they don't have the bias of having to have a pedigree to do something. And then we get to get at the essence of them learning and growing as fast as the organization. And we've had great results with that. Yeah, that's good. I mean, you started the conversation with, you know, the sort of presumptive view that sometimes that, you know, by picking a diverse candidate or a woman candidate that it's because of that. And, and I don't think people understand how undermining that is to all of the individuals, you know, I think all of us as women probably at one time or another have felt that people think that while we're in these jobs because we're women. And that's so undermining. I think we just have to work so hard at changing that narrative. And so, so how is it, how is it going? I feel like we're making progress and that that the people are shifting the way they think and that they're really viewing candidates on their own merits. I do. I, again, I think it's one of those things that, you know, it's like Robert Van, if you don't, if you don't constantly make it part of what you're trying to do that you will slip back. You know, I know I've talked to people, I've sent men to women's conferences so they can feel like what it feels like to be in the minority. And that's when I mean like I look for those kind of experiences or when we're looking for candidates and I don't see any women in the pool. You know, I started asking questions and I specifically drilled down like what about Mary, right, why, why is Mary not in this pool and when people say well you know we've been working with her but you know she's probably about a year away and I said you know what I asked you last time she told you told me she was a year away. I said, because she's still not there. You know who's fault that is that's our fault. Because if we didn't identify what we needed to do for Mary. And we keep telling her she's a year away. Then the failure is we're not great leaders and we're not building talent behind as I talk about this all the time you got to build tap build talent behind you for you to have opportunity to do other things you got to be making sure that the whole company is growing. So those conversations are uncomfortable. Oftentimes you know people are trying to figure out where I'm coming from, and really and truly, I just want to make sure again that people get treated fairly, and they get a chance and they get a chance to grow. And nobody's born an executive or born a prince, you know president of EVP, you know, a business leader, there's so much that we can do for others. And then again that extends to what you do for others in your mentorship outside of the company and helping, you know, with with students get, you know, associated and kind of immersed in our in our what we do is an industry and how exciting that is. But you got to care you got to be you got to care enough to challenge your own beliefs about what you should be looking for and again I still say say it's a balance of technical but even more so these the qualitative emotional intelligence for someone to to really be a balanced leader, let alone a balanced team member, and you might as well work for people with very diverse backgrounds in that and be conscious about it so it's it's something that you just got to continue to go through we've made quite a bit of progress but I think it's we could bounce back so the leaders behind me. We have our first Hispanic CEO that is taking on the interim spot as I'm transitioning I'm really proud of him. And again our team is just, you know, they just come with great substance. And, and they think about talent in a better way now than I think we did five or 10 years ago. Yeah, you know that that thank you that I think what you said is going to really stick with me for a long time. If you have someone who keeps you know every time it's only a year a year out your year or two out. It really is to reflection more on the organization and then the environment that people find themselves in if we're not helping people advance so I think that's really, that's really insightful. Yeah, well thank you. Okay, what I want to do now is to have a conversation really amongst amongst all of us about, you know, what are the things that you think work the best. So if we imagine we've got this incredible C3 audience here listening to this and many of them are emerging leaders. And, and they need to know what are what what are the things that work the best and, and what are the things that you've tried that actually haven't worked at all. Because I think that's equally important to understand you know what's not worth the time or at least, you know, if you're going to try again do it differently. And maybe Kathy if you want to start and then really just, you know, just chime in and let's kind of figure out let's give some good tools for success. You're on Kathy. For me, I think I separate the activities a little bit into what are we doing internally for our own organizational DNA, and then what are we doing for our business so on the first category what are we doing internally organizationally for our DNA I think I think you know both Carla and Paula hit on this, the art of conversation, the safe creating a safe space to discuss to have everybody discuss is incredibly important. Translating those good ideas that come from all over the place and places in the organization that you might not expect integrating them into into a formalized program where you're going to measure your progress. It's the same tools that we apply to our core business that we need to apply to diversity equity and inclusion issues, and how we run the businesses so that's that's sort of what I would say, like, really, really has been helpful to us, and in all the different categories. When it comes to like how do we do the business externally and for us that's electric for all and making sure that that mission is translated into building charging infrastructure for all kinds of people in all kinds of places it's convenient and reliable. Again, measuring it adding filters to ensure that when we site and when we invest our investors capital and like each one of our stations can cost a million bucks, that's real dough. And through the lens of are we are we are if we build this charging infrastructure there is it helping to advance our mission. So again, it's the same business principles that we apply to our core business of measuring your progress, but including these other factors and guess what, we're able to do it. I would say the thing quickly the thing that that we've actually struggled with I referred to this obliquely before is the idea of spreading the diversity equity inclusion responsibilities across the organization. Or centralizing them someplace again sort of as Carla referred to she's got a person who's responsible for it, we're still struggling with the best way to do that. If it's across the organization, you're sure lots and lots and lots of people are involved in this point their points view at the same time, we don't make as much progress as quickly. If somebody doesn't actually own it and that's just a classic one of those organizational issues. I'd love everybody else's thoughts on the fifth got the answer here because we're still struggling. So, so the rest of you and any, any thoughts, or follow up to Kathy's question. Hey, this is the, this is Paula actually can't they would say that we struggle with the same thing is what you know as well what's the best way to do that. I still believe that that for us when I when we have done this thing where we've picked a person and put their name on a program like diversity, or or even strategy, right, or innovation. And interestingly right. It, it actually has a counter effect sometimes it feels like oh well they'll tap me on the shoulder when I need to do that or I guess they're lucky because they get to be the ones that champion this and and I'm going to just kind of be reactive and utilities and our general DNA is to fix things to react to things to, to restore power to fix something that's broken to, you know, call a customer back. And so, for me and my leadership I've, I've really tried to get more and more people to understand that strategy is part of your job innovations part of your job. And I think like you want to develop talent and and ensuring that the talent pool that you're looking at when you're making individual high decisions is as important as anything that's done anywhere else in the community. So I get the whole thing about that what I try to do have tried to do in the past two is to get every senior leader in our organization to own that within their own organizations. And that's complicated to I don't think it's been perfect I think maybe it should be a bridge of both. And that's something that I think, you know, my successor is going to have an opportunity to focus on. Yeah, I'll chime in here I agree with just all the same and specifically your last point Paula about how it is both. I think about it two ways I mean one on one hand anything that we're serious about doing. There's people who have expertise in that right, and we can tell people, everyone should own equity diversity inclusion but their professionals who have studied this who have figured out the best ways to do this. And I think it's important to honor, honor that and hire people who where this is our expertise. And that also make it a part of what people are expected to think about constantly as leaders, I'll give the equivalence to safety. You know PG&E, we thought a lot about our safety journey and really invested in that the same when I was at Edison in the PUC, and you have your co workers who are focused on the discipline of safety. But we also expect everyone to own safety. So one of the things I asked my leaders on a regular basis and our check ins and this is what I would say is kind of a good practice is. How are you, how have you own safety as a leader. How are you living our safety stand as a leader and for corporate affairs again, you know, not our operational folks. It can be a harder question, but we've learned how to understand really what that means for us, including physical system safety as well as psychological, but then also asking that question how are you owning our diversity equity inclusion stand. I think I'm differentiating that as a leader, incorporating that fully in the performance review at the end of the year. Yeah, have you been a safety leader, have you been a DEI leader. I think by asking the question so much people just not reflect on what they can do. And when you start to say you have to do something they start to realize that they have more power than they do. So I think it is a hybrid. I can chime in a little bit. Hi Kathy. Sorry, before I do though I want to, I want to, I want to shout out to Kathy when I was being recruited into the Obama administration. The first call after the White House was Kathy called me and was recruited me into DOE so thank you. So, you know, for us, you know, the struggle is real. We have established an inclusion diversity committee across the organization and we were very thoughtful about both getting management and you know staff, but also pulling reaching out to the craft to make sure that we've got linemen represented and engineering represented. So we were really very thoughtful about kind of the up and down and across. And then we've established and then we have executive sponsors to have, you know, some not total ownership but guidance over how things get rolled out. Much like what Carla was just talking about was safety. We're also rolling out a human performance just culture initiative across the organization because we just really want to infuse safety across the entire organization and I feel a little bit, I feel the same about inclusion and diversity. Because I think it needs to get owned across kind of across the board. And thanks. I think that Carla's comment about safety is really interesting. So in the Department of Energy labs, there was a time when safety performance wasn't as good as people wanted it to be. The Department of Energy rolled out an integrated safety management program that was a hybrid model with deep expertise but also distributed responsibilities throughout the organization. And what really struck me is the training was actually so good and so profound and measured so well that I actually carried it home to my personal life. And so all of a sudden my house, my family, you know, walking on unsafe places, you know, I was just hyper aware. And I think that that's a huge opportunity if the workplace could also be a place that makes us think not only about when we're working but things about our home and our community. And if we could get diversity, equity, inclusion, you know, part of that fabric that could be really a catalytic in terms of helping to advance this much more broadly. So we've got great questions from the audience and we're using Slido. So the way this works is that somebody puts up a question and then other people can vote for it. And so these are ranked according to what you're almost interested in. So we'll start off with the first one. Yes, does the conventional imperative of C corp profit hinder energy equity. And the second part is should all shareholder utilities be the corpse profit plus purpose. So yeah, and I think this is for any and all of you who would like to comment on that. I think what I would add is, we're here in San Antonio, we're a business owned by a community. But the fact of the matter is, especially before COVID right we all realize that the world was small. I had the fortune of talking to CEOs in different countries, the energy issues that are out there are fairly common on whether you know you're working to get away from fossil fuels and the fact of the matter is there's just a whole lot more investment that has to happen in trying to figure out how to take baseload plants and replace them with cream green or clean technologies and to get to these goals. So, so that is a real thing. You know, coupled with the social justice. You know when you watch social justice issues and I always say, you know what, what the sacrifice that we took and losing Mr George Floyd to something that historically was associated with hate and racism that is not new this is that you know that reflection just brought forward, you know, hundreds of years of, of issues and discrimination so this is now squarely in our lives energy issues are squarely in our lives and so I think every organization particularly a business needs to have the dynamic of how to make to be viable, moving forward, but also making sure that these aspects of how do you do it in the most socially just way how do you improve the environment how do you make sure that people are kept safe, that people are felt that they feel like their their energy systems are secure, and making sure that everyone has the ability to afford an essential service. All those things have to be wrapped up in balance whether or not you are in one aspect of another but I think businesses no longer have the opportunity to just go to the fact financial bottom line and I'm a financial person, you've got to do it through this this additional prison and hopefully I'm addressing some of the, but the interest there on both sides and that question. Okay, quick thought on that. I'm going to add. Yeah, I agree with Paula and just say first of all it's in our investor's interest that we incorporate environmental social justice because we need our customers to pay their bills, and everyone's our customer. You know, so that's first and foremost and so if they're not able to afford their bills it's a problem for us. It's also an issue where they're not happy with their service we're also regulated entities. And so our regulator will will come down and give us direction so the more we can solve that ourselves, and then just practically we're seeing investors highlight why this is important so people feel it's important investors feel it's important because they feel socially motivated, but again it's good financial interest. The explosion we have seen in ESJ ratings metrics services that are being used by investors reporting. You have the SEC looking at rules around you know climate change risk disclosures. There's so much of focus on environment sustainability human rights that it is just becoming a fundamental part of what we do and what we're reporting out to investors in the business. I think we're going to move on to the next question is where it's actually starting to run out of time, but so this this part of the sponsorship of C3E are a number of universities. So I think that's the where this question is coming from but the question is, is, how can education support the triple challenge of sustainability workforce diversity and environmental justice. And again, San Antonio, seventh largest city in the US but we have a huge issue still with low, low graduation rates from, from high school, and we also have literacy issues here. It's not it's not rampant but when, I mean it's not the majority but if you have like 25% of your population that have these challenges, you understand that structurally your community is going to have this element of suffering but I think we here at CPS Energy really believe that education is key, both in terms of foundationally making sure that that when you know we're reaching out to parts of the community where it's not maybe as, as comfortable for them I mean just going through the pandemic and realizing how important the digital divide was that impacted students, you know those kind of things and, and, and what we can do to help kids catch back up again, talk to them about their careers, keep them interested and really encouraging them to take a big role to college. We have a lot of colleges and universities in town, but we have this huge gap about people who don't think that they, that their college material or those kind of things but we're not going to, we're not going to solve the problem if we don't get more and more people educated involved from every aspect of a career you don't have to be an engineer to have an impact from this industry, which really have to have his passion, creativity and interest in solving what we talked about earlier so if we don't, we've got to fix this educational gap that I don't think in some cases are is really getting smaller it's it's substantially structurally in some ways, either staying a constant big issue, or getting bigger, you know unconsciously is as we're trying to solve other problems. Yeah, Sally if I could just chime in to add on me Paula focused more on the, on the high school education I would say when it comes to the university level stuff and during my wonderful years of working with you closely teaching kids at Stanford. I think the thing that that's that we were doing that was really appealing is we were we were, we had a multi disciplinary approach, and almost builds on what Paula was saying about you don't need to be an engineer. The things that I taught had engineers, historians English majors poets, people from the business school, all coming together collectively to say look we're looking for a clean energy future. What can we do together to invent tomorrow. And those multi disciplinary programs often, often have challenges getting funded or sustained funding support from university, from university leadership because professors tend to be very, you know, like, this is my discipline I got a PhD in this thing. And the benefit of having multi disciplinary, you know, training at the university level is incredibly profoundly important for changing the world. And Sally, I would, I would just want to chime in, I would agree, I would agree with that Kathy, I think, right before COVID I was teaching at Stanford as well. And I tell you that, you know, the, the passion and multiple, multi disciplinary students that we got to teach on sustainability clean energy, and that such passion and interest and multiple multi disciplinary approach was just amazing. And I think for as far as academia goes, we just really got to continue the work of getting diverse student bodies in there to bring their perspectives as well. So thanks, Sally. Thank you. You know, we've actually come to the time when we need to wrap up. So I want to thank the panelists for bringing your experiences, knowledge and wisdom and so being so engaging on this discussion. And thank you all for your leadership. I feel much more comfortable knowing that the wonderful people like you all are in the, the home of these important companies. Thank you for inspiring us all to do better, to give us ideas about how every day we can do our own parts to make the world more equitable, and more just for everyone. So thank you very much and to the audience. Thanks for joining us and we hope you enjoyed it.