Future Utility Executive Leadership (FUEL)
Dates
Oct. 20-24 and Nov. 17-21, 2025
Location
Vancouver, Washington
Venue will be announced soon
Suggested Hotel
TBD
Program Fee
$6,100*
Program Schedule
*Subject to change
Oct. 20-24 and Nov. 17-21, 2025 | Vancouver, Washington
WEEK ONE
Sunday | 5-8 p.m. (Introduction)
- Welcome and introductions.
- A conversation on regional and emerging trends with guest speaker.
- Program overview.
- Networking reception.
Monday, Oct 19. | 8 a.m.- 6 p.m. (Position Your Utility for Success)
Topics: Utility structure and governance. Utility strategy. Introduction to the final project (a five-year strategic plan) and meeting your final project team.
Final project work (4-6 p.m.): Review the landscape provided and develop a SWOT analysis.
Tuesday, Oct. 20 | 8 a.m.- 6 p.m. (Utility Financial Drivers)
Topics: Capital and O&M budgets. How investment decisions are made. Customer rate implications.
Final project work (4-6 p.m.): Look at the goals, objectives, landscape, and SWOT to draft four to eight desired outcomes.
Wednesday, Oct. 21 | 8 a.m.-6 p.m. (Utility Field Operations)
Topics: Overview of field operations with subject matter expert guests. Safety demonstration. Field operations employee engagement.
Final project work (4-6 p.m. as needed): Begin brainstorming four strategies for the final project.
Thursday, Oct. 22 | 8 a.m.-4 p.m. (Load Forecasting, Distribution System Planning, and Supply Planning)
Topics: Load forecasting and distribution system planning. Energy supply planning and transmission system planning.
Final project work (4-6 p.m.): Continue working on strategies.
Friday, Oct. 23 | 8 a.m.-3 p.m. (Serving Community and Customers)
Topics: What it means to be a community-owned utility. Meeting expectations of community leaders, external stakeholders, and customers. Focusing on the customer experience.
Final project work (optional working lunch, and/or work from 3-5 p.m.): Define the customer value proposition for each strategy, articulating how the strategies will help customers.
WEEK TWO
Monday, Nov. 17 | 8 a.m.-4 p.m. (Cost of Service and Rate Design)
Topics: The rate approval process. Cost of service, cost allocation, and rate design. Review of current design issues and trends.
Final project work (4-6 p.m.): Estimate the capital and O&M needs of your four strategies. Calculate estimated rate impact on customers, focusing on affordability and delivering value for customers.
Tuesday, Nov. 18 | 8 a.m.-4 p.m. (Federal Advocacy; Challenging Negotiations and Stakeholder Relations)
Federal Advocacy topics: Federal policy and legislation that impacts all utilities. Ways the utility sector advocates with elected and appointed officials on key issues. Current hot topics in D.C.
Challenging Negotiations and Stakeholder Relations topics: Working through challenging negotiations. Understand your stakeholders and build long-term relationships with them.
Final project work (4-6 p.m.): Practice presenting the final project as a team.
Wednesday, Nov. 19 | 8 a.m.-4 p.m. (Presenting to Your Board)
Topics: Introduction to Roberts Rules and board scenarios. Improve your public speaking in formal board settings.
Final project work (4-6 p.m.): Determine metrics for measuring success during strategy implementation. Determine potential risks and develop a mitigation plan.
Thursday, Nov. 20 | 8 a.m.-4 p.m. (Leading Through Change)
Topics: Leading through change. Understanding one’s leadership style.
Final project work (4-6 p.m.): Determine the operations and personal impacts of your strategies and what is needed to execute your strategies well.
Friday, Nov. 21 | 8 a.m.-3 p.m. (Final Project Presentation)
Present final projects to a panel of utility judges.
Instructors
Julie Ryan
FUEL Program Director and Instructor
Class: Position Your Utility for Success
Julie Ryan has over 30 years of experience in the energy industry and is currently managing partner of Aether Advisors LLC, providing management consulting services, industry training classes, and facilitation services in the utility sector.
Ryan has been an instructor with NWPPA since 2014, teaching utility strategy, risk management, business fundamentals, negotiations, and workforce planning. Additionally, she provides customized in-house training programs in these topics, as well as in utility finance, energy risk management and hedging, and state regulation. Prior to leading the FUEL program, she served as the director of Willamette University Atkinson School of Graduate Studies’ Utility Management Certificate program from 2013-2023.
Ryan started consulting in 2006. Prior to that, she held executive roles in regulated and non-regulated energy companies. At Puget Sound Energy, she served as vice president, risk management and strategic planning and, prior to that, vice president, energy portfolio management. Before PSE, she was managing director at Merchant Energy Group of the Americas, responsible for North American origination and marketing. She also held positions as senior vice president at Duke/Louis Dreyfus and as vice president at Louis Dreyfus Energy Corp., where she launched the firm’s natural gas trading business and led marketing alliances and joint ventures.
Ryan currently serves on the NWPPA Board of Trustees, representing NWPPA associate members. She is also an advisory board member for Entrion Wind. From 2010-2017, she was an appointed member of the Seattle City Light Review Panel. From 2002-2006, she served on the board of directors of the Northwest Gas Association. Ryan graduated cum laude, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, from Smith College in Massachusetts.
Gomathi Sadhasivan
Class: Serving Community and Customers
Gomathi Sadhasivan is vice president – energy systems at DNV. In this role, she builds and strengthens trusted partner relationships and helps clients navigate the energy transition. She has worked at the intersection of customer behavior, market research, and analytics for 30 years. She brings to bear a sophisticated toolkit honed on projects for clients in highly competitive sectors like automotive, finance, and retail to a rapidly evolving energy industry seeking insights on topics such as customer engagement, price sensitivity, and product optimization. Her recent work has focused on topics such as customer adoption of distributed energy resources; smart grid-enabled technologies and services; and transportation electrification. She led several studies that focused on underserved communities and customer segments such as low-income, seniors, and rural customers.
Sadhasivan was the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative research committee chair from 2015 to 2019 and led several pioneering national consumer studies in that role. She is the vice chair of SECC’s board of directors. She has been a guest lecturer for the customer engagement module at Willamette University’s Utility Management Certificate course for the last three years.
Sadhasivan has an MBA in sustainable management from Presidio Graduate School and graduate degrees in mathematics and statistics from Michigan Technological University and the University of Mumbai.
Sergey Tarasov
Class: Cost of Service and Rate Design
Sergey Tarasov is an FCS GROUP principal and shareholder with 18 years of experience in rate design and financial feasibility analysis for water, sewer, stormwater, electric, and solid waste utilities. His areas of expertise include revenue requirement development, cost-of-service analysis, rate design analysis, and unit cost determination.
Tarasov specializes in guiding utilities through cost-based, transparent rate-setting studies. He focuses on engaging decision-makers and stakeholders throughout the process by presenting and educating from the start. This helps infuse the study with utility- and client-specific goals and objectives addressing issues such as fiscal policies, affordability, rate understandability, and transparency. He has extensive modeling experience, which allows for tailoring each financial model to meet individual client needs and facilitates the generation of sensitivity analysis to ensure the optimum rate strategy is selected.
In addition to his technical and project management work, Tarasov frequently presents results to diverse audiences such as citizen rate advisory groups, advisory boards, commissions, and councils to engage and educate participants in decision-making processes. He also actively participates in numerous associations throughout the industry by presenting on topics ranging from broad rate-making principals to industry-specific topics.
In his free time, Tarasov enjoys spending time with his family, including two dogs and two cats. He likes to stay active by playing soccer and exercising.
Jo Smith
Class: Workforce Planning and Leading Through Change
Jo Smith is a certified management consultant, executive coach, and speaker. She helps leaders improve employee engagement, client satisfaction, and business profitability. Smith helps organizations develop leadership talent and coaches professionals to achieve their potential, make their greatest contributions, and live their best lives. She coaches and consults for one reason—she loves to help people succeed.
Smith served as managing consultant of the Los Angeles office of Drake Beam Morin, leading a team of professional consultants and staff to become one of the global human resource firm’s top performing offices worldwide, as measured by employee satisfaction, client satisfaction, and profit margins. She served as a global project director with DBM, directing the service delivery of multimillion-dollar projects to clients with multiple sites within the United States. DBM designated her one of six consultants responsible for the training of all new consultants hired throughout the United States.
Smith served on the board of directors of the National University of Natural Medicine. She also served on the national board of directors of the Institute of Management Consultants USA and chaired its national marketing committee. She is a past president of the Portland State University Alumni Association and of the Oregon chapter of the American Marketing Association.
Smith earned a Bachelor of Science with high honors from Portland State University. She was an early inductee into Beta Gamma Sigma, the national honor society for business students. She earned a certificate in human resources and completed a 77-hour course in coaching.
Nicole Case
Class: Government Affairs
Nicole Case has worked in public power since her first job as a lawyer working on environmental and power sales issues for the Bonneville Power Administration in the early 1990s. Her time at BPA became a spring board for working on Capitol Hill on Pacific Northwest energy issues; lobbying for consumer-owned utilities in Washington, D.C.; and for the last 15 years, representing the Public Power Council, NWPPA, and the Northern California Power Agency as a government relations consultant.
Dr. Sukhsimran Singh
Class: Challenging Negotiations and Stakeholder Relations
Dr. Sukhsimran Singh’s career is built on the foundation of using peaceful methods to resolve difficult conflicts. His negotiation style is based on respect and empathy. He has represented clients in various countries and successfully consulted with state governments, courts, businesses, churches, and schools.
Singh has successfully resolved hundreds of domestic and cross-border mediations. He practices in many areas and currently focuses on business/commercial disputes, government and public agency disputes, faith-based and educational institution conflicts, cross-border/international conflicts, civil rights, cross-cultural conflicts, employment conflicts, personal injury/torts disputes, and real property disputes. He has successfully resolved large, complex cases, including one valued at over $100 million.
Singh is known for his expertise in international mediation, collaborative problem-solving, crafting mediation agreements, and many other mediation areas. He regularly serves as a mediator for educational institutions, businesses, and government entities, including for the City of Beverly Hills, where he was nominated for the city’s Annual Peace Award. He is also sought after to create conflict resolution plans for churches, schools, and law enforcement organizations. The City of Los Angeles honored him for his work for the Los Angeles Police Department.
Singh has trained over 3,000 business professionals and graduate law and business students in negotiation theory and practice. He is assistant dean of graduate law programs and Judge Danny Weinstein managing director of the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law, where he also serves as professor of law and practice. He previously taught at USC School of Law, Willamette University, and Hamline University, as well as in India at the National Law University. In 2017, the government of India recognized Singh as a Global Initiative of Academic Networks scholar. Singh’s work can be found in several journals and books on dispute resolution.
Julie Desimone
Coming soon!
Mark Forster
Coming soon!
Paul Munz
Coming soon!
Mandi Stanley
Coming soon!
To apply for the FUEL program, click button above.
For utilities that send four or more employees, you will receive a $500 discount per person on the cost of registration.
The fee includes all instruction, course materials, meals, refreshments, and the welcome reception.
For more information, please contact Julie Ryan at jryan@aetheradvisors.com.
NWPPA’s Future Utility Executive Leadership (FUEL) program is designed to prepare the utility leaders of tomorrow. FUEL delivers a comprehensive approach that increases participants’ understanding of the industry and their utilities. The goal of the program is for every participant to leave with broad industry knowledge and the ability to step into new leadership roles at their organization.
Strategically crafted curriculum
FUEL is designed for professionals interested in assuming leadership positions at their organizations. Participants may be assistant general managers, directors, managers, supervisors, and other rising leaders. FUEL focuses on leadership through a public power lens, though content is applicable to all utilities. The program hones participants’ critical thinking skills; guides them to consider the opportunities and challenges facing the utility sector; helps them plan how to deliver value to their customers; and gives them tools to lead more effectively.
Upon registering, applicants will be asked several questions to ensure the program is a good fit for them at this time in their career. Applicants have the option to share their career aspirations—what they enjoy in their work and what they want to achieve in the future, which enables NWPPA to tailor FUEL content for participants.
FUEL is an interactive program that incorporates experiential learning through pre-readings, in-class instruction, discussion, activities, and a final project. The program includes relevant and timely content for the energy industry.
Industry Strategy and Trends
- Utility strategy
- Utility finance
- Rate design and cost of service
- Field operations
- Western regional grid resources and transmission
- Load forecasting, system planning, and supply planning
- Customer service and customer engagement
- Workforce planning
- Public policy
Professional Development
- Executive presentation skills
- Utility governance
- Working with a board
- Strategic thinking
- Stakeholder relations
- Effective leadership
- Retaining and developing employees
- Advocacy
An optional one-day segment covering issues unique to investor-owned utilities will be held for those interested.
In addition to learning from multiple subject matter experts during the program, participants will network with other students and develop a final project (a five-year strategic plan) within a small team. At the conclusion of the program, each team will present their five-year strategic plan to a panel of utility judges.
To participate in FUEL, prospective students must apply for and be accepted into the program.
Dates:
Oct. 20-24 and Nov. 17-21, 2025
Location:
Vancouver, WA
Suggested hotel:
TBD
Program fee:
$6,100*
*Utilities that send four or more participants will receive a discounted rate of $5,600 per person.