Excellence in Women’s Development

2024 Honoree

Entrust Solutions Group is committed to fostering the growth and leadership of women within the energy industry. Through their women’s resource group, SPARK, they have implemented a comprehensive strategy to prepare and support women for leadership roles in operations and engineering. With 200 active members as of February 2024, SPARK prioritizes member involvement and feedback. SPARK actively works to increase membership, ensuring all eligible 731 women at ENTRUST are encouraged to join. Fostering diversity and inclusion is embedded in ENTRUST’s core values. Through initiatives led by SPARK and their dedicated DE&I Task Force, they actively strive to cultivate a diverse pool of candidates, particularly in operations and engineering roles. By specifically focusing on women in these fields, they’ve implemented targeted strategies to attract and retain female talent.

ENTRUST’s success in increasing women in operations and engineering roles can be attributed to several key initiatives, including:

• The implementation of targeted recruitment strategies aimed at attracting female candidates. – Leadership development programs specifically tailored to support women in advancing their careers.
• Mentorship opportunities that pair female employees with experienced leaders within the organization. – Ongoing efforts to foster a culture of inclusion and support, where all employees feel valued and empowered to succeed.

Impact of External Engagements: Involvement in external events and organizations has also played a significant role in their success. By actively participating in conferences, networking events, and industry panels, they have been able to connect with talented female professionals and showcase the opportunities available at ENTRUST.

Overall, their company’s success in increasing women in operations and engineering roles underscores their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

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2023 Honoree

ComEd: An Exelon Company, is dedicated to ensuring that their employees reflect the identities, skills, and values of the 4 million customers they serve. Embracing diversity, ensuring an equitable and inclusive workplace culture, and serving the needs of their communicates are all key components of powering a cleaner and brighter future for their customers and empowering their service territory.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is core to their business and part of who they are. It strengthens their ability to achieve their vision by integrating this important value as a business imperative and a core strength for attracting, retaining, and advancing employees who will best serve and represent their customers, partners, and communities. DEI is as important to ComEd as the delivery of safe, reliable — and ever cleaner — energy to their customers. ComEd has a clear commitment, deliberate strategy, and bold approach exhibited by their core DEI objectives, including specific employee resource groups focused on women.

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2022 Honoree

DTE Energy, celebrates and leverages diverse backgrounds and perspectives. DTE understands that diverse representation in the workforce begins with attracting and retaining a diverse talent pool. DTE focuses on recruiting women, people of color, veterans, and individuals with disabilities through strong partnerships with the Society of Women Engineers, Women of Color in STEM Conference, National Black MBA Conference, and other organizations.

DTE knows that investing in the development of women for leadership roles requires ongoing education, growth opportunities, mentorship and time. Through use of focused tools and resources for women at every level, the company has placed capable women in key roles at DTE.

View DTE Energy’s video.

2021 Honoree

Burns & McDonnell was recently named one of Forbes’ Best Employers for Diversity — a list based on results from an independent survey that looked at a representative sample of 60,000 employees working for companies employing at least 1,000 people in their U.S. operations. Questions included topics of age, gender equality, ethnicity, disability, LGBTQA+ and general diversity. They are proud to be among some of the most well-known brands in the U.S. and recognized for their efforts to create an inclusive workforce for all.

Burns & McDonnell is committed to empowering their female engineers by connecting them with meaningful opportunities to advance their careers. Whether it is their mentor program, professional development opportunities or their Professional Women’s Exchange (PWE), they provide the tools and resources necessary to help them realize and reach their career goals.

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2019 Honoree

Consumers Energy is a strong advocate for promoting and retaining women in their company. Their CEO, Patti Poppe, is one of only 25 female CEOs of a Fortune 500 company. Their Board of Directors is made up of nearly 50% women, and they proudly have eight other female officers in the company.

Consumers Energy is dedicated to employing a diverse and inclusive workforce and creating an environment where every worker can be their best and authentic self. As such, Consumers Energy has made a concerted effort to create a diverse talent pipeline and consistently bring women and minorities to the table for strategic leadership and problem solving.

The company has strong partnerships and aligns themselves with external organizations, career fairs, and college visits in order to increase the number of women in the pipeline for engineering and operations positions. Historically, women have made up a small percentage of the workforce in linework, and this trend is true for Consumers Energy. In an effort to attract women into this rewarding career, they have created a female lineworker scholarship.

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2018 Honoree

CenterPoint Energy’s focus on workforce diversity and respect is reflected in their Women in Leadership (WIL) Advisory Council. The Council was established in 2011 to increase female leadership development within all organizational areas of CenterPoint Energy, including operations and engineering. Recently, the WIL Advisory Council started a ‘Pipeline to Purposeful Leadership’ that provides opportunities to educate women on feeling confident in their pursuit of leadership and management positions.

CenterPoint Energy offers a variety of internal professional growth programs and opportunities to bring female leaders and employees together to foster discussion, networking and relationship building. Support and funding, at the corporate level, of these highly attended programs is a testament to the company’s commitment to diversity. The result is a significant increase in female leaders, specifically in engineering and operations.

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2017 Honoree

NiSource fosters a culture of Inclusion and Diversity (I&D) every day. Their success depends on being open to new ways of thinking that can make them a better community partner and a stronger company. NiSource embraces a four-part I&D strategy that focuses on

1. providing resources and support for employees by enhancing Employee Resource Groups (ERG) to provide development opportunities and cultural awareness;
2. providing Inclusive Leadership Training to all senior leaders and measuring the success through an innovative “Inclusive Index”;
3. accelerating the development of existing diverse workforce through nationally recognized programs; and
4. enhancing efforts to drive diverse talent acquisition through prioritizing outreach to diverse candidate pools.

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