CEO: Gil Quiniones
Headquarters: White Plains, New York
Website: www.nypa.com

POWER COMPANY FOSTERING DIVERSITY COMBINING BOTTOM LINE AND PERSONAL SATISFACTION

The nation’s largest state power organization is fostering diversity and inclusion with an emphasis combining the bottom line and personal satisfaction.

The New York Power Authority (NYPA) is integrating innovative leadership initiatives that focus on diversity recruiting and make employees feel welcome and supported.

“Female and minority engineers are specifically underrepresented industry-wide in the power profession,” said NYPA Director of Recruiting Barbara Coles. NYPA is demonstrating commitment to those numbers, providing more leadership opportunities for all, and recruiting more female and minority employees as a major component of its Strategic Vision 2020 plan.

Its innovative initiatives have been a success, with an 18 percent increase in minority employees and a 7 percent increase in female employees over the past two years. Similarly, the number of women in management and director positions has increased 11 percent across the board, while minorities went up 18 percent.

Engineer Daniella Piper, who is of Afro-Caribbean descent, started at NYPA as a college intern. Less than 10 years later, she is the project manager for two of NYPA’s largest initiatives: the $726 million Transmission Life Extension and Modernization project and the $58 million Marcy South Series Compensation Project. Piper attributes much of her career growth to the “positive environment” at NYPA as well as programs and opportunities that helped prepare her for more responsibility. She said NYPA allows people to succeed, regardless of their background, if they have the willingness and drive to do so.

Piper also participates in activities through Women in Power, a NYPA employee resource group, and New York State’s Women in Communications and Energy, a group that encourages networking and knowledge-sharing among women in utility-related jobs.

Encouraging Piper, and other similarly motivated employees, to move into positions of higher responsibility illustrates NYPA’s commitment to an underutilized but valuable labor pool and its willingness to let female engineers realize their maximum potential.