Pepco’s Energy Source
Ranked Among the Top Five Utilities in the Nation And Serving 800,000 Customers, Pepco Keeps Its Charge Under The Leadership of Region President Donna Cooper, Her Core Values And Vision
Pepco Region President Donna M. Cooper PHOTO COURTESY PEPCO/PHI
By Kia Lisby and Raoul Dennis // Additional reporting by Tiffany Young
Pepco Region President Donna M. Cooper may come from quiet, humble beginnings but she has taken her opportunities and turned them into great strides not just for herself, but for the 800,000 customers that she represents when she goes to work every day.
Actually, she carries herself with an air of ease and humility that belies the fact that she is one of the most powerful women in the region. Although the former Kingstree, South Carolina resident (born and bred) comes from a family of small business owners and community leaders, Cooper has augmented the character traits of those roots to national heights without ever losing her sense of self or community service.
In fact, it is part of her mantra at Pepco today.
“Pepco is committed to providing safe, reliable, affordable and sustainable energy to our customers,” Cooper says. “It’s critical that we are providing the highest level of service to our valued customers, equitably and inclusively. Personally, I am passionate about community and service. In all that I do, there has to be a service component (opportunities to make a difference and elevate others). Our customers are foremost (central). We must not only meet—but exceed their expectations,” Cooper says.
Putting that into action, Pepco Region President Donna M. Cooper has been playing a critical role in shaping policy and managing issues to help deliver the most effective service value to customers and key stakeholders of the Pepco community.
Cooper has been with Pepco since 2008. PHOTO COURTESY PEPCO/PHI
She has led in developing green-friendly new technologies and developments---a part of Pepco’s future consisting of smart streetlights, energy shortage projects, and an electric vehicle program among others.
During her watch, Cooper has overseen a process of greater diversity at the utility giant: the PHI Executive team is “60% diverse” today.
Pepco was recently ranked the “Most Trusted Brand” among electric utilities in the East, based on the results of a brand trust survey released in June by Escalent, a leading human behavior analytics firm. The Cogent Syndicated Utility Trusted Brand & Customer Engagement study also noted that Pepco’s score ranked among the top five electric and combined electric/natural gas utilities in the country.
Also, a recent Pepco report, The 2020 Responsibility and Impact Report, detailing its tactile connection with community, equity and service, sheds light on grass root efforts.
Highlights from the company’s report include:
• Supporting small businesses with grants through the COVID-19 pandemic
• Enabling transportation electrification with EVsmart charging stations
• Launching the Sustainable Communities Grant Program supporting local open space and resiliency projects
• DC Infrastructure Academy: preparing District residents for a bright future
• Engaging young women in energy careers through the company’s STEM Academy
• Reduce Energy Use DC – providing smarter, customer-driven energy solutions for managing summer heat and energy use.
Former Pepco Region President Tom Graham is Cooper’s predecessor. “For the majority of my executive career at Pepco/PHI, I had the pleasure of working with Donna,” Graham says. “She’s well respected within the company and in the community because of her commitment to excellence, integrity and genuine concern for people.”
Although Dr. Donna Cooper joined Pepco in 2008 and has made a considerable impact since then, her story begins long before that point.
Good Apples Never Fall Far From Good Apple Trees
“My grandfather was a small business owner. My father took the business on when [my grandfather] became ill,” Cooper says of her family in Kingstree. Growing up, she worked at her father’s dry cleaners where she learned the importance of excellent customer service, integrity, strong values, and treating all people equally. “On my mother’s side of the family, they were teachers, educators and also businesspeople, as well.”
A dedication in Kingstree, SC noting the 1966 visit to Kingstree by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that Donna Cooper’s father helped to develop.
Donna’s father was also involved in public service. He was consistently involved in the educational system, recognizing that education was a critical equalizer. He was also an elected county council member and a charter member of the NAACP. He was involved in civil rights work and helped to bring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the county in 1966 to encourage black residents to register to vote and to exercise their right to vote.
Although she says Williamsburg County was one of the nation’s most economically challenged counties, young Donna was supported not just by her family but by others in her “small circle of friends, family and community members in a small town where everyone knew each other.”
“I grew up with truly great people in a community that wanted you to succeed -- we wanted each other to succeed,” she says.
Like children anywhere, Donna spent her free time dancing, reading, skating, and keeping up with her friends on her bicycle. She even had a talent for sketching and drawing in the early years. Donna had an ear for music of all disciplines and looked forward to her ballet dance courses.
But she says she specifically enjoyed history and being taught by her parents about black history (particularly her father). “I loved the stories shared with me by my parents, grandparents and my community leaders. They were all outstanding teachers.”
Absorbing and learning from the stories of those who came before her, Donna built on her surroundings that emphasized community, business and service. She says that running a business was a family tradition and she became familiar with the act of serving others. She said “my parents were always involved in community as well as service.”
She says: “I used to go with my father to a lot of his meetings with the council in Williamsburg County because I was always interested in community as well as service, and that structure.”
“My dad was also in public service, in the context that he was involved in our school board for a period of time,” Cooper said in an earlier interview with Prince George’s Suite Magazine. She says he was involved in the educational system and also led the Parent Teacher Association for awhile. “He was an elected county council member in our county. He was a charter member that established the NAACP charter for our county. He also was, just in context as well, very much as involved as it relates to civil rights work in the context that he was instrumental in helping to bring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to our county around voting rights for African Americans.
I give you this context of service, business, as well as politics and government. I always tell people that, if you go back to my county, because politics sometimes has a negative connotation. But if you talk to anyone in my county, [dad] was in it for the right reason, which was to expand opportunities be it economic development for people or ensuring that our schools were the best for our communities. I always had that particular take from him, and my mother, and my grandparents about the importance of service. That was just my pathway.”
Cooper holds an undergraduate degree in Political Science, a Master’s in Public Affairs and a Doctorate in Political Science.
The Path To Pepco Went Through Civic Office
Before joining Pepco, Cooper worked for the Council of the District of Columbia as a policy director and worked for the National Association of Counties. She was also in academia for a period of time. But when the opportunity presented itself at Pepco, she took it.
She said: “Pepco, as a large energy provider, with a focus on service to the community, the deliverer of one of the most important services, and an entity that was positioned to advance energy policies and drive change was very interesting and important to me. Not long after joining Pepco, I had the opportunity to represent the company on the District of Columbia Sustainable Energy Utility Advisory Board. My role with Pepco provided me with the opportunity to be focused in an area that was giving back to communities in a huge way but, helping to drive change from an energy and an environmental perspective, and hence, here I am.”
Although the young professional didn’t pursue a career in politics, she believes more women and women of color should be encouraged to be involved in it.
Cooper (at center, left) and Pepco in efforts to support women in careers for the future.
“We need to encourage more women to be involved in the political process,” she says. “Organizations and the thoughts around women in political leadership are critical, and important. So creating the pathway for women to have an opportunity to have a voice to compete, to be a part of that process is always critical.”
The executive’s community-oriented nature fits perfectly with the demands of the position. “With my current role, I get a lot of satisfaction when I’m able to get into the community to speak with people, to connect with people, to understand what their interests are. If there are concerns that they have, I want to see how we can help them through what we’re doing as a company with our policies, initiatives, and programs that we’re implementing,” she explains.
Helping To Lead Pepco Through The Pandemic
Given the fact that COVID-19 has affected the world beyond measure, Cooper and her team were able to make the pivot and transition to virtual operations.
“We were able to transition, to operate most of our platforms from a virtual perspective,” she says of the impact of the pandemic. “Continuing to engage communities, utilizing platforms such as Microsoft Teams WebEx and ZOOM, we have ongoing engagement, are able to stay connected, provide updates, and execute meetings, etc., while it is not a substitute for being in-person. She underscored that Pepco’s crews continued to work in the public space throughout the pandemic, implementing important system enhancements, system maintenance and connecting new service. We’re still in the public space. As a company, one of our top priorities is safety, so ensuring that we were adhering to the guidance that was in all of our jurisdictions, as well as CDC guidelines, remains paramount. We implemented significant measures to ensure the safety of our employees, the safety of our customers. We were able to be very effective under the circumstances.”
The company has also continued to help communities throughout the worst of the pandemic. Pepco provided support to nonprofit organizations, people within the communities with food and security, small business grants for businesses that continue to struggle and provided food to healthcare workers. Pepco advanced scholarships for the community colleges and students who may have had additional challenges. “We are continuing to drive diversity, equity and inclusion for contracting opportunities and connecting local businesses to opportunities with our company,” Cooper says. Pepco also contracts with local businesses and employs people within the communities they serve.
Cooper cares about the community and her team. Communication plays a major role in understanding the wants and needs of the community. “One of the biggest things for me was to ensure that we are sharing with communities that we care. That we are interested in everything that’s happening in our communities. That we want to be a part of that,” Copper explains. “We want to help to shape and to drive, in a positive way, the outcome as it relates to economics, as it relates to the social pieces.”
A Day At A Time: Focus On The Work
A typical workday starts with a company operations call that gives updates and information on how their system is performing. She’ll also have meetings with the company teams about different initiatives they’re implementing as well as their brand. If there are programs the company is trying to implement, Cooper participates in the meetings. She talks to their internal stakeholders, engages external stakeholders, and comes up with new initiatives and platforms to inform and educate customers in those respective areas.
Cooper also serves on various boards and participates in different board meetings that are in those respective areas. Before COVID, she would have many external meetings and engagement activities. Sometimes she goes on-site regarding Pepco projects or initiatives embedded in local communities.
The determined professional is committed “to enhancing the communities that Pepco serves and that our employees live in and are a part of,” she says. The executive is focused on driving equity and inclusion, providing reliable, affordable and resilient service to customers and being partners to address climate change. Cooper wants to advance programs that are going to make a meaningful difference to realistically align with the goals within the company’s various jurisdictions. The former civil servant also wants to ensure that as a company, Pepco is “not only walking the walk regarding what we’re doing regarding our own operations but that we’re also extending programs to our customers that assist them.”
The Howard University alum wants to ensure that the company’s operations and reliability initiatives are “communicated effectively to communities and customers that will be impacted. It is important that the purpose of our work is shared and its criticality to ensure that our customers are served at their highest levels--from system capacity, to grid modernization, to connecting solar and reliability enhancements. Our customers need to understand why we are in the public space and its significance and connection to them.”
And, she says, centrally included in all of this: “Diversity, equity and inclusion are paramount and central to all that we do.”
A Pepco Charging Station opening in Greenbelt. PHOTO: PEPCO/PHI
The Future Is Green And Diverse
Some of the green-friendly new technologies and developments that are a part of Pepco’s future consists of smart communities, energy storage projects, an electric vehicle program and energy efficiency programs amongst many others.
As a woman of color, Cooper says she is able to bring a unique perspective to the company. “One thing about diversity is that individuals are shaped by their experiences, their culture and their upbringing,” she says. “The reality is that all of us have different experiences, exposure points. When you have diverse individuals that are at the table, you have diverse thoughts as well as perspectives.”
As president, Cooper’s short term goals consist of ensuring that many of the company’s forward-looking projects and initiatives are staying on a timely track, “making sure they are yielding the outcomes that are critical and important to the benefit of their customers, communicating effectively with customers on those initiatives and programs and being responsive to the interests of the jurisdictions in which they operate as well as their customers’ particular wants, interests and needs,” she says.
Pepco Utility Training. PHOTO: PEPCO/PHI
Over the long term, Cooper said she wants “effective two-way communications ensuring that we understand the priorities of the jurisdictions in which we operate; that we’re able to demonstrate that we are a valuable partner to advancing those particular interests, that we are a committed partner and able to demonstrate what our niche is in those respective areas. [We want to show] the value that we bring to the table in order to make the jurisdictions in which we operate much stronger and much more economically vibrant. We want to be viewed as stable leaders as it relates to the issues of climate change, economic development and vibrancy and that we are driving the change in order to ensure that our communities are thriving, equitably and inclusively. We want to ensure that our students are thriving and that we are creating [great futures] for that next generation.”
Influencing the next generation is high on Donna’s list of priorities. “Donna Cooper is an incredible individual who is talented and energetic,” says President and CEO of the Greater Prince George’s Business Roundtable M.H. Jim Estepp.
In her role as chair of the Greater Prince George’s Business Roundtable (GPGBR), Donna Cooper announces award to Pastor John Jenkins of First Baptist Church of Glenarden. Left to right are Prince George’s County Councilmember Deni Taveras, GPGBR President and CEO M. H. Jim Estepp, Donna Cooper, Pastor Jenkins, Prince George’s County Public Schools CEO Dr. Monica Goldson and Pohanka Automotive Group President and CEO Geoff Pohanka.
PHOTO: AMIR STOUDAMIRE // PRINCE GEORGE’S SUITE MAGAZINE & MEDIA
The Greater Prince George’s Business Roundtable (GPGBR) is a non-profit, nonpartisan business alliance of Chief Executives, formed to improve our political, economic and community environments for a better Prince George’s County. GPGBR is led by a board of directors, composed of concerned and active business leaders from the county and region, whose companies employ nearly 60,000 people. Cooper is currently chair of the Roundtable.
“She cares deeply about people and especially our youth,” Estepp says. “Donna knows that a good education is the key to success and she is passionate about seeing that our students receive the best. She’s highly respected by her peers and it has been an absolute pleasure to work with her.”
Just a few years ago, the Pepco leader reconnected with an old spark of her own. “I reengaged my artistic side,” she says of her move to pick up painting. “I’m not an artist by any stretch of the imagination but I have always had an interest,” Cooper says. She’s raising her own family today and isn’t shy about picking up rollerblading again, either. Proving once and for all, you can take the girl out of Kingstree, but it’s a very good thing that you can never take Kingstree out of the girl. Combined with anchored character traits and a driven sense of service, it’s all working out pretty well for the 800,000 members of the Pepco family that a bit of Kingstree has come to Washington, D.C.
