By Tom Kleckner
SPP last week announced the promotions of three longtime executives to senior vice president positions, though their areas of responsibilities will not change.
Barbara Sugg (information technology and chief security officer), Bruce Rew (operations) and Lanny Nickell (engineering) were all vice presidents over their departments.
Each of the new senior vice presidents has at least 20 years of experience with SPP. Rew joined in 1990 and was one of the organization’s original 14 employees, while Sugg and Nickell came on board in 1997.
CEO Nick Brown announced the promotions Thursday during SPP’s customary staff meeting following the Board of Directors meeting. Brown revealed his own retirement plans, effective April 2020, during the board meeting. (See related story, SPP’s Brown to Retire as CEO in 2020.)
“Each of these individuals has proven many times over that they possess the technical expertise, business acumen and leadership qualities that SPP needs to best serve our customers,” he said in a statement.
“Being promoted to senior vice president recognizes the importance of and dependency on IT and cybersecurity at SPP,” said Sugg, who oversees IT and telecommunications services to its members and establishes IT strategy and policies.
Rew has held several engineering and management roles at SPP, including serving as vice president of engineering. He is leading SPP’s Western expansion — which includes contract services for reliability coordination and an energy imbalance market — and is responsible for the grid operator’s market operations.
“This promotion is a recognition of the outstanding team of professionals I get the honor of leading on a daily basis,” he said. “I look forward to continued success in managing the operational opportunities ahead for SPP.”
Like Rew, Nickell has been vice president of both engineering and operations. He is responsible for transmission planning, tracking projects costs and statuses, and administering long-term transmission service and generator interconnection processes.
“SPP and the power grid face a future full of tremendous opportunities and rapid change,” he said. “It will be increasingly important for us to anticipate the exciting changes facing our industry and do so in a way that provides increased value for our members and their customers.”
