ISO-NE announced the election of its four-person 2021 Board of Directors slate on Thursday, which will expand the board to 11 members for one year. 

Incumbent Michael Curran and newcomers Caren Anders, Steve Corneli and Catherine Flax comprised the slate elected to serve three-year terms starting Oct. 1. The new members will replace the retiring Kathleen Abernathy, the current chair, and Philip Shapiro.

The slate was nominated by the Joint Nominating Committee (JNC), a panel comprising seven current board members, NEPOOL’s six sector leaders and Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities Chair Matthew Nelson, representing the New England Conference of Public Utilities Commissioners. The NEPOOL Participants Committee also voted on the slate, which reached the required 70% support for endorsement.

“Caren, Steve and Catherine bring a wealth of diverse experience and knowledge to the ISO New England Board of Directors,” ISO-NE CEO Gordon van Welie said. “This experience and knowledge will be a benefit to all of New England as the region moves towards the clean, reliable grid of the future.”

While the election of the four-person slate pushes the board to 11 members, it will return to 10 when Vickie VanZandt retires in 2022. (See “Five Advance to Next Interview Round for Board Positions,” NEPOOL Participants Committee Briefs: May 6, 2021.)

Shapiro, according to the minutes from a July 21 executive session of the PC, said that the “exceptional quality” of the new candidates for the board and the significant turnover in membership looming in the next several years both made the effort of choosing three new candidates “extraordinarily challenging” for the JNC. As a result, waivers to the Participants Agreement to accommodate a four-person slate were approved by the PC.

Anders, Corneli, Flax Join; Curran Re-elected

A transmission expert, Anders, an executive adviser for Quanta Technology, works with utility clients. Her career includes leading Duke Energy’s transmission organization, overseeing 2,100 employees responsible for serving seven million customers. Before joining Duke, Anders served as vice president of transmission and substations at Exelon. She holds a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. in finance from Drexel University.

Principal and owner of Strategies for Clean Energy Innovation, Corneli focuses on the efficient deployment of clean resources for a range of clients including think tanks, distributed energy technology companies and clean energy and environmental advocates. Before his consultant work, Corneli served as senior vice president of policy, strategy and sustainability at NRG Energy. He has also worked as a consumer advocate within the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office for seven years. Corneli holds a bachelor of arts from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, N.M., and an M.P.A. from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute, with a concentration in energy, environment, and technology policy.

This year, Corneli participated as a speaker during a wholesale market design technical forum organized by New England states. He said any successful energy market designed for rapid decarbonization would need to find efficient portfolios of complementary clean energy resources. (See NE States Considering Different Market Models.)

Flax is president of private investing at X Machina Capital Strategies, focusing on investments related to energy transition in the oil and gas arena. She is an economist who has worked as a senior executive in several investment banks’ energy, power and commodities businesses. Flax also served as global head of commodity finance at J.P. Morgan and managing director and head of commodities, Americas, at BNP Paribas during her career. She has also served on a range of industry and corporate boards and advisory boards. Flax holds a bachelor of science in economics and finance from Texas A&M University, and a master’s in economics from Brown University.

Curran joined the RTO’s board in 2019 after serving as chair of the MISO Board of Directors. Curran spent most of his career in the financial services and investment community, including the Boston Stock Exchange, where he was chair and CEO. Before joining the stock exchange, Curran was managing director and chief operating officer of Kemper Funds and International Mutual Funds for Zurich Scudder Investments. He is a graduate of Dickinson College.