Trustees Re-elected; Leadership Shuffle at MRC, Board Committees

Thursday’s meeting of NERC’s Member Representatives Committee (MRC) and Board of Trustees saw some changeover in the organization’s leadership, as board Chair Ken DeFontes sought “to get some fresh eyes in front of things.”

First, outgoing MRC Chair Paul Choudhury of BC Hydro handed over his gavel to Roy Jones, CEO of ElectriCities; Evergy’s Jennifer Flandermeyer succeeded Jones as vice chair. Jones and Flandermeyer were elected at the MRC’s previous meeting in November. (See “Jones, Flandermeyer Picked to Head MRC,” NERC Board of Trustees/MRC Briefs: Nov. 4, 2021.)

MRC members then unanimously approved the re-election of Trustees Jane Allen, Bob Clarke and Colleen Sidford — along with DeFontes — for additional three-year terms each. The four were chosen in what Nominating Committee Chair Roy Thilly jokingly described as “an easy process”; Jones congratulated the four following the vote, which he called “a vote of confidence that you all are doing a fantastic job.”

In the subsequent board meeting, DeFontes sought and gained trustees’ approval to elevate George Hawkins to vice chair, replacing Clarke, who took the post last February. (See NERC Board of Trustees/MRC Briefs: Feb. 4, 2021.)

The move was part of a larger proposed leadership shuffle among the board’s committees: Suzanne Keenan will replace Hawkins as Chair of the Corporate Governance and Human Resources Committee, while Clarke will take over the Nominating Committee from Thilly. The Technology and Security Committee, currently helmed by Keenan, will be taken over by Jane Allen, and Clarke’s chairmanship of the Finance and Audit Committee will be taken by Jim Piro. The board approved all of these moves as well.

Rob Manning and Colleen Sidford will remain as chairs of the Compliance Committee and Enterprise-wide Risk Committee, respectively.

DeFontes described the committee changes as a way to “facilitate [the] development” of the committees. He called Hawkins’ move to vice chair part of his goal of “using the vice chair role in a lot more strategic way than we have in the past”; DeFontes also later asked the board to raise the vice chair’s stipend to $10,000, the same as committee chairs, in light of “the impact and the work that’s involved” in the role, which was also approved.

Finally, NERC CEO Jim Robb presented NERC’s slate of officers to the board for approval, noting two changes: Bryan Preston, who joined the organization in September as vice president of people and culture; and Kimberly Mielcarek, NERC’s senior director of communications, who was elevated to vice president. These updates were approved as well.

Additional Approvals

The trustees went on to approve work plans for 2022 for NERC’s Standards Committee, Compliance and Certification Committee, and the Personnel Certification Governance Committee, along with changes to the Standards Committee’s charter that “clarify the role of the [committee] as a process oversight body … [and] that the [committee] may consult technical committees regarding the technical justification of standard authorization requests.” The updates also more directly specify the committee’s ability to “address urgent reliability needs with appropriate agility.”

The board also approved proposed reliability standard CIP-014-3 (Physical security) for submission to FERC. The new standard updates CIP-014-2 to reflect the introduction of the ERO Enterprise Secure Evidence Locker, which made obsolete some of the standard’s language regarding storage of “evidence for demonstrating compliance” with the standard.

Face-to-face Meetings to Return in May

While NERC’s plan to resume in-person board meetings in February had to be suspended because of the surge in COVID-19 cases in December and January, DeFontes said Thursday that the organization remains focused on bringing back face-to-face gatherings.

“We’re coming to a point with the pandemic where things are starting to calm down a bit post-Omicron,” DeFontes told the MRC, referring to the highly contagious Omicron variant of COVID-19 that fueled the past few months’ high case numbers. “I’d really like to have the May meeting be a [fully] attended meeting. … Hopefully by then there won’t be any problem with people’s ability to travel.”

NERC had originally intended to ease the transition back to a normal meeting schedule by holding the first meeting of the year in Atlanta with a hybrid format, in which only board and MRC members would meet in person and all others would join via teleconference.

However, with May’s meeting scheduled to be held in D.C., DeFontes acknowledged that setting up the audio and visual equipment would be “a little bit more complicated … when we’re doing it at a hotel.” He encouraged members to “make an effort to come and get back together” for their first face-to-face gathering since the board’s February 2020 meeting in Manhattan Beach, Calif.

The rest of the year’s meeting schedule has not been finalized, but DeFontes said the board plans to hold its August meeting in person in Vancouver, Canada; November’s meeting will likely be held in New Orleans.