By Rich Heidorn Jr.

WASHINGTON — The Energy Bar Association opened its conference last week with four present and former regulators discussing their career challenges as women and minorities. Although the speakers’ recollections dated back decades, they said the issues they confronted remain salient today.

Former Texas regulator Robert W. Gee recalled how he moved to D.C. to find work after being told he wouldn’t be hired by major law firms in Houston because he was Asian American.

Although he found Washington “more hospitable,” he was nevertheless told in an interview at one federal agency that if he were hired, “’we’re going to have to keep an eye on you because we hired [a minority] in the past and she didn’t work out.’”

Overachieving

The “difficulty getting that first job has always been with me,” he said. “It’s sort of like the fear factor that drives you. You have to prove to people that you’re better than the next person.”

Puerto Rico native Carmen Cintron, FERC’s acting chief administrative law judge, felt a similar need to overachieve. As a woman and a Latina, she said, she had “two strikes” against her when started her career at the Federal Communications Commission.

“I still work 24/7. And I work when I’m on vacation. And I think that was because I had to prove, more so than anybody else, that I can do the work and complete the assignments in a timely fashion,” she said.

Former FERC Commissioner Vicky A. Bailey recalled being bused to her high school during the integration of schools in Indianapolis. She praised the “courage” of former Indiana Gov. Robert D. Orr for appointing her to the state Utility Regulatory Commission, where she was the second female and first African American appointee.

FERC Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur, the first in her family to attend college, cited a high school classics teacher and former New England Electric System CEO John Rowe for mentoring and sponsoring her. Although she was not immune to sexism — she recalled seeing “girlie” pinups in a utility locker room — she said her most difficult time came in her 30s when she was trying to raise two young children as a working mother. While other people talked of their five-year plan, she said, her concern was, “How do I get to Friday?”

Divisive Campaign Rhetoric

Although each of the speakers’ stories was one of triumph, the issues they confronted remain — as evidenced, they said, by the rhetoric in the 2016 presidential race.

The issue was raised by a questioner from the audience, who said the campaign’s rhetoric was reminiscent of 1930s Germany.

Although no one mentioned him by name, it was clear the questioner, and the speakers on the dais, were thinking of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

LaFleur responded by recalling her regret over not challenging a client’s anti-Semitic remarks at a dinner to celebrate a legal victory 40 years ago.

She said she finds “very troubling … what our public discourse has come to [concerning] people who are different than we are.”

“In your own life, I think it’s important to have the courage to speak up if somebody says something that’s inappropriate no matter how difficult and awkward it is to say ‘We don’t do that,’” she said.

Gee also responded.

“If we let this type of rhetoric divide us, we will become another Weimar Germany. We could become that,” he said. “There are people who would like to see that happen. We cannot allow that to happen.”

Bailey, now a Republican, grew up a Democrat, the daughter of a domestic worker.

“It has been hurtful to hear some of the divisive rhetoric that has been spewn across the TV,” she said. “I am now an African American who happens to be a Republican. I’m waiting for someone in leadership to stand up and say, ‘This is not what we’re about.’”