Molly Greene

Q: What most notably stands out about your leadership style or what is an example of leadership success you can share with our readers?

I love my work and am inspired by my team. In looking at how to characterize my leadership style, I think it reflects traits of a strategic leader. Our department’s mission is devoted to equipping internal and external leaders with information, strategies and perspectives to achieve SRP’s corporate objectives on behalf of our customers. This relies on cultivating team members and a long-term commitment to inspire work that explains complicated technical information to the public. We work with various business units to understand what is often quite technical information and to communicate it succinctly, often under pressure for a timely result. We wouldn’t be successful without a professional team that applies its extraordinary talents while maintaining a positive work environment.

I’m pleased to lead a group that bears a critical responsibility to support and advocate for customers, as well as to champion SRP’s public policy interests impacting numerous stakeholders. I enjoy working with professionals who are forward-thinking, agile and adaptable as they successfully guide our public engagement. Leading a new team and developing an ambitious function within that team requires considerable collaboration, accountability and productivity.

Q: What impact has COVID-19 or the disruptions of the past 18 months had on you as a leader?

I was selected as one of several leaders over the course of the pandemic to drive SRP’s Return to Work effort. Building systems and redundancies to ensure uninterrupted power and water delivery during one of the deadliest pandemics in history taught me a lot about communication, processes and people. In a virtual environment, I had to be far more purposeful in my communication. I learned to be more organized, prepared and focused in team meetings and to appreciate how valuable real-time communications are to an organization responsible for critical infrastructure.

I also learned the importance of interpersonal relationships and human contact, both personally and in the workplace. I had the privilege of getting to know my team members more personally. The experience resulted in a mutual understanding and respect for how the pandemic impacted people differently across the company.

Few would say that they are unchanged from the experience of living through the pandemic. Many of us are more grateful but also hold higher expectations of work-life balance and the opportunity to enjoy every day of this precious life.

Q: What do you feel we can be doing as a business community to empower economic growth here?

Salt River Project knows the value of providing power and water to customers across an arid desert, making the Valley one of the fastest-growing communities in the country. Working at SRP has provided me the unique perspective of seeing how a community-based, not-for-profit public utility delivers water and power to more than 2 million — and counting — customers.

SRP has been operating one of the nation’s first federal reclamation projects and managing vital watersheds in Arizona for 120 years. Our emphasis on partnerships with a wide variety of community leaders, including Tribal communities, customers, trade groups and other stakeholders, ensures we meet the water and power needs of the region. And our diversified energy policy taps into the most efficient and cost-effective mix of energy sources to maintain the reliability and affordability needed for Arizona’s hot summers. This helps us maintain a steady focus on increasing renewables, including solar and battery storage, as we continue reducing carbon-emitting energy sources.

Q: What is new and notable for your company’s near future that will impact our economy?

SRP is proud of our extensive work and collaboration to develop an Integrated System Plan (ISP) that includes system-wide recommendations and strategies for 2025–2035.

SRP’s goal is to build a better Arizona with innovative ways to give our customers reliable, affordable and sustainable power and water. To achieve this, we built an ISP to guide our power generation strategies through 2035. Forty-eight SRP departments and 140 external stakeholders participated in the two-year process. Customer inputs helped ensure our plans align with what they care about most, as demand is estimated to spike 25% by 2030. The data-driven process modeled potential system plans under varying growth scenarios, supply chain and regulatory constraints to determine if the plans affordably meet customer need for reliable power, while meeting the SRP’s Board-approved carbon reduction goals. As a result, SRP will deploy key ISPs to meet our sustainability goals without sacrificing reliability or affordability.