2024 Speakers
Brandi Davis-Handy
President, AES Indiana
Brandi Davis-Handy has more than 20 years of customer and stakeholder engagement, communications, and marketing experience. Prior to AES, she served as Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Project Lead The Way and has also led communications teams at OneAmerica Financial Partners and the American Cancer Society.
Brandi has been recognized as a 2022 Woman of Influence by the Indianapolis Business Journal, Center for Leadership Development Minority Achiever in Media and Communications in 2018 and was the recipient of the Breakthrough Woman in Leadership Development Award for 2018 from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women.
Brandi received her B.A. in Mass Media Arts from Hampton University.
Karen Mangia
President & Chief Strategy Officer, The Engineered Innovation Group, Author of Success from Anywhere
As an internationally-recognized thought leader whose TEDx appearance, keynotes, blogs, and books reach hundreds of thousands of business leaders each year, Karen Mangia is a catalyst who uses curiosity and diversified creativity to empower individuals, teams, and organizations to sustain success.
Lindsay Boccardo
Keynote Speaker, Virtual Presenter, & Founder of Lindsay Boccardo
Lindsay is fascinated by generations in the workplace. As a generational expert and certified coach, groups from across the country lean on her to help their teams connect across age and experience.
Laura Johnson
Vice President of Government Affairs, Duke Energy Indiana
Laura Johnson currently leads Duke Energy Indiana's government affairs work and is responsible for state government strategies and relationships affecting the interests of the company, its customers and stakeholders.
Laura Rauch
Executive Director of Transmission Planning, MISO
Laura Rauch oversees all aspects of MISO’s transmission planning function to ensure the transmission system meets the future needs of MISO’s members. She is responsible for the processes that yield, allocate the costs of, and select the competitive developers for the reliability, economic, long range, and interregional transmission projects captured in the annual MISO Transmission Expansion Plan (MTEP).
Laura has more than 19 years in the energy industry, with experience spanning multiple planning and market functions. While at MISO, Laura has championed diversity, equity, and inclusion program and other cultural work. She is a former chair of the MISO Women’s Resource Group and cosponsored MISO’s Leadership Development Initiatives.
Christina Calabrese
Director of Permitting & Environmental Affairs, EDP Renewables
Christi Calabrese and her team manage environmental permitting and permit compliance for EDPR North America’s projects in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, from planning phases through implementation and operations, including developing strategies to avoid and minimize environmental impacts. Christi also collaborates with different Sustainability teams within EDP on biodiversity and circular economy initiatives.
Christi has a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology from the University of Florida and a Masters Degree in Marine Resources Management from Texas A&M Galveston.
Stan Pinegar
State President, Duke Energy Indiana
Stan Pinegar serves as president of Duke Energy's Indiana operations, the state's largest electric utility, serving approximately 860,000 customers in 69 of Indiana's 92 counties. He is responsible for the financial performance of Duke Energy's regulated utilities in Indiana, in addition to managing regulatory affairs, government relations and community affairs. He also has responsibility for advancing the company's legislative and regulatory strategies and integrated resource planning.
Rabia Kamal
Industry Advisor, Microsoft
Rabia Kamal is a dedicated and experienced Industry Advisor in the Energy and Resources sector at Microsoft, specializing in the Mining and Power and Utility industries. With a strong background in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Rabia has a proven track record of leveraging data to drive innovation and efficiency across the entire value chain of a business.
Rabia is based in Toronto, Canada. Outside of work, she enjoys traveling, practicing yoga, and finding new activities for her toddler!
Chemia Woods
Talent Scout & Employer Brand Ambassador, MISO
Chemia Woods is a recruiter with 15 years of combined communications and HR experience. Inspired by the power of people and partnership, Chemia values and understands the nuance and necessity of influencing people to action and wake up daily to share authentic, relatable stories that enhance customer / candidate experience, corporate careers, and workplace culture.
Ashley Babcock
Regional Vice President of Indiana & Ohio Gas, CenterPoint Energy
In Ashley's current role, she is responsible for all aspects of the company's natural gas distribution operations in Indiana and Ohio. She has been with CenterPoint Energy for more than 14 years and has served in a variety of roles in Gas Engineering, Performance Management, Continuous Improvement, Dispatch and Scheduling, Damage Prevention and Meter Reading.
Jenna Pearcy
Director of Process & Productivity, Duke Energy
Jenna started her career in Public Accounting as an Auditor. From there, she transitioned into the energy industry as a part of the Corporate Audit Services team at Duke Energy at their headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. Since moving to Indiana, she’s held several roles in Project Management.
BeiBei Li
Manager of Strategic Assessments, MISO
Beibei Li (BeiLi) manages the Strategic Assessment team for the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), where she leads a dynamic group dedicated to evaluating the impacts of trends and drivers on the energy industry through a structured and systematic approach.
Melanie Raney
Commercial Manager, AES Indiana
Melanie currently serves as a Commercial Manager for AES Indiana. She is responsible for AES Indiana's All Source Generation Resource Requests for Proposals. She is thoroughly enjoying helping AES Indiana make the transition to a cleaner, more efficient, and cost-effective energy future for Central Indiana residents.
Sarah Oblon
Associate Director of Development, EDP Renewables
Sarah is passionate to create an ecologically responsible, sustainable, reliable energy future for all humans. Sarah taught Earth Science, Chemistry and Physics in Malawi, Africa and Houston, Texas for four years. Using and generating electricity in a thoughtful and sustainable way became Sarah’s motivation to join EDP Renewables over fifteen years ago. She has supported the development, construction, and operations of utility size wind farms, solar parks, and battery storage projects throughout North America.
Theresa Young
Chief Operating Officer, Wabash Valley Power Alliance
Theresa graduated from the University of Indianapolis with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and has many years of experience working for utility companies including Cinergy and Vectren Corporation. Starting in 2003, she’s worked for Wabash Valley Power as Controller, and is responsible for all accounting, internal & external reporting, and budgeting & forecasting functions. In 2016, she was named as Vice President of Financial Services and became responsible for overseeing corporate records. In addition, Theresa interfaces with the Board Audit Committee, ensuring that Wabash Valley Power’s financial disclosures and regulatory compliance remain transparent and timely. In 2018, she was promoted to Chief Financial Officer.
Jessica Franklin
System Operations Team Leader, AES Indiana
Jessica Franklin started working in the energy industry as an intern in 2009 for Indianapolis Power and Light Company, now AES Indiana. With her foot in the door, she has been with the company ever since. Jessica’s AES experience includes standards and code compliance, asset management, and transmission operations. In her current role as system operations team leader, she maintains responsibility for the safe and reliable operation of the AES Indiana transmission system, overseeing substation inspectors, switch persons, power quality and line patrol.
Colleen Lueken
Market Development Director, AES
Colleen Lueken is a Market Development Director at The AES Corporation, where she focuses on market opening and market development for a digitally-enabled and reimagined electrical grid to meet the realities of our clean energy transformation, including catalyzing the policies and regulations to remove barriers to the adoption of new technologies.
Bette White
Substation Design Engineer, AES Indiana
Bette White began her career in the Power Industry over 40 years ago as a Co-op Student at Indianapolis Power & Light Company (IPL), now AES, while completing her Engineering degree. Upon graduation she joined IPL as the second female engineer and watched the industry grow from electro-mechanical relays with pilot wire and microwave communications, mainframe computers, central office-based telephones, and coal-based generation to the computerized relaying and SCADA systems, self-healing fiber optic rings, VoIP, laptops in trucks, computers in our hands in the form smart devices, and renewable generation.