Interview with Shanelle Montana, Chief Development Officer at Arevon

Catherine: Hi, I’m Catherine McLean, Founder and CEO of Dylan Green, and we are coming to you from the PowerUp live stage at REplus 2025 in Las Vegas. The PowerUp live stage is presented by Wärtsilä Energy Storage. Today I have with me Shanelle Montana, Chief Development Officer at Arevon. Thanks for joining me. For those of you who don’t know, can you please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your role at Arevon.

Shanelle: So I’m the Chief Development Officer at Arevon. We are an owner operator of utility scale solar and storage projects. I have been brought in and I’m really crafting the development team here at Arevon to sort of break through as a developer, establish our Greenfield philosophy, and really expand our pipeline and portfolio, and it’s been a great time for the last year.

Catherine: “We’re involved in ethanol and wind”, and so tell us how you got to where you are today.

Shanelle: Absolutely. So I have had a couple of different hats throughout my career, but they’ve all centered around the theme of urban and rural communities and development coming together. So when I got into energy, I actually started as a farm girl in rural Minnesota, and I loved the fact that the Midwest was leading the way in ethanol and in wind, and ended up in the Beltway in D.C. working on federal policy around renewable energy with military installations, which is fascinating work. From there, I ended up at EDF, and I was there for 10 years, really establishing myself in the development community and the policy community as we tried to bring in more wind and solar throughout the Midwest. I’ve worked also at BayWa Renewables and then at LightSource for about five years, and it’s just been really amazing to see the growth that our industry has had, and I’m really proud to do, you know, that really what I set out to do was to bring urban and rural communities together, because we have so much more in common than we do apart.

Catherine: Yes, I totally agree. And you were hired to build Arevon’s development arm inside a company that started as an operator, which is interesting. What about that challenge excited you, and how are you shaping the team to succeed?

Shanelle: Yeah, it’s been fascinating getting to know the Arevon team, because it’s so opposite the way other IPPs have started, where they were developers and then said, oh, now we need to do operations. And Arevon really started as an operator and then said, hey, you know, we’re really good at this. Let’s move on to development. And so I was brought in to create sort of the building blocks for the development team. We started our real estate group, our GIS group, our environmental group, and then as well as our execution group, which is our developers.
And it’s really been growing and growing the last couple of years to be not just an operator, but also a best-in-class developer as well. It’s been very fun to see.

Catherine: Yeah. And how does Arevon’s operator-first DNA give you an edge as you scale development?

Shanelle: So my favorite thing to tell our landowners and our communities is that we are A to Z. So you’re meeting us as the developer. We’re walking you through the development process. We’ll be there as we construct. We’ll be there on site as we operate that project. We are 40-year partners with the communities that we’re in. And I think that makes us step back and think about how we are developing and how is that going to be reflected in that 30-year mark, that 40-year mark? Are we making sure that we’re dotting all of our I’s and crossing all of our T’s? Because we are the operator at the end of the day. There’s tremendous shops who flip projects at one point or another, FNTP. And they’re doing some tremendous work. However, I think it really behooves us to think about how that project lifecycle is going to look instead of just, hey, can we get this to construction or can we get this to operations?

Catherine: Much more of a long-term commitment.

Shanelle: 100%. And that’s reflected in our development.

Catherine: Yeah. There’s been some policy shifts. I don’t know if you’ve noticed. Oh, really? Federal policy changes and market uncertainty are reshaping how developers plan projects.
How are you navigating these shifts to keep Ariba’s pipeline on track?

Shanelle: It’s a big question. And of course, it’s on everybody’s mind here today. But the way I’m looking at it is we are going to lead with patience. We’re going to lead with calmness. And we are going to make educated decisions. And we’re not going to run into something headlong.
We are going to make sure that we are never feeling stressed from a timing perspective to make a decision. Instead, we’re leaving our options open so that we can adjust and we can flex. If I think of procurement and all of the changes that are happening to procurement, and shout out to the Ariba procurement team. They’ve done a tremendous job. But we’ve really had to sit back and say, how can we give them as much space to make their decisions as we’re permitting and we’re doing our land control and our environmental studies? We have to keep our options open to be able to flex and then adjust when necessary, but never do it reactionary and said, make sure that we’re really thinking through the decisions we’re making. We have very patient capital and that’s helped a ton to be able to say, hey, we’re not certain on this decision. We need more, two months, we need a quarter, we need a year. And that also has really helped us to be smart in this marketplace.

Catherine: Gosh, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say they had patient capital. I think everybody probably wants to know who your capital providers are.

Shanelle: It has really, I think, again, it’s helped us make very smart, informed, calm decisions. Nobody makes a good decision under stress. You need to be calm.

Catherine: Yep. And competition for clean energy talent is intense. What strategies are you using to recruit and retain people in such a fast changing market?

Shanelle: So I think it all comes down to culture and that culture, it isn’t just in my group. It really is the managers that are under me maintaining culture. It’s my CEO, Kevin Smith, maintaining our culture. It’s ensuring that we are providing, it’s going to sound repetitive, but this calm environment in this semi-uncalmed time. I’ve been through the solar coaster. You’ve been through the solar coaster, but we always need to recognize that not all of our employees have.

Catherine: That’s right. Especially the newer generation.

Shanelle: Exactly. And if we spin, they will spin. But if we’re calm and we’re leading with calmness, they will see that and they will want to continue being there.

Catherine: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a very good point. As one of the few women in a C-suite role in utility scale solar, what do you see as the most effective ways to advance more women into senior leadership? And why does this matter to businesses?

Shanelle: First off, I think every study I have ever read shows that having a diverse set of employees is going to put that company in a better position. And it isn’t just about women. It is about making sure we have people who are from different states, making sure we have people of different ages, making sure we have people of different political beliefs. And that is something that I carry onto my team. When we are hiring, we need to stop and pause and be patient to ensure that we have a diverse team that will help with our decision-making. It’ll help with our culture. And the way that I am trying to advance women is the same way that I want to advance someone who’s maybe younger in their career or older in their career. It really is about fostering diverse viewpoints and respecting that and making people feel like they can be their genuine self. And then they’ll want to be there and they’ll want to succeed in the role that they’re in.

Catherine: Yeah, that’s right. So looking ahead, if we look three to five years out, what do you think will define the companies that stay competitive in the energy transition? And what role will workforce play in that?

Shanelle: So unfortunately, it’s going to come down to capital for many people. That’s just the environment that we’re in. I think there’s amazing development teams out there that are struggling because of the ability to get capital. And that’s very unfortunate for our entire industry. But the companies that I see really prospering are the ones who can be flexible, who can say, okay, we’re not going to move that project. We’re going to move that a year, or maybe we’re going to advance this project and we have enough panels that we can move this more quickly. I also think it’s going to come down to relationships, right? Like we know that our EPC partners are going to feel that ITC cliff coming up, making sure we have good relationships and we’re communicating with them. Everybody in this industry is going to have to adjust and be a little bit on warp speed until the ITC cliff. But we got to do it together. We got to communicate together. We get to talk about, hey, we’re missing engineers here, or we need more construction support, whatever it is. But that communication has to be there. Companies that I see that are having a harder time seem to be a little bit siloed and not part of the greater industry. And so they’re not able to see the full picture, I think, and to communicate what their needs are and then they struggle.

Catherine: Right. Yeah. Being nimble is so important now.

Shanelle: So important.

Catherine: Well, thank you for talking to me. I appreciate it. Thank you for joining us here at the Power Up live stage presented by Wärtsilä Energy Storage and produced by Suncast Media.

Shanelle: Wonderful.