Interview with Erica Brinker, Chaberton | From Aerospace to Leading the Nation’s #1 Community Solar Developer

Catherine: Hi, I’m Catherine McLean, Founder and CEO of Dylan Green. And today I have Erica Brinker with me. Erica is the Chief Commercial Officer at Chaberton Energy.Thanks for joining me. 

Erica: Thanks for having me. 

Catherine: So Erica flew in today to rainy DC from, I assume, sunny Phoenix.

Erica: It’s a little bit of an oven right now. It’s about 105. 

Catherine: So my goodness. So hopefully a little cooler here. And I feel like by the time this airs in the winter, it will still be 105 in a little bit. So can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your current role at Chaberton? 

Erica: Yeah, absolutely. I actually have a much longer title. That’s Chief Commercial and Sustainability Officer, which I often leave out just because it’s a mouthful. But in that role, we’re a developer, community solar developer. So that means my team does everything from the top of the funnel. So think about top of the funnel marketing, finding landowners, finding businesses that are interested in deploying solar for different reasons. And then I have the origination team who goes out and meets with those landowners or the businesses that are looking to deploy community solar and then move it into the commercial operations where we’re signing leases and making sure that the landowners and businesses are creating a great revenue stream for their property.

Catherine: Great. And I just want to talk a bit about how you transitioned into clean energy. You began your career working in marketing and product management in several different industries. And prior to working at Chaberton and you were at Array and you were the Chief Marketing Officer at Honeywell, how did you get into the industry? 

Erica: So Honeywell was actually a great, I’d say, place to start. I was there for 10 years. I started in the aerospace industry where we actually were deploying green fuels very early. We were a pioneer in green fuels. We also were doing smart building efficiency. So I worked on a product that was really trying to make buildings smarter so that they’d use less energy. And so it was a bit of a natural transition to Array, but there was a little something that happened that was called COVID and having a baby at the same time. 

Catherine: Oh my goodness. 

Erica: So I had a baby in February of 2020 and then three weeks later we were in shutdown. So I read a book called Uninhabitable Earth by Mr. Wallace Wells and it forever changed my trajectory because once I read it, he’s not a climatologist. He’s not this environmentalist. He’s basically an economist that talks about all the different things that go into climate change and just display them as facts in his book. And so it really ignited a fire in me to do something more directly with climate change. So I started looking for roles that were more in the green space. 

Catherine: And you’re very passionate about community solar, specifically.So can you share a bit more about Chaberton’s most recent community solar projects and why they’re so significant? 

Erica: Yeah, actually we have a lot to talk about. Especially in alphabetical order. I’m like, which stage should I start with? So the interesting thing is we’ve only been around for, it’ll be five years this coming January. So the trajectory of the company has been incredible, our growth. But I think some of the most interesting things about our projects are in Maryland, where our home base is in Romville, Maryland. We’re the number one solar developer there now after such a short period of time. We just kicked off the first CPCN project, which means projects that are five megawatts and above that kind of supersede the county process and are deployed through the state. And so this helps Maryland continue to be an unbelievable leader in solar. And so Maryland’s kind of our top market right now. We’re in Delaware, Virginia. We’re doing a lot of work in Illinois.

And what we’re really hoping for is more community solar in other states. I think one of the things that you’ll find when you talk to community solar developers is it’s a very different game than utility scale. At Array, it was mostly utility scale, and you can kind of do work wherever.

Community solar is a state by state game, and you can’t deploy community solar in half of the U.S. right now. And so we want to get all of the states up and running and saving community members utility bills. I mean, that’s the name of the game is clean energy and then savings for utility payers.

Catherine: Now, that’s really great, and it’ll be exciting to see which of the next states that come online. I want to talk next about the Chaberton CARES program. You all are involved with pollinator habitats, and you seem to take corporate social responsibility very seriously. I’d love to hear more about your focus on CSR. 

Erica: Yes. So it’s at the foundation of the company. So Chaberton is built on three values, and those values are so critical to everything that we do. So Chaberton CARES is at the foundation of everything that we do at the company because of our values. And we have three critical values. We talk about them every day in almost every meeting. It’s just kind of the way we work.

It’s the way we hire. And that’s creativity, excellence, and humanity.

• And so you think about creativity. It’s about problem solving, being resourceful. 
• Excellence, just doing the best that we can in every aspect of our projects.
• And then humanity. It’s the way we hire. It’s the way we treat landowners, the way we treat businesses, and the way we care for our work.

Chaberton CARES is just an extension of that. Okay. Those important values. So Chaberton CARES is how we deploy dollars to the communities that we serve. So for every megawatt installed, we donate $5,000 to a local charity or cause. And that can be up to the landowner or the business. We really try to deploy it right in the community. So a food bank or something that’s very critical to the infrastructure of that particular community. 

Catherine: Oh my goodness. That’s amazing. 

Erica: That’s a lot of dollars spent on that sort of thing. And it engenders so much pride with employees in the community that we can have this harmonious relationship. Sometimes with solar, unfortunately, you still have a little bit of pushback. Communities where they’re not always welcoming, but I think it helps them to know that we’re invested in the community too. Before we even go in for a project, we have a community impact team that goes to the community, goes to the town halls, speaks with stakeholders, commissioners, landowners to make sure that we’re deploying in a very conscious way. 

Catherine: That’s great. I know you all were recently recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in the US, Inc. 5,000, you were recognized by, and that you had grown in revenue. And I had to read this a few times because I thought it was a typo. 7,300% over the past three years? So yeah, it’s been kind of a banner year at Chaberton. 

Erica: So this year was actually the first year that we could apply for the Inc. 5,000 because you have to have a three-year runway of revenue that you can show. So it’s a revenue-based number. So obviously as a new company, the denominator is quite small, which is where you’d get like over 7,000% growth. It’s fun to say that. But we were just blown away by being number 34 and we were number two in Maryland, number two in energy. So all these accolades, we’re a humble company, so we take it in stride, but it was nice to be able to recognize the hard work of our team and everything they’ve done to make this possible.

Catherine: So what do you think are some of the factors that contributed to this success? 

Erica: Well, I mean, I might be biased coming from outside of solar, but I think a lot of us weren’t necessarily long-time solar folks. And so I think there’s a lot of business applications that once you apply them to solar work quite well. A lot of great business practices. I think we have a lot of rigor and process, which can sound boring, but for people that come into our system, so to speak, it becomes really easy because we have things documented. There’s a really clean process. The roles and responsibilities are more defined. Now, was it like that four years ago? Of course not. There were just a few people four years ago, but now we’re at about 50 people and everyone knows what their role is. Our handoffs are very clean. Again, we engage the community earlier and we really care about our projects. And I know that sounds cheesy, but if you would come to one of our meetings, and we’re having one this week, that’s why I’m in town, you would just have such a different vibe than anywhere else I’ve ever worked. 

Catherine: That’s amazing. What are some of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make in your role and how do you manage that? 

Erica: There’s been a lot of tough decisions. I feel like some of them being letting go of markets that maybe aren’t going to work out or changing the structure. I mean, pretty early on my team, I had the fortunate or unfortunate gift of taking over my team from the CEO. It was like the last team that got their own leader. He’s an originator at heart. Stefano is like a developer’s developer. He loves to find these great pieces of property. And my approach was different because I didn’t have a developer background. So I changed the whole process just to make it highly repeatable.

And what was difficult about it was that my whole team knew how to originate and I didn’t, but I saw a sales process that needed work. And so it was a good collaboration with the team too. They tell me if I was going too far with something or if I was going far enough for another, and then we just kept doing checkpoints. And now our runway, we’re originating over 350 megawatts a year with a pretty tight team. And it’s working really well. So I think that’s been hard, the adjustment. But now when we look back, because I’m almost a year and a half in, when I look back and talk to the team, they almost can’t remember doing it differently. Because it was a nice collaboration between thinking about it differently and then really knowing solar development. 

Catherine: I mean, this is what anyone that knows me knows I bang on and on and on about.

When I say diversity, bringing in diversity into the clean energy industry, it’s not just about bringing in women. It’s about just bringing in different sector expertise, different ideas of how you did things in other industries. All these things we can learn so much from with the existing solar talent that we have. I am so on the same page with that. 

Erica: I just feel like solar is still nascent, right? And so some of these, I come from an industrial manufacturing background, companies that have been around for over a hundred years. They’ve taken the time to figure some things out. And we should be begging and borrowing and stealing from that so that we can bring solar to the next level too. Because what got us here isn’t going to get us to the next point in progress. So we have to have more discipline as an industry so that we can garner the respect and the dollars that we need to keep growing.

Catherine: Yeah. What are some unique challenges that you faced as a senior woman leader in the industry, in the clean energy industry? Well, focus on just the clean energy industry where we’d be here. 

Erica: In your career since day one.

Catherine: And have you overcome them? 

Erica: I mean, ever since Honeywell, it’s been pretty normal for me to be the only woman in a meeting. And that’s not really ever bothered me. I think it maybe makes you adjust as a female in the room. Yeah. I think the other adjustment I’ve had to make, and you talk about diversity in other ways, I’ve come up through marketing where now I’m doing sales and I’m in a leadership role. And so maybe not being an engineer or not being your typical so-called left brain, I feel like I bring a different perspective. And something that oftentimes as a marketer and a salesperson, we see things from the customer point of view. We see them at the 30,000 foot view. So we’re seeing the big picture. So I think sometimes being courageous in your viewpoints and being able to voice them out loud, that’s something that my mom taught me from a very young age is to not be afraid to say what I thought. And that stuck with me.

I mean, being in corporate meetings is not for the faint of heart. And if you want to make change, which I am, I transform businesses. That’s what I do. And you can’t do it by being silent. And so for me, the biggest challenge is I want to understand everything before I talk, right? I’m not one that talks before I don’t understand something. So sometimes you’ll find a much quieter version of me early in a role or in a project, but then I feel like you really have to let your voice be heard and also listen at the same time. I originally came to school in Washington, DC because I wanted to be a politician. But I found out that listening wasn’t really required. So now that was not a good move for me. So I ended up switching lanes a little bit, but it’s in corporate America and in the solar industry, we do have to listen. We have to understand what everybody needs when we’re working with the landowner, we’re working with the business, what do they need? And I feel like listening has been a superpower for me. And as a woman, I feel like we’re often pretty good at it. Maybe not always, but I feel like that’s my superpower and being able to listen and then turn it into a solution. 

Catherine: Yeah. I really love that. I think that’s so important. I mean, what’s the saying? You have two ears and one mouth.

Erica: Use it in that ratio. 

Catherine: Exactly. Exactly. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today and coming to visit me. 

Erica: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.