Interview with Suzanne Tegen, CNEC

Catherine: Hi, I’m Catherine McLean, Founder and CEO of Dylan Green. Today I have with me Suzanne Tegen, Acting Director at the Center for the New Energy Economy and one of the founders at RISE. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Suzanne: Thank you, I’m happy to be here.

Catherine: You’ve worked across policy, research and academia. Can you start by telling us a bit about your current role and what you’re focused on now?

Suzanne: Yes, I’m the Acting Director of a fairly small center. We’re about 10 people at the time. So it’s called the Center for the New Energy Economy. And we are located within Colorado State University. So at the Center for the New Energy Economy, we work on bipartisan clean energy research and we also educate policymakers at the state level, so legislators, state legislators, and we work with governor’s energy offices and utilities and other policymakers on clean energy policy throughout the country. In one of our biggest programs, we bring together state legislators and it’s a small group of about 30 people where we educate them on clean energy policy and then they go back to where they’re from and hopefully work on bipartisan energy legislation.

Catherine: Okay, great. And you worked as an energy analyst at NREL before stepping into management and eventually leading a large team. What helped you make that transition into leadership? And what advice would you give others that want to take that step in their own careers?

Suzanne: Yeah, that’s a great question. I would say that managing people is not just another piece of your job. So if you’re an energy analyst or an engineer or whatever you’re working on, managing people is a totally different way to work. There’s no formula. And when you are working on an energy problem, sometimes there really is a right answer at the end. But with people, everyone is different and every manager is different. And so there’s no one path to follow. And if you want to be in management, I would say you really need to love working with people and helping them succeed and helping your organization succeed. So if you’re someone who really wants to help others succeed and you want to help your organization succeed and you can deal with bureaucracy, that’s part of management. And human resources is part of management. So the people in that department will get to be your friends. Then it’s something you could take on. And you know, for the long term, there are hard parts that come with management. When something great happens, you want to celebrate with everyone and that’s wonderful. And you have to make sure you let people know why they matter to their organization and how they fit in. And you can celebrate successes. And then on the other hand, if something terrible happens, which usually within a decade, if you’re managing, it does. You’re the person to deliver the hard news too. You’ll end up hiring, which is so fun. And you’ll end up letting people go as well, which is not fun on the other end. But all of that comes with it.
To me, it was worth it. And I’ve always loved managing projects. And so when I took on managing people, it was another dimension. And listening carefully is part of that. And we’ll be working on that our whole lives, I’m sure. But really building trust takes a lot of time. And everybody does it differently. For me, I want to know about how people are doing at home and how people are doing at work. And checking in is a big part of it for me. So everybody does it differently. But I would say the leadership training that I had at WRISE gave me a lot of confidence and helped me move up in not just at NREL, but in my career.

Catherine: Yeah. That’s really great advice. And you helped launch WRISE 20 years ago. What motivated you and the team to start it? What do you remember most about those early days or just beyond the lack of women in the room? Because everyone has mentioned that.

Suzanne: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, everyone’s mentioned that, I’m sure. I think, well, it was mostly a group of us at NREL, at the National Lab. And we all had stories of challenges that were because we were women. And we thought we could find solutions if we broadened our network a bit. And the people that founded it, we would count on each other for advice. And Mia and Trudy, they all gave me good advice. And it was really helpful to have the counsel of other women. Because I think back then and still today, you do have to work harder as a woman to get to the table, right? It was probably more true back then, but it’s definitely still true today.
And I think if you have a network of women to count on and to go to, they’re not going to be able to tell you the answer, but they’ll tell you the strategies that they used. And then you can find one that’s right for you. So I think the point of developing a network was for mentoring and for leadership counseling. And we didn’t want to leave men out either. That wasn’t the point. The point was to support women, right? And so we did have men, even in the early days who were supportive of what we were doing. Yeah, and I would say, yeah, the biggest thing was just solving our challenges by speaking with other women who’d been in our shoes.

Catherine: Right, right. Yeah. When you think about WRISE’s growth over the past two decades, what are you most proud of contributing to personally or collectively?

Suzanne: That’s a good question. I am proud that we helped students and other people who are just getting into these careers, whether they’re student age or whatever age, that we brought them into the field and into industry. I think one of the most helpful things is to have a network to count on and have connections when you’re looking for a job or whether you’re looking to move up in your job. It really helps to have people who are cheering you on. And I think sometimes students or people who are coming from other industries don’t really know the ropes in the wind industry or in the renewables industry. And so bringing them to a conference and then allowing them to meet some of the leaders in the industry is super helpful for their career. And that’s a short-term thing, but hopefully we’ll go beyond that as well. And some of them, we have success stories, right? Like there’s some people who came as WRISE fellows or Red Meyer fellows in the old days, and then they were able to meet with partners in the industry and get jobs. So we really have seen success bringing people in and then supporting them as they go through it.

Catherine: Yeah. Someone said to me once, it’s building your personal board of directors.

Suzanne: Absolutely. Yeah. And I just think the mentorship program is so important, the mentoring program that we started a long time ago. But when we started that, it was kind of a traditional mentoring program, and then it really blossomed from there. I mean, we learned that you’re mentoring each other, right? And so the people who are more experienced are mentoring the junior people, and the junior people are also mentoring. So it was two-way mentoring, which I hadn’t seen before, but it was so perfect for WRISE. We had book groups and we had all sorts of online mentoring, in-person mentoring. So I think that was another big success for WRISE.

Catherine: Yeah, that’s really great. What does allyship mean to you, especially in male-dominated spaces like wind and GridTech? And what are some ways allies have made a real difference in your work?

Suzanne: Yeah. Allies are so important because they have your back, they’re looking out for you, even in circles that you don’t know. And I think I can remember moments that have given me a lot of confidence when somebody has said to me, oh, this person, I was at a conference with this person, they were telling me what great work you’re doing. And I just thought, oh my gosh, then that must mean it’s real, right? If I’m not even in the room, if I’m not even standing next to that person, but he’s talking to this other guy about this report that I just wrote or whatever it is. That’s, I think, real allyship. And they’re trying to promote the work that you do, even when you’re not in the room. Yes. So I would say that’s a big part of it and also making sure that you do that, right, for other people.

Catherine: Yeah, absolutely. In your policy and research work, have you seen a time when inclusion or the lack of it clearly shaped the outcome of an energy decision or project? And what did it teach you?

Suzanne: Yeah, that’s a great question. So some of the work that I do now has to do with the energy transition and energy communities. So we are going into communities that are reliant on fossil fuels and looking at what comes next for them. As clean energy increases and storage increases, some power plants will be phased out and some, especially rural towns, are reliant on those fossil fuel industries. And so we’re looking at what comes next for the people in those communities. And the conversations that I’ve had there at the beginning were with town leaders and elected officials and people like that. And what I realized was we’re not hearing from the people who own businesses on Main Street or the school teachers or the people who are running the power plants. And we worked really hard to try to make sure we’re including voices from the community that are going to be impacted by all of the economic changes. So yes, I think that when there is an energy decision to be made, and it depends which level, but when it involves the whole community, we need to make sure that we are including different facets of the community, not just the voices who always have the megaphone, not just the people we hear from all the time.
Inclusion is intentional. And so if you want to be inclusive, you have to do the research. You have to go there and dig in and find out who are we not hearing from to make a better energy decision, right? And then the town, when it comes for a vote or something like that, the people in the town will be like, oh yeah, they listened to me. I attended those meetings and they listened to what I was saying.

Catherine: So yeah, that’s important. And what advice would you offer to women and underrepresented professionals just starting out in the clean energy industry? Is there anything that helped you stay grounded through those challenges?

Suzanne: I think the women that I know from the WRISE, the WRISE board and the WRISE network and the community really did help inspire me. I left a really good stable job at the National Lab, which I loved so much, but I wanted to be closer to the policy piece and policy makers. And so now I get to talk with policy makers and work with them from my day job and use the good work from the National Labs and then kind of translate that into policy speak and work with the policy makers. So I don’t think I would have had the courage to leave a good stable job were it not for my colleagues at WRISE. They really gave me a lot of confidence and helped me talk about my experience in a way that I saw, oh yeah, maybe I do have what it takes to move to something that I really, really want to do. To people who are just starting out, I would say, take the stretch opportunities, meet people, hopefully you can do that in person, but if not, you can do it online, but take those opportunities. When senior people say, anytime you want to talk, give me a call, well, they’re really busy, right? But you should still do it, even if it’s a month out, right? Talk to that person and get to know them a little bit because you probably have something in common and you can help them and they can help you later. I mean, I know it’s great advice that I got once to get to know your interns. I have a couple of interns that ended up being people who indirectly kind of fund my projects, down the line, or I work for them in some way. So things will move around, things are fluid and it’s great to really connect with people as people. I worked at the National Lab and we were very focused on engineering and I think I realized more and more as I get older, as people are people, right? They want to get to know other people and you should get to know them as people. Join groups like WRISE or other groups like that that will help you. They’ll help grow your networks and maybe they’ll help you in the future because you’ll end up working for them or they’ll be your future funder or whatever it is, yeah.

Catherine: It’s so funny that you mentioned that because I have a friend who had an intern and then 20 years later, she went to work for him. Funny.

Suzanne: I know, it is funny. That’s exactly the timeframe for me. I mean, there was a woman that I worked with at the turn of the century. She wasn’t an intern, but we worked at the same place and had a great relationship and I lost touch with her over the years, but 20 years later, she ended up being one of my funders.

Catherine: Amazing.

Suzanne: Yeah, it was amazing. We kind of walked into the same room and we’re like, oh, hello, you know? Yeah, but she was an ally, I would say and she was a supporter way back when because I was a young person just starting my career and that was way back and then when my boss introduced us at this event, we said, oh my gosh, we know each other and she said to him, oh, you made a good choice and it felt so good, you know?

Catherine: Yeah. I love that. Yeah. So as WRISE marks its 20th anniversary, what’s your vision for the next chapter and what will it take to build a more inclusive and effective clean energy workforce?

Suzanne: Yeah, I think WRISE has been so successful because of the in-person and online events that make people feel really included and I think that’s got to continue. I feel like they’re doing a great job and I don’t want to say more of the same, but really in this case, it’s true because people are struggling to find kind of where they matter and where they fit in and I think knowing that you have the support of people who aren’t just in your job area, right? They could be just in this industry and they could do something totally different. Maybe you’re in a nonprofit or you’re in academia and they’re working for a company or something like that and the other way around too. So I think this inclusiveness and the networking, whether it’s virtual or in-person, is really, really important. I think especially today, as we’re dealing with a lot of chaos and changes at the federal level, we know and when you think about the changes that are happening, we know that most people in this country want clean air and clean water, right? Like that’s something that everybody wants, no matter what they believe in. Clean air, clean water and a good future for the coming generations. We know that we wanna be on the right side of history when we think about that in 10 years. What did we do during that time that was pretty chaotic? Where were we and what were we doing? Well, if you stayed the course, you do what you’re good at, right? Help other people and ask for help, build trust. You’re doing the right thing and you’ll be on the right side of history so you’ll be proud in the end.

Catherine: Yeah, yeah, no, that’s great. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. It was great speaking with you. It was so great to speak with you too.

Suzanne: Thank you so much for doing this for all of us. I appreciate it. Yeah, no, my pleasure.