Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

Energy and Leadership in the Age of Extremes

Tue, September 22, 2026
Dinner Program
Steven Powell

Join The Roberts Environmental Center explore the significance of energizing Southern California. The electric grid is being asked to do something new: evolve faster, withstand more, and cost less — all at the same time. As California moves toward a cleaner energy future, climate-driven extremes, growing demand, and rising cost pressures are reshaping what reliability and resilience mean in practice. For leaders, this creates a different kind of challenge — making decisions with incomplete information while balancing reliability, affordability, and speed. Progress also depends on navigating a complex and often divisive policy environment, where expectations and priorities don’t always align. In this talk, Steve Powell, President and CEO of Southern California Edison, shares how these tradeoffs are managed — and what it means to lead when there are no easy answers.
 

Steven Powell is president and CEO of Southern California Edison (SCE), one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, serving more than 15 million people across Central, Coastal and Southern California. In over 25 years with SCE, he has held leadership roles spanning operations, strategy, resource planning, energy procurement and electric transportation. Prior to becoming CEO, he served as executive vice president of Operations, overseeing transmission and distribution, customer service, safety, security, business resiliency and operational services. Powell serves on the board of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), chairs EPRI’s Climate READi Committee, and co-chairs the Edison Electric Institute Wildfire Task Force. He holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and an MBA from UCLA.

Powell’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Roberts Environmental Center at CMC.

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Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Claremont McKenna College
385 E. Eighth Street
Claremont, CA 91711