Portrait
A New Chapter Begins: LADWP Welcomes CEO and Chief Engineer Janisse Quiñones
By Vanessa Lopez
In April of this year, a nationwide search for LADWP’s new Chief Executive Officer and Chief Engineer culminated in Mayor Karen Bass’ recommendation of Janisse Quiñones for the critical position. She was confirmed by the Los Angeles City Council on May 14, and effectively began her service as the new leader of the Department. Quiñones joins LADWP with over 25 years of leadership experience as a senior executive in utility and engineering industries.
A Meet and Greet event was held on May 16, where Quiñones received a warm welcome from former General Manager and Chief Engineer Martin L. Adams, Board of Water and Power Commission President Richard Katz and more than 2,000 LADWP employees who joined in person at the John Ferraro Building (JFB) auditorium and online. Quiñones shared her past career accomplishments and answered employees’ questions on a variety of topics, including why she wanted to join LADWP, her thoughts on achieving 100 percent renewable energy by 2035 and her goals for LADWP as we enter this new era.
Read below to see what LADWP’s new CEO and Chief Engineer had to share. Employees can view the full event recording on MyDWP.
Quiñones introduces herself at a Los Angeles City Council meeting on May 10.
What made you want to transition from investor-owned utilities (IOUs) into public service?
I’ve spent most of my career in service of this country. I’ve been in the Coast Guard for 19 and a half years, and the happiest times of my life have been when I’ve been serving my country and my communities. Working with IOUs has given me a lot of experience to come here and understand what LADWP is doing, especially on the power side. I have a lot to learn on the water side, but I did natural gas for a long time which has pipes, valves, regulators, compressor stations, which technically is similar. Public policy is a little bit different, but I think I had to do all the IOU time to be ready for a job like this. This job is not only important from the perspective of keeping the lights on and making the water flow, but also for transforming the energy industry and the energy sector. And what I’m seeing from the IOU perspective is that there’s a huge movement to bring public power to the forefront of running utilities. We’re starting to see it in San Jose and San Diego where they’re trying to municipalize power. There’s a reason why that happens, and that’s because public power serves our communities first. And so, I was eager and longing for a chance where I could serve our communities and make a difference for the people that we’re privileged to serve. And that’s the reason why I am here. It was not an easy decision, but a decision I made with my whole soul and heart, and my soul tells me this is where I need to be.
Quiñones takes oath following Los Angeles City Council confirmation on May 14.
With challenges like rising electricity demand, AI server needs, transitioning to EVs, and achieving clean energy, do you think it’s realistic that we will be able to reach 100 percent clean energy by 2035?
We’re going to try, that’s for sure. Let me just say that I think this is a problem that’s impacting everybody in the nation. FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) just requested a study for a 20-year transmission component due to capacity shortage in the system. We’re starting to see it in Texas, where they have emergencies because they don’t have enough energy coming through the lines, so this is a problem not just for LADWP. This is a problem that needs collaboration with other IOUs, the CAISO (California Independent System Operator), and the Department of Energy. I would say we are in a very interesting position because we’re one of the few utilities in California that are vertically integrated. We own our generation and we’re able to build transmission coming out of state. The other ones are in a little bit of a bigger conundrum because they’re dependent on the CAISO system. We will try. The last 10 to 20 percent is going to be the hardest, but if anybody can do it, LADWP can do it.
Quiñones holds her first LADWP executive team meeting.
LADWP recently prepared a Strategic Plan within the last 18 months. Will there be an opportunity to review and update that in the first three to six months?
I’m going to be reading it and really evaluating what we can do in the next 12 to 18 months. Strategic planning requires constant review. We look at what we are doing, we execute the plan, and we evaluate our execution and performance to see if we’re still on the right track. If not, then we determine what we need to change to execute to the goal. We have to constantly evaluate our strategic plan and make sure it’s geared toward what we need to do.
Quiñones speaks to employees at the Meet and Greet event at the John Ferraro Building on May 16.
You mentioned long-term and short-term goals. Can you elaborate on your short-term goals?
My short-term goals are really stabilizing the company, evaluating the performance of the Department, and working on earning back the trust of our stakeholders. Also, I really want to dig into our customer service. There’s a lot of concern about what tools our customer service reps can use to better their performance and help our customers. We’re in 2024, and there are a lot of tools that allow us to do great customer service. We need to determine what tools we need to bring in to ensure that our customer service reps have the right information at their fingertips. I think that HR and IT also need to be supported the right way in order to enable us to be successful.
Board of Water and Power Commission Vice President George McGraw, President Richard Katz, and Commissioner Nurit Katz smile with Quiñones at the Meet and Greet event on May 16.
How would you describe your own style of leadership and what are some concrete ways in which your actions demonstrate this style?
I would say adaptable. My way of being is authentic and honest. You’ll always get my true self when I’m talking, and the reason is because it’s physically painful not to be me. I don’t know how to fake it until I make it, so you get who I am the whole time. When I have to make strong decisions, I’ll make the decisions. I collaborate a lot - my goal is to serve you. But I would never call myself a servant leader because servant leaders don’t call themselves servant leaders, they should act like servant leaders. And I’m flexible. One of the things I’ve learned through my career is resiliency and patience. I wasn’t always patient; I was always resilient but not always patient. Getting to patience, and understanding where the organization is coming from and how we move forward, is a critical component of my leadership style.
Quiñones visits the Owens Valley along with Board of Water and Power Commission Vice President George McGraw, Commissioner Nurit Katz, Senior Assistant General Manager – Water System Anselmo Collins and others.
What advice do you have for women working in the Department and for our daughters?
The number one advice I have for women is to stay together and support each other. One of the things that is a big pet peeve of mine is when I see women competing with women and not supporting them. Women have special skills that are innate with who we are. We are able to have this intuition, and trust that intuition. And two, is removing the noise from everything coming at you. Identifying a problem is easy for women because we’re used to managing a lot of noise around us and figuring out what’s the next most important thing to do. My biggest advice is also not so much for the women as it is for the men. In order for us to have gender equality in corporate America, we have to be allies, we have to be sponsors, we have to be mentors and we have to be coaches. In this time and day, that has to be very intentional. It’s gotten to the point where it’s one of the things that’s at the forefront of what you want to do as a leader, as a male leader - to support the female leaders coming in through the organization and the women that are coming into the “non-traditional” roles. It is important that we stick together because at the end of the day we’re all working toward a common goal, which is to make LADWP successful, serve the City of L.A. and enable the clean energy transition.
Quiñones joined Board of Water and Power Commissioners President Richard Katz, Commissioner Wilma J. Pinder and Senior Assistant General Manager - Power System Simon Zewdu for a visit to Valley Generating Station.
