Managing IT in the Midst of a Tech Revolution - Elizabeth Hackenson, Chief Information Officer, Schneider Electric
Release Date: 04/27/2026
People Leveraging Carbon Markets To Keep Their Land – Stacey Solie, Coproducer of the Documentary "From The Ground Up: Voices From The Carbon Market"
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“If you don't tell your stories, then no one will ever know, …Basically I just said, I think we should tell the positive stories and we should do it through the people…Let's actually just go and meet the people at all levels from the people that are involved in the projects and organizing them. Also the people that are participating in them and benefiting from them and find out what they say. How does this change your life? Is this actually happening? Did trees actually get planted? Did this well actually get plugged?." Stacey Solie on Electric Ladies Podcast Who are the regular...
info_outline
Managing IT in the Midst of a Tech Revolution - Elizabeth Hackenson, Chief Information Officer, Schneider Electric
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“We realized early on with our digital transformation that really what we're trying to do is digitize processes and …we really want to transform. But the people that own these business processes are stakeholders, they're in sales, they're in operations, they're in HR, finance, supply chain, so we needed them before we could get started on digitally architecting a solution. So… we take a senior leader from a function and ops or a business unit and ask them to be the business process leader…. and we match you to an IT leader who's also quite senior. So these are VP SVP roles and they're...
info_outline
Earth Day Career Advice From 6 Extraordinary Women Leaders
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“Try as best as you can not to be fear-driven. I think we are so driven by fear that we're never going to be enough, that we aren't going to contribute enough….(Y)ou actually are enough just as you are, right? Take this day, do what you can. Impact the people around you.…Become partners in your career with unlikely people, people who don't think like you, people who aren't doing the same career as you. You'll get a lot more joy out of, I think, your career because of the cross-pollination.” Dr. Katherine Gergen-Barnett on Electric Ladies Podcast This Earth Day, we want to share...
info_outline
The State of Energy Today Might Surprise You - Lisa Jacobson, BCSE on the 2026 Energy Factbook
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“You see corporate procurement of clean energy, predominantly renewable energy, but there's fleet investments, there are efficiency improvements in buildings and on campuses underway….but it was a little different than what we'd seen in recent years. It wasn't just solar and wind. There was an interest in 24/7 reliable clean energy in particular by the tech industries, which won't surprise you, but things like nuclear, geothermal, other integrated technologies like solar and storage…So that's kind of an interesting set of dynamics because it's really diversifying the players in the...
info_outline
How To Talk "Climate" To Keep People Safe – Allison Agsten, USC Center for Climate Journalism & Communications
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“If there are people who are willing to talk to you about it, the first thing you got to do is listen….I grew up in a very rural area and it's very conservative also. And when I go home, I don't talk about climate change. I do talk about what's going on with hunting season. 'Oh, there's no deer this year. Why do you think that is? Tell me about the rain'….It is again about that pivoting and you have to understand what's important to the people you're talking to… I might say, 'I just upgraded my mom's generator. It's great because with all the outages we're having out here, now she can...
info_outline
How Carbon Credits Work – with Donna Lee, CEO & CoFounder, Calyx Global
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
"What I knew about Carbon Credits having watched them for many years is that they're not always what they seem...So, Calyx Global was founded in 2021 to help companies navigate the space, to really understand….(i)t's a promise that somebody has reduced methane in that landfill or planted some trees thousands of miles away. So that's what Calyx Global is, we're a Carbon Credit Ratings Agency. But really what we're doing is, for every one of these assets, helping buyers understand what's underneath that, what the quality of that asset is. Donna Lee on Electric Ladies Podcast You've...
info_outline
Creativity & Relationships Help Secure Grants – Megan Pater, CEO/Founder of Fund Nation & ECE Solutions
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“Number one reason that people get denied and they didn't read the eligibility criteria. So yeah, very, very important …If you don't have the qualifications or something for something, you partner with somebody who does and you guys go after it together.… If you don't know something, that gives you a reason to call the vendor and start that conversation and get that personal relationship with them.…Relationships, relationships, relationships. It really is the key to grants. It's really not about what you write, it's about who you're speaking to ahead of time." Megan Pater on Electric...
info_outline
"Healthcare Without Harm" to People & Planet – Dr. Katherine Gergen-Barnett & Dr. Anna Goldman, Boston Medical Center
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“Healthcare Without Harm is more of an advocacy organization that works with clinicians and other healthcare workers to reduce the environmental impact of healthcare and pollution as well as climate impacts. And then Practice Greenhealth advises hospitals on how to get there and they do this awards process…(which is) about having people aware of all these different metrics that impact your operational sustainability…(and) raise awareness among the people who are running the hospital and leadership about how they're using water, food waste, where they're buying their food from, their...
info_outline
New Nuclear Energy Is Growing Fast – Maria Korsnick, President and CEO, Nuclear Energy Institute
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“I've been in this industry for 40 years and we have never been at a moment like we are today. …About 10 years ago, a little bit more than that, the narrative at that time was we were closing down plants…. Now the narrative today is, Hey, you know what? Some of those plants you shut down, we've changed our mind. How hard would it be to restart that?... All of these hyperscalers (Google, Amazon, e.g.) are figuring out partnerships and marriages, if you will, with nuclear and trying to help nuclear be brought to the marketplace….I mean, the demand is off the charts, and that's really the...
info_outline
How To Pressure Electeds For Climate, Clean Air – Dominique Browning, Mom's Clean Air Force
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“We, the people we can definitely keep the pressure on, not only on our lawmakers, our governors, our mayors, our senators, our Congress people. We have to keep reminding them that we care about these issues…There's a real key also to the future reimagining, asking companies to reimagine themselves as energy companies, not oil companies or gas companies, but energy companies. So all of these pressure points are incredibly important. We all have favorite stores, favorite brands that we shop on. If you love Walmart writing to the customer services and to the president of Walmart saying,...
info_outline“We realized early on with our digital transformation that really what we're trying to do is digitize processes and …we really want to transform. But the people that own these business processes are stakeholders, they're in sales, they're in operations, they're in HR, finance, supply chain, so we needed them before we could get started on digitally architecting a solution. So… we take a senior leader from a function and ops or a business unit and ask them to be the business process leader…. and we match you to an IT leader who's also quite senior. So these are VP SVP roles and they're the power couple. So we ask the domain leader on the stakeholder or business side, you define the what and the why, so what is it that you need and why? That's the value part of it….They're a partnership."”
Elizabeth Hackenson on Electric Ladies Podcast
How do you manage business systems in the middle of an industrial-technology revolution when those very systems are transforming too? They also use massive amounts of energy, water and are made from things like critical minerals, steel, aluminum wires, computer chips, et cetera that are all complicated by climate and energy crises.
Listen to Elizabeth Hackenson, Chief Information Officer of Schneider Electric explain how this massive global technology leader transforms itself while helping clients do the same in this fascinating discussion with Electric Ladies host Joan Michelson.
You’ll hear about:
- How what a Chief Information Officer's portfolio really is and how they manage it 24/7 across the globe
- How they are leveraging and managing AI, as well as data centers.
- How their "power couples" have become a valuable structure for ground up systems transformation with the end user in mind.
- How they reduce their carbon footprint while helping clients do the same and maintain excellence.
- Plus, insightful career advice, such as…
“First you have to find a company that is interesting to you and what you want to do. And then to me, it's always about focus on delivering what you've been asked to and what you can do. And then opportunity, in my view, opens up. Now sometimes it's at the company you're at and other times it's not. And that's okay…When you're at that 15-year mark, you should have by then figured out what you like, what your interests are and where you want to go next. And you've got to take control of your destiny. And again, I think getting to a company that you believe in, you have the same values, can give you that pathway to whatever it is you're looking for is where to start and then deliver.”
Elizabeth Hackenson on Electric Ladies Podcast
Read Joan’s Forbes article about this new report here and more of her articles here too.
You'll also like:
- Microgrids Keep the Lights On - Jana Gerber, President of Microgrids, Schneider Electric
- Making Infrastructure Resilient - Genevieve Avice-Huet, EVP of Industrial Automation, Schneider Electric (formerly Chief Strategy & Sustainability Officer)
- Critical Minerals 101 - with Abby Wulf, Critical Minerals expert and former head of Critical Minerals in the U.S. Dept. of Energy
- Business Leaders Bridging the Climate Gap - Top executives from The Earth Day Women's Summit
- The State of Energy Today Might Surprise You - Lisa Jacobson, President, Business Council for Sustainable Energy on their 2026 Energy Factbook
Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our podcasts, blog, events and special coaching offers..
Thanks for subscribing on Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio and leaving us a review!
Follow us on Twitter @joanmichelson