Microgrids Keep The Lights On, For Less – Jana Gerber, President of Microgrids, Schneider Electric
Release Date: 01/28/2026
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“What is a microgrid?...There's a lot of challenges that folks are dealing with around the grid infrastructure, with weather related challenges and load growth and other elements. And so what a microgrid does is help those customers become not only consumers of energy, but also producers of energy. So we like to call that a prosumer….So a microgrid helps to create that bridge between the building and the big grid…So if the grid's no longer there (e.g., an outage), they can act independently of the grid. It also helps with deploying more renewables on their sites, as well as really energy costs.”
Jana Gerber on Electric Ladies Podcast
Our hearts go out to the many people who are out of power in the current massive winter storm. We wish they had access to a microgrid to give them power when the grid is down, like during this ferocious storm. How does a microgrid work? Can you get one for your home?
Listen to Jana Gerber, President of Microgrids at Schneider Electric in this helpful and engaging conversation with Electric Ladies host Joan Michelson, live at the Schneider Electric U.S. Innovation Summit a couple of months ago. They also share insightful career advice.
You’ll hear about:
- What a microgrid is, how it works and how to use it.
- How microgrids can serve communities in disaster situations – and are doing so in real time.
- How facilities as different as military bases to airports to EV charging are using microgrids to keep the power on.
- How microgrids are powered by renewables and batteries…and so much more
- Plus, insightful career advice, such as…
“I think having purpose in what we do really drives that passion. And so continue to find what your North star is and where your passion aligns with that and keep going at it. So I think that's the important thing….I've had multiple different roles across different elements of the (SE) business and really getting to understand the perspectives and everybody wants to provide value and what they're doing. And so helping to find ways that you can pull folks in to help them bring their value to your customers or through other means is really critical.” Jana Gerber on Electric Ladies Podcast
Read Joan’s Forbes articles here.
You'll also like:
- An Industrial Revolution Unlike Any Other – with Gwenaelle Avice-Huet, EVP and head of Automation at Schneider Electric, from their U.S. Innovation Summit 2025
- Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), on the politics of energy and infrastructure
- Doreen Harris, President and CEO of NYSERDA, on how New York is leading the way to the clean energy future.
- Paula Glover, from the Alliance To Save Energy
- Autum Huskins, Hitachi Zosen Inova, turning waste into energy (and wine)
- Marit Brommer, Ph.D., International Geothermal Association, how geothermal is a dependable energy source
- Claire Seaborn, former Chief of Staff to Canada’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources on what the U.S. can learn from Canada’s energy policies
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