We’ve wrapped up Women’s History Month in March and as we begin a new month, we are pleased to highlight our newest female General Managers throughout April. First up is Kim Holmes, General Manager of the largest municipal light facility, Taunton. Kim started out as an intern at Taunton Municipal Lighting Plant twenty one years ago and has worked her way up through the years with various roles eventually becoming Business Manager, then Assistant General Manager. Kim’s transition to GM was smooth as she has been a member of the Taunton MLP family since the very beginning of her career. It is Kim’s love and understanding of public power that makes her such an asset to Taunton. She sees what public power has to offer its ratepayers with their ability to have direct influence on the community needs. Plus, her dedicated staff are so familiar with the system that overall they reduce outages and are far more reliable than investment owned utilities.
Looking toward the future, Kim sees the role of public power changing to address the concerns of climate change with the creation of a new department focused on sustainability. Since Taunton contains the largest industrial park in the public power system, Kim would like to develop programs to address the needs of the commercial/industrial sector in their efforts to green their systems. Our team at ENE is excited to collaborate with Kim and the rest of the team at Taunton to lead these efforts. We’ve already dedicated our power purchase efforts to increase the green options for power needs and the sky’s the limit for what we all can do.
Kim leads with a positive mindset despite how the role of General Manager has become more complicated with management, communication, and financial needs in higher demand than in the past. Recognizing the need for workforce development and to draw interest to the utility trades, we have worked with our local schools in many ways over the years to educate students on careers within the utility industry. Our employees have mentored high school students, participated in school career days, volunteered with Taunton Area School to Career, and worked with colleges to provide co-op learning experiences. Kim hopes that the industry will attract a more diversified workforce into this field and empower them to innovate in public power!
