Geisha Williams
Cuban-American
CEO + President, PG&E Corporation
At just five years old, geisha and her family fled Cuba to safety in the United States in 1967. Arriving in Minnesota first, the family would eventually settle in Union City, New Jersey. After saving money that her father earned from a factory day job and washing dishes by night, geisha’s parents opened two grocery stores. These years would expose geisha to the importance of what it means to provide ‘good customer service.’
She began on an unexpected path in the electric business when she stumbled across an internship posting on a college job board at the University of Miami. It was for a summer internship at Florida Power & Light (FPL), and perfectly suitable for her engineering studies. Geisha would fall in love with the electric business, complete her senior year with a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering, then join FPL full-time as a ‘residential energy auditor’. For the next 24 years, she held a variety of positions of increasing responsibility in customer service, marketing, external affairs and electric operations; and ended her FPL career as the ‘Vice President of Power Systems’. Within these years, she also found the time to obtain her mba degree from Nova Southeastern University.
Thirty years after taking action on the job board posting at the university of Miami, geisha has climbed the corporate ladder with unwavering drive. She moved to California in 2007 to join the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) in California, and now sits at the helm of Electric Operations, effective March 2017. Geisha considers this recent appointment as the pinnacle of her career, but fully understands that work still needs to get done. She has been entrusted to deliver electricity to 15 million Californians, and will focus on clean-energy initiatives and next-generation utility redevelopment.
Sources: San Francisco Business Times, SFGate and Hispanic Executive