Biography
Message
Utilities provide a critical service to their communities, and their tenets have been safety, reliability, and reasonable cost. As an industry that developed over 100 years ago, utilities are sometimes considered ‘old economy’, stodgy entities. But, this is far from the truth. Utilities can be environmental stewards, promoters of efficiency and innovative technology, and customer service organizations. My career objective is to help utility managers achieve these goals in order to deliver compelling value to their customers and owners.
Biography
Julie Ryan, Program Director for Willamette University's Utility Management Certificate program, is also the Managing Partner of Aether Advisors LLC. She is an experienced energy industry executive, providing advisory services in the areas of risk management, strategic planning, energy supply, trading and marketing, M&A due diligence, and business integration planning. Ms. Ryan has been consulting since 2006, and prior to that, she had over 20 years of direct work experience in utility, merchant power and trading & marketing firms. She held two officer positions at Puget Sound Energy as Vice-President, Risk Management and Strategic Planning, and prior to that, Vice President Energy Portfolio Management. Prior to that, Ms. Ryan also held officer positions at Merchant Energy Group and Louis Dreyfus Energy Corp and Duke/Louis Dreyfus.
Ms. Ryan was an appointed member of the Seattle City Light Review Panel from 2010-2017, and served as the chair from 2016-217, that overseas its strategic planning process and rate design. She is an associate member of the Northwest Public Power Association and the American Public Power Association. Ms. Ryan has spoken at numerous industry conferences on the topics of hedging and risk assessment, published articles on utility hedging and risk reporting, and has been a guest instructor, teaching risk management and strategic planning at Willamette University's Atkinson School of Management, since 2006. She became the program director in 2013. She graduated Cum Laude, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, from Smith College in Massachusetts.