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2020 UAI Excellence Award Winners

In collaboration with our founding award partner, Bidgely, UAI announces the winners of the first annual UAI Excellence Awards.

UAI honors the best of the best in the utility analytics profession, recognizing the individuals, teams, and organizations that have achieved and maintained excellence through innovation.

Founding Award Partner:

The 2020 UAI Excellence Award winners are…

WATCH AWARD CEREMONY

Best Innovative Utility Analytics Team

This award recognizes teams that have set and achieved the highest standards of excellence in utility analytics for problem solving in innovative ways and takes the time to instill that culture in their employees.

WINNER!  SoCalGas, Performance Mgmt & Org Strategy Team

Winner Acceptance Speech

Best Utility Analytics Leader

This award acknowledges and honors a utility analytics leader who has excelled at supporting any or all analytics work within their utility and who most clearly demonstrates the ability to serve and advance analytics within the utility industry.

WINNER!  Christine Wisniewski, Executive Director, Analytics & Systems – Consumers Energy

Winner Acceptance Speech

Best Utility Analytics Professional

This award recognizes the utility analytics industry’s top professional who possess the knowledge, skills, experience, passion, and business acumen required to provide consistent, quality, and innovative effort that is directly relevant to the utility analytics industry.

WINNER!  Ioannis Katsanos, Manager of Data Science – Exelon Utilities

Winner Acceptance Speech

Analytics Ambassador

This award recognizes the lasting contributions, leadership, enthusiasm, and tireless efforts of industry luminaries who’ve committed themselves to elevating the reputation of the utility analytics profession and improving the industry.

WINNER!  Amelia Badders, Director, Enterprise Advanced Analytics – CPS Energy

Winner Acceptance Speech

Community Engagement

Nominations are not required to qualify for the UAI Community Engagement Awards. UAI selects our winners for this category from a combination of engagement activities, including engagement scores on UAI Connect, UAI Community Conversation involvement, volunteerism with UAI, plus so much more. Two winners have been selected for this category: Most Engaged Individual and Most Engaged Utility.

WINNER!  Community Engagement Award – Most Engaged Individual: Travis Metcalfe, Strategy, Innovation, and Engagement Manager – Tacoma Public

Winner Acceptance Speech

WINNER!  Community Engagement Award – Most Engaged Utility: Evergy

Winner Acceptance Speech

Top 25 Thought Leaders in Utility Analytics

Utility analytics professionals are a community minded bunch. They are a conscientious group eager to learn and grow, and to share with one another to help promote excellence in the industry. And so, it is no surprise that this community is also eager to celebrate its champions, those who are the most active in the community and share their insights for the benefit of all. We are proud to celebrate all that these influencers do for our industry with UAI’s Top 25 Thought Leaders in Utility Analytics.

Ankush Agarwal
Director Grid T&D Analytics – Exelon Utilities

Patrick Dever
Chief Data Strategist – Avista Corporation

Abhay Gupta
CEO – Bidgely

Vitha Krishnamurthy 
Lead Business Intelligence – Enbridge Gas Inc.

Glen Sartain
Principle Director – Accenture

Amelia Badders
Director of Enterprise Advanced Analytics – CPS Energy

Mark Drewes
Manager, Analytics Center of Excellence – Salt River Project

Eddy Halter
Sr. Director of Enterprise Analytics – Evergy

Karen Lefkowitz 
CEO – Sunset Energy

Mike Smith
Industry Principle – SAS Institute

Carol Bogacz
Associate Data Scientist – Burns and McDonnell

Jill Feblowitz
President – Feblowitz Energy Consulting

Sandi Joralemon
Data Strategy Manager – New Braunfels Utilities

Vijoy Mathew
Executive Director, Analytics, Cloud, Dev Ops, & Enterprise Architecture – Consumers Energy

Raiford Smith
Director, Energy & Analytics – Google

Andrew Braeger
Data Engineering Manager – Tacoma Public Utilities

Eddie Fee
Director, Meter Services – Orlando Utilities Commission

Andy Kapp
Lead Enterprise Architect – Evergy

Neelanjan Patri
Strategic Operations Solutions – Tennessee Valley Authority

Steve Sundstrom
Group Vice President, Utility Segment – C3.ai

Norv Clontz
Director of Data Science Innovation – Duke Energy

Kim Gaddy
Consultant, Former VP and Managing Director of UAI

Tim Krall
Director, Customer Analytics – Exelon Utilities

David Pope
Sr. Manager, Pre Sales US Energy – SAS

Chris Wisniewski
Executive Director of Analytics & Systems – Consumers Energy