058: Breaking Barriers in the Energy Industry with Katherine Johnson

Hosts Tracy Swain and JaVonne Williams are joined by Katherine Johnson. Katherine is President of Johnson Consulting Group. For nearly 20 years, Katherine has worked closely with investor-owned, rural electric cooperatives, and municipal energy utilities. She has helped utilities design, implement, and evaluate successful programs that target all sectors of the energy efficiency market. She has also worked closely with program administrators in designing and evaluating innovative energy efficiency programs such as on-the-bill financing programs promoting whole-house energy efficiency improvements. In today's episode, Katherine shares her thoughts on working in a typically male-dominated industry like the energy industry and the importance of being a Woman-owned certified business.

Katherine has been active in program evaluation and market analysis. She has completed more than 200 process and impact evaluations throughout her career as well as developed business cases for geothermal heat pumps, commercial and residential lighting, and solar PV systems, among others. She has written the Home Performance with ENERGY STAR® compendium (www.johnsonconsults.com/HPWEScompendium2008.html) which profiles all current HPwES programs. Katherine published the "Geo Heat Pumps: Leading Energy Utility Marketing Programs, Fifth Edition" which was first released in 2007 and updated in 2009 and 2010. She also authored the Geothermal Heat Pump Chapter, Technical Handbook for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which was published in January 2008.

Katherine is also active within the energy services industry including Association of Energy Services Professionals (AESP) and is a well-regarded presenter on a variety of topics including effective program design, evaluation, and implementation for Demand Side Management (DSM) programs, identifying industry “best practices” in design and evaluation, and making the “business case” for energy efficiency programs. Katherine has received the much-deserved B. H. Prasad Award for Outstanding Contributor of the Year. Katherine is also a co-author in the book Women in Business: Breaking Through. She has authored a fiction book titled Grit & Granite.

Katherine received her Doctorate in Business Administration from the University of Southern Queensland, July 2010. Her dissertation is titled: "Changes in the strategic focus and internal operating culture of investor-owned US electric utilities due to deregulation." She earned a Masters in Business Administration from Rollins College with concentrations in Marketing and Finance, and an undergraduate degree in Business-Journalism from Indiana University.

To learn more about Katherine Johnson and her company's services, visit their website: https://www.johnsonconsults.com or Email: [email protected] or Phone: (301) 461-4865.