You started your career as a commercial real estate attorney in private practice – walk us through the journey that’s led you to becoming Chief Operating Officer at CleanArc.
Despite working toward a “dream job” as an NFL agent during law school at the University of Denver, I ended up taking a job with a small general practice firm in Denver for whom I’d been a law clerk during my final school year. I did a lot of interesting work at that firm, including some real estate transactions. Real estate become my focus in my next two private practice roles at progressively bigger firms, and I also picked up some exposure to M&A at my last private practice stop. From there, I went in-house at a renewable energy company – RES – and added construction and international experience in Canada and Chile. After several years there, family circumstances prompted me to look at opportunities in Texas and a role as real estate and construction counsel for CyrusOne entered the picture. Going from renewables to data centers was pretty fluid – I already “spoke MWs” – and the development processes are fairly similar. A couple of years into that role, I had the opportunity to move from the legal side of the table to the business side at CyrusOne, with a promotion to VP of Project Development. A few years later, I decided the time was right to explore options outside of CyrusOne. Through a series of conversations, I was connected to the 547 Energy team, and then to Jim and CleanArc.
How do all of your professional experiences to date (energy and power, legal, commercial real estate, project development) serve you in your current role at CleanArc?
As Chief Operating Officer, I’m responsible for ensuring the successful execution of all of our business activities, from strategic to administrative, and making sure all business activities work smoothly within each function and that each function works well with the others. My somewhat unique path has actually been really helpful in building the skills needed to manage these responsibilities. My most recent legal roles were both as in-house counsel, which gave me great insight into how businesses operate and how different business units interact. And at my last company, I reported directly to the head of almost every business unit – legal, technology, strategy, finance, and operations – during my tenure, which gave me really great exposure to the inner workings of those units.
What are you most proud of in your career so far?
Making it to the C-suite. The percentage of C-level executives that are women is somewhere around 28%, and female COOs are at around 23%. It’s not only a recognition of the work and development I’ve put into my career and leadership growth, but also an opportunity to show representation at this level – and as a woman with a daughter, it’s incredibly important to me to show her that there’s no limit to the kinds of jobs she can have.
What do you find most inspiring or motivating about working at CleanArc?
I really love our “let’s change the conversation, let’s change the game” approach. We’re not constrained by “legacy” – legacy design, legacy energy purchasing. We’re approaching everything from a very fresh perspective and it creates so many opportunities for innovation.
You often participate on panels at various industry conferences – which conversations do you find most interesting? What conversations should we be having more of?
Actually, the conversations that are usually the most interesting are the ones that happen off-stage! The conferences and panels I’ve participated in have all prompted some really great, thought-provoking discussions. A topic I often come back around to is that as our society and economy become increasingly digitized, data centers will become an even more integral part of our entire economic infrastructure – in the same vein as electric grids. And we as developers and operators (and our customers, when they play that role) are constantly evolving our designs to keep up with the power requirements of new technologies and the environmental considerations of operating larger and larger campuses and the associated cooling and backup power they require. There are a lot of things in there that would make for great thought-leader discussions. But what I’d really find interesting to do is an engagement that educates people outside the industry on what data centers are, what services they support, and how they can be positive impacts for the areas they’re developed in.
