People Make blackEnergy Go Round

Posted by Sonja Ebron

I like to take all the credit for blackEnergy’s success, but the truth is there is a fantastic staff doing the company’s work. Dave Benfield, our VP for sales and marketing, is retired from the same position at one of Georgia’s natural gas suppliers. Besides mentoring me (read: keeping my head on straight most days), he uses a thick Rolodex to introduce me to lots of helpful contacts. He’s also made it much easier than we thought to transition from exclusive relationships with utility suppliers to a tenable independent status. Gwen Sheppard, an old and dear college friend, is a retired military officer and software genius. As director of operations, she keeps the trains running on time and just gets the job done right every day. Crystal Grant (pictured below discussing energy conservation with an Atlanta resident) is a recent graduate of Spelman’s innovative environmental science program. As our special projects coordinator, she has a hand in everything from government contracting to consumer education initiatives.

Crystal and Atlanta resident discussion energy efficient lighting

Crystal also supervises our summer intern, Sarah Jones, a political science and environmental science major at Spelman. Perhaps because they’re young and inexperienced, Crystal and Sarah add the energy and out-of-the-box thinking the rest of us old-timers sometimes lack. Along with our vendors and suppliers, I think we make a great team. So while I can’t take credit for their work, at least I can take credit for hiring them.