San Diego’s Sempra Energy has named Debra Reed as CEO of the global energy conglomerate, which operates two Southern California utilities and a separate holding company of diversified energy businesses focused on natural gas and power generation.
Reed, who also joined Sempra’s board, is the first woman appointed to head Sempra, which posted an annual profit of $739 million on revenue of $9 billion in 2010 and is listed at No. 274 on the 2011 Fortune 500 ranking of America’s biggest companies. Reed was graduated summa cum laude from the University of Southern California with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and has spent 33 years in the utility business. After joining Southern California Gas in 1978 as an energy systems engineer, she rose through the ranks to become the company’s first female executive officer in 1988.
The 55-year-old engineer was responsible for the operations of Sempra’s two regulated utilities, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) and Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas), as president and CEO from 2006 through April 2010, when she was named as Sempra’s executive vice president.
She succeeds Don Felsinger, who will continue as Sempra Energy’s executive chairman until his planned retirement at age 65 in late 2012. Neal Schmale, Sempra’s president and COO, plans to retire later this year.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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The 55-year-old engineer was responsible for the operations of Sempra’s two regulated utilities, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) and Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas), as president and CEO from 2006 through April 2010, when she was named as Sempra’s executive vice president.