Recently, Prairie State completed its second Leadership Summit to gather our organization’s leaders to discuss how to help Prairie State continue to grow and work towards its goal of being the best coal-fired power plant in the country.
PSEC’s leaders from the power plant, mine and corporate offices gathered at the World Shooting Recreational Complex to discuss and share ideas about how to motivate and inspire our employees in all facets of our campus. The majority of the Summit was spent talking about the best ways to harness and channel the vast amounts of talent that Prairie State’s employees possess.
Activities at both summits included speeches and presentations from members of the board of directors and Jay Bartlett, a member of the ownership group, breakout sessions allowing our leaders to brainstorm and share ideas that will help our employee culture grow and improve. After the brainstorming sessions, the groups came back together to share the findings that their groups came up with. Our leaders will be able to take their ideas back to our campus to share with their employees to make us better as a whole.
Both Summits had two different keynote speakers that shared their expertise in the energy sector.
The first was Mark Pruitt, the first director of the Illinois Power Agency, who spoke about how Prairie State is primed to lead the energy sector for decades because of its forward-thinking qualities that make it an affordable, sustainable and environmentally-friendly energy provider. He also touched on challenges that the sector may face in years to come.
The second Leadership Summit was keynoted by Dick Gephardt, who was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Missouri. Gephardt was the House Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995 and the House Minority Leader from 1995 to 2003. He spent 27 years as a member of the House of Representatives before retiring in 2007. Gephardt spoke about coal’s role in the future of energy in the United States saying that it will be crucial that we have a mixture of energy sources, including coal, for the future of our infrastructure.
Gephardt also said that Prairie State is primed to be a leader in the coal energy sector because of its most important resource; our people.
The lessons learned from Prairie State’s leaders at the 2018 Leadership Summit will help catapult PSEC into the next decade as we continue to grow into a leader of the American energy sector.