Former PSC Chair Colette Honorable named to Southern Company board

Former Arkansas Public Service Commission Chair Colette Honorable, who has also served as a Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner, was named to the board of directors for energy firm Southern Company effective Oct. 1, 2020.

Honorable will serve as an independent director and will join the Business Security and Resiliency Committee and the Finance Committee for Southern.

“Colette has extensive energy policy and regulation experience at the local, state and national level. Her knowledge will fortify Southern Company’s position as a leader in the advancement of ideas and positions in the private and public arenas that are beneficial to customers, communities, employees and stockholders,” said Southern Company chairman, president and CEO Thomas A. Fanning. “The addition to our board of someone of Colette’s caliber is further evidence of the importance we place upon corporate governance, risk oversight, board refreshment, transparency and diversity.”

Honorable currently is a partner at Reed Smith LLP where she is a member of the firm’s Energy and Natural Resources Group and leads the energy regulatory practice. Based in Washington, D.C., Honorable serves as chair of the office’s Women’s Initiative Network and is a member of the firm’s Sustaining and Training African Americans business inclusion group.

Honorable served as a FERC commissioner from January 2015 to June 2017. Prior to joining FERC, Honorable joined the Arkansas Public Service Commission (PSC) as a commissioner in Oct. 2007, served as interim chair in 2008, and led the PSC as chair from Jan. 2011 to Jan. 2015.

She also served as president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners from 2013 to 2014, becoming that organization’s first African-American president.

Honorable currently is a nonresident senior fellow with The Brookings Institution, a senior fellow with the Bipartisan Policy Center, an ambassador for DOE Clean Energy Education & Empowerment Initiative and serves on the global advisory board of Energy Futures Initiative.

A native of Arkansas, she is a graduate of the University of Memphis and received a Juris Doctor from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Law, where she later served as an adjunct professor.

Atlanta-based Southern Company, a publicly traded firm, is a leading energy company serving 9 million customers through its subsidiaries. The company provides energy through electric operating companies in three states and natural gas distribution companies in four states.