ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND CORE COMPETENCIES

• Provides strategic leadership and direction for the Customer and Community Engagement division, including ensuring the division’s purpose, priorities, roadmap, and performance measures are in alignment with LES’ vision and enterprise priorities. 

• Provides skilled leadership at the executive level that delivers a safe, productive, collaborative, and heathy work environment, intended to achieve outstanding employee experience.  

• Champions the development, implementation, and measurement of best-in-class customer  experience principles and practices, providing strategic leadership for customer service, customer programs, service quality, accessibility, and other customer-focused functions. 

• Provides strategic oversight and occasional tactical guidance of public and governmental affairs and policy-related issues, ensuring the best interests of LES and the service area are represented and advocated for with civic leaders, public officials, community stakeholders, and industry partners. 

• Provides strategic oversight for mass and crisis communications, media and public relations, advertising, education, events, and marketing strategies to strengthen LES’ brand, foster public trust, and ensure clear and consistent community engagement. 

• Ensures the availability of customer data, voice-of-customer insights, satisfaction measures, complaint trends, and operational metrics, and uses those to guide decisions and lead digital transformation and continuous improvement efforts that improve the customer experience. 

• Provides effective executive leadership for complex customer and community escalations, outage and crisis communications, and other time-sensitive issues, demonstrating sound judgment and decisiveness when information may be incomplete. 

• Aligns divisional budgets, staffing, and resources with strategic and service priorities and develops and supports leaders and employees through coaching, feedback, accountability, and development opportunities. 

• Communicates customer service performance, risks, opportunities, priorities, and resource needs to executive leadership and supports the development and delivery of presentations and information for the LES Administrative Board and committees. 

• Builds and maintains productive relationships and strong partnerships across LES and with community organizations, technology partners, industry groups, civic leaders, public officials, and other stakeholders to advance enterprise priorities and strengthen LES’ ability to serve customers and the community. 

• Ensures customer service practices align with applicable utility regulations, statutory obligations, consumer protection expectations, internal guidelines, and balanced risk management practices while leading organizational change with clarity, consistency, and care. 

• Participates as a member of executive leadership, bringing the customer and community perspective to enterprise decisions and fostering a culture of trust, transparency, accountability, collaboration, and service while balancing customer and employee needs, organizational priorities, operational realities, and the long-term interests of LES

Communication - Expresses ideas and information in a clear and concise manner whether verbally, written, or other means; tailors message to fit the interests and needs of the audience; delivers information in a manner that is interesting and compelling.

Customer Focus - Putting customers, both internal and external, at the center of business decisions to identify and respond to current and future customer needs. Builds customer confidence, is committed to increasing customer satisfaction, sets achievable customer expectations, assumes responsibility for solving customer problems, ensures commitments to customers are met, solicits opinions and ideas from customers, responds to internal customers.

Teamwork - The ability to effectively interact, cooperate, collaborate, and manage conflicts with other people. Shows enthusiasm toward being a member of the group; actively participates in team meetings and activities; leverages the skills and interests of coworkers to achieve goals and solve problems; supports team decisions. 

OTHER SKILLS AND ABILITIES REQUIRED 

• Demonstrated strategic leadership with the ability to translate enterprise priorities into practical divisional strategies, lead organizational change and continuous improvement, and achieve measurable outcomes. 

• Exceptional communication, listening, and relationship-building skills with the ability to effectively engage employees, executive leadership, the LES Administrative Board, public officials, community stakeholders, customers, and industry partners. 

• Demonstrated emotional intelligence, empathy, sound judgment, and composure with the ability to navigate complex or sensitive situations, provide constructive feedback, develop leaders, build trust, and make effective decisions under pressure. 

• Strong ability to use customer and operational data, technology, and automation to identify opportunities and improve service while balancing customer and community needs with organizational priorities, regulatory requirements, risk considerations, and operational realities. 

REQUIRED EDUCATION and/or EXPERIENCE 

• Bachelor’s degree in business administration, public administration, communications, marketing, management, or a related field; and 

• Progressively responsible leadership experience in customer service, customer experience, community engagement, public or governmental affairs, communications, utility operations, or a related field, including significant experience leading teams, organizational strategy, and complex cross-functional initiatives; or 

• An equivalent combination of education and experience sufficient to successfully perform the essential duties of the job. 

REQUIRED CERTIFICATES, LICENSES, REGISTRATIONS 

• Valid driver’s license.