As the world continue to shift and improve, the spaces for women in leadership positions have greatly opened up. Cheryl Campbell, former Senior Vice President of Xcel Energy and the Independent Director of Hoffman Southwest, takes us to the boardroom as she engages her experiences as a woman functioning in board roles. Together with Jo Lynne Whiting of Board Bound, we follow Cheryl as she describes her responsibilities from working with Xcel Energy to Hoffman Southwest. She provides great insights and advices to those young men and women who would love a career path that would soon serve on boards, laying down some pointers on how you can make key decisions and add value – from compliance and progress to employee safety and acquisition. Cheryl then sheds a light for women who want to participate in nontraditional areas, encouraging them to have the confidence to pursue what they love to do.

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Entering The Boardroom with Cheryl Campbell and Jo Lynne Whiting

We’re doing a cohosted version of the show. My cohost is http://businessleaderspodcast.com/women-on-board-with-jo-lynne-whiting/ (Jo Lynne Whiting). She is a previous guest on the podcast. She is with https://womensleadershipfoundation.org/board-bound-program/ (Boardbound) by the Women’s Leadership Foundation. Our guest is Cheryl Campbell. She is the former Senior Vice President of https://www.xcelenergy.com/ (Xcel Energy), retired and she’s also the Independent Director of http://hswcorp.com/ (Hoffman Southwest). For the folks that don’t know what Hoffman Southwest is, they are the parent company of Roto-Rooter.

They do https://www.rotorooter.com/ (Roto-Rooter) and https://pro-pipe.com/ (Pro-Pipe). They do a lot of pipeline work for the utility industry.

Tell us a little bit about what you do, what you’ve done in the past. We’ll bring it forward to your service on boards and the relationship that you have with Boardbound.

I spent about 35 years in the energy industry, about twenty years with the old Coastal Corporation, Colorado Interstate Gas and the last several years was with Xcel Energy. I retired from there. I spent a lot of time doing engineering, strategic planning, operations, regulatory work and a wide variety of things. I was very fortunate to have many opportunities and do a lot of interesting work over the course of my career. I got interested in boards relatively early on. I sat on a number of nonprofit boards. I decided I wanted to serve on company boards. It’s been a great career. I’m really happy to be here and talk to you about what I’ve been up to in the Boardbound Program.

Cheryl, you were an executive in the energy business. We have a lot of energy businesses here in Colorado. For those people that may not be familiar with Xcel, could you describe the scope of your responsibility?

Xcel Energy is a combination gas and electric utility provider and they serve eight states. We had two million gas customers and about 3.4 million electric customers. It’s a good-sized company. Overall, I ran the gas business for Xcel. I was responsible for those two million gas customers, our employees and our asset base. I have spent the last several years or so building their asset management programs and their risk management programs. Working with our board to improve our risk management and our safety both for employees and the public around our system. It was a great opportunity. We made a lot of good progress while I was there and they continue to make a lot of good progress now.

For the young men and women that are out there and they’re going to go, “I’d love to have a career path where I progress and succeed and en...