Wisconsin awards honor co-op service
Shannon Clark, Richland Electric Cooperative’s CEO and general manager since 1999, received the Wisconsin Electric Cooperative Association’s highest honor at the organization’s 81st annual meeting here November 7.
Clark is the newest recipient of the ACE (Ally of Cooperative Electrification) Award, given for the past 50 years to a nominee judged to have advanced the electric co-op mission in a distinguished manner beyond routine performance of duty.
He credited an earlier ACE Award winner, the late Richland Electric Board President Gilman Moe, for creating “a culture of people putting service above self,” adding that for Wisconsin’s electric co-op community, the commitment to service “makes us what we are.”
Clark has been a long-time leader of efforts to expand telecommunications and data services to rural Wisconsin and has served on numerous local, state and national co-op boards. This summer, he received a regional service award from the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, recognizing his successes promoting rural economic development.
Also at the November 7 event Mary Kay Brevig, communications and public relations manager at Eau Claire Energy Cooperative, was presented with the N.F. Leifer Memorial Journalism Award.
Its namesake was a Vernon Electric Cooperative manager who co-founded what became the Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News. Originally a tabloid newspaper, the Wisconsin R.E.C. News was launched in 1940 as the nation’s first statewide periodical produced for the general membership of rural electric cooperatives.
The Leifer award is given annually to the cooperative selected by an independent judge as having created the magazine’s best local co-op pages during the prior year. Brevig has won the award on three past occasions.
Commitment to utility worker job training and safety was honored at the Wisconsin event as Nathan Steines, director of operations at Barron Electric Cooperative, received the Herman C. Potthast Award for 2017.
In actions a Washburn County (Wisconsin) sheriff’s investigator called “heroic,” Steines came upon a highway accident, contacted emergency personnel, assisted two victims in escaping their overturned vehicle which was leaking fuel, and attended to them until an ambulance arrived.
The Potthast Award is named for the Wisconsin co-ops’ job training and safety coordinator who, for more than two decades beginning in the early 1940s, spearheaded development of safety standards and practices for electric utility workers nationwide.
Clark is the newest recipient of the ACE (Ally of Cooperative Electrification) Award, given for the past 50 years to a nominee judged to have advanced the electric co-op mission in a distinguished manner beyond routine performance of duty.
He credited an earlier ACE Award winner, the late Richland Electric Board President Gilman Moe, for creating “a culture of people putting service above self,” adding that for Wisconsin’s electric co-op community, the commitment to service “makes us what we are.”
Clark has been a long-time leader of efforts to expand telecommunications and data services to rural Wisconsin and has served on numerous local, state and national co-op boards. This summer, he received a regional service award from the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, recognizing his successes promoting rural economic development.
Also at the November 7 event Mary Kay Brevig, communications and public relations manager at Eau Claire Energy Cooperative, was presented with the N.F. Leifer Memorial Journalism Award.
Its namesake was a Vernon Electric Cooperative manager who co-founded what became the Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News. Originally a tabloid newspaper, the Wisconsin R.E.C. News was launched in 1940 as the nation’s first statewide periodical produced for the general membership of rural electric cooperatives.
The Leifer award is given annually to the cooperative selected by an independent judge as having created the magazine’s best local co-op pages during the prior year. Brevig has won the award on three past occasions.
Commitment to utility worker job training and safety was honored at the Wisconsin event as Nathan Steines, director of operations at Barron Electric Cooperative, received the Herman C. Potthast Award for 2017.
In actions a Washburn County (Wisconsin) sheriff’s investigator called “heroic,” Steines came upon a highway accident, contacted emergency personnel, assisted two victims in escaping their overturned vehicle which was leaking fuel, and attended to them until an ambulance arrived.
The Potthast Award is named for the Wisconsin co-ops’ job training and safety coordinator who, for more than two decades beginning in the early 1940s, spearheaded development of safety standards and practices for electric utility workers nationwide.