Steven G. (Steve) Hickok
Deputy Administrator
Bonneville Power Administration
905 N.E. 11th Avenue
Portland, OR 97232
Steven G. Hickok is the Deputy Administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration, a Federal electric utility marketing about half the power generated in the Pacific Northwest and operating nearly 80 percent of the region’s high voltage transmission. It is headquartered in Portland, Oregon.
Mr. Hickok was born in 1948 in Seattle, Washington, where he attended Nathan Hale High School and graduated first in his class in 1966. He attended Pomona College in Claremont, California, and graduated with honors and a joint degree in chemistry and zoology in 1970. He completed the Stanford Executive Program at the Graduate School of Business in 1988.
From 1971 to 1978 he held successive positions as Legislative Assistant, Legislative Director, and Field Director for US Senator Mark O. Hatfield. He served as Staff Director for the Republican side of the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in the 96th Congress (1979 and 1980). In 1981 he served as Assistant to the Chairman, US Senate Committee on Appropriations.
Mr. Hickok began work at the Bonneville Power Administration in September 1981, and was appointed BPA’s first Assistant Administrator for conservation and renewable resources development in January 1982. In 1984 he was awarded the Secretary of Energy’s Meritorious Service Award which cited the agency’s national leadership in exploiting conservation as a utility power resource.
Mr. Hickok served as Executive Assistant Administrator (chief operating officer) of BPA from 1986 to 1994, managing day-to-day operations of the utility and leading strategic planning that culminated in the restructuring of its fundamental approach to the business. This change in approach -- a response to the emerging competitive market environment of electric utilities -- caused BPA to develop and market a wider range of power, transmission, and demand management offerings. It also spawned the organization of a new sales and customer service function, which he was appointed to head in 1994.
Mr. Hickok served as Group Vice President for sales and customer service from 1994 to 1996, establishing BPA’s current system of sales management through account managers responsible for all aspects of the agency’s commercial relationship with its customers.
In response to orders of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) compelling utilities to separate their transmission functions from their power merchant functions, BPA reorganized in 1996 to split the agency into a Power Business Line, a Transmission Business Line, and a group of centralized services supporting both. Mr. Hickok was appointed to head the new Power Business Line, where he was responsible for the marketing and sale of BPA power, and for the planning and operational coordination of the power plants of the Federal Columbia River Power System -- 23,000 megawatts of installed generating capacity at 29 federal dams and 7 nonfederal power plants, including a major nuclear project.
In 1998, Judith A. Johansen, upon her appointment as BPA’s twelfth Administrator, asked Mr. Hickok to return to the position of Chief Operating Officer to prepare the agency for the next stage of the electric power industry’s regulatory restructuring. In 2001, Stephen J. Wright, upon his appointment as BPA’s thirteenth Administrator, appointed Mr. Hickok Deputy Administrator, the number two position in the agency.
Mr. Hickok has twice received the highest recognition for managerial accomplishment in the Federal service, the Presidential Executive Rank Award -- in 1992 for innovations in the management of electric power planning and operations which had been recognized at the national and international level, and in 2000 for his leadership of the competitive transformation of BPA’s utility business.
He lives in Lake Oswego, Oregon, with his wife, Linda, and two daughters, Kathryn and Lauren. He is active in his Catholic parish, having served as director of the lector ministry and president of the parish chapter of the Holy Name Society. He has served as a member of the boards of directors of the Electric Power Research Institute, the Western Energy Institute, the American Leadership Forum of Oregon, the Portland Business Alliance, and the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. He has also served as a member of the Advisory Committee of the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center, and as a representative of the members of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC). He co-chaired one of four task groups that devised major elements of NERC's application for government certification in the US and Canada as the single Electric Reliability Organization for development and enforcement of mandatory reliability standards to govern the operation of all users, owners and operators of the North American bulk power system. He is currently chairman of the member representatives of NERC.
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