AEIC is governed by the senior operators of its member utilities and run by a small, dedicated staff. The Executive Committee and Board set direction; the Center for Operational Excellence carries it out.
Senior operations executives from member utilities across North America, setting the Association's direction.
David Bonenberger is Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Utilities at PPL Corporation, where he oversees utility operations, customer service, and safety and technical training across PPL's regulated utilities in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
He has spent his entire career at PPL, joining in 1984 at the Susquehanna nuclear plant and advancing through roles in corporate audit, finance, and customer service before moving into operating leadership. He served as Vice President of Transmission and Substations and Vice President of Distribution Operations at PPL Electric Utilities, and then as President of Rhode Island Energy following PPL's acquisition of the Rhode Island utility, before taking on his current enterprise-wide operating role.
Bonenberger holds a bachelor's degree in accounting from Bloomsburg University and an MBA from Wilkes University. He serves on the board of directors of the American Gas Association, is Chair Emeritus of the Edison Electric Institute's National Response Executive Committee, and sits on EEI's Preparedness and Recovery Executive Advisory Committee and the board of WIRES.
Michael Jarro is Vice President of Power Delivery at Florida Power & Light, where he leads the company's electric distribution organization, overseeing the infrastructure that serves more than five million customer accounts across FPL's Florida service territory and directing a workforce of more than 1,650 engineers, technicians, and field employees along with the company's control center operations.
He previously served as Vice President of Transmission and Substation, responsible for transmission and substation operations, technology, compliance, reliability, construction, maintenance, and service restoration across FPL as well as NextEra Energy Resources, NextEra Energy Transmission, and Lone Star Transmission in Texas. Since joining FPL in 1997, he has held a range of operating leadership roles, including Distribution Reliability Manager, Control Center General Manager, Director of Network Operations, and senior director positions in customer strategy and analytics and in central maintenance and construction.
Jarro holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Miami and an MBA from Florida International University, and is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt. He serves on the Southeastern Electric Exchange Executive Committee, FIU's College of Engineering and Computing Executive Advisory Council, and the board of the YMCA of South Florida.
Brian Calka is Senior Vice President of Distribution Operations for DTE Electric, where he oversees all aspects of the company's electrical system, including engineering, field operations, vegetation management, emergency response, operational technology, asset management, and regulatory functions.
He previously served as Vice President of Distribution Operations at DTE Electric and has held a range of roles across his DTE career, including in Corporate Finance, Electric Strategy, and Renewable Energy. Before DTE, he worked at Ford Motor Company in positions ranging from project management to plant-floor supervision.
Calka holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan-Dearborn and an MBA from the University of Michigan. He is a trustee of the Detroit-based Children's Foundation and serves on the boards of several Northville youth sports organizations.
Orville O. Cocking serves as Senior Vice President of Transmission & Distribution at Southern California Edison, where he leads the operation, maintenance, and modernization of the company's electrical grid across a 50,000-square-mile service area, ensuring safe, reliable delivery to roughly 15 million people across Central, Coastal, and Southern California, with a focus on grid resiliency and operational performance for California's clean energy future.
Before SCE, he was Senior Vice President of Electric Operations at NIPSCO, overseeing generation, transmission, distribution, asset risk management, and engineering for about 500,000 electric customers, and Senior Vice President of Gas Operations supporting 900,000 natural gas customers. He held progressively senior leadership roles at Consolidated Edison of New York and Orange & Rockland Utilities.
Across his career he has worked to strengthen safety, reliability, and contract planning in complex utility operations, leading high-risk work, partnering with labor organizations, navigating regulatory environments, and driving large-scale organizational change.
Rick Erixton is Chief Electric Systems Officer at JEA, the community-owned utility serving Jacksonville, Florida, where he oversees the operation and maintenance of the utility's electric system from generation resources through transmission and distribution to customer delivery.
He began at JEA as a co-op student in 1989 and joined full time as an engineer in the System Operations department in 1991, where he spent roughly two decades before moving into transmission and distribution leadership. He went on to serve as Director of Transmission and Distribution Maintenance, Senior Director of Transmission and Distribution, Vice President of Electric Systems, and Deputy Chief Operating Officer, building more than three decades of operating experience across the JEA system.
Erixton holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Florida and is a NERC-certified system operator. He serves on the board of directors of SERC Reliability Corporation, representing the municipal utility sector, and on the board of the Florida Municipal Electric Association, where he was elected Secretary-Treasurer in 2025.
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