The Board of Trustees for the Northwest Public Power Association has selected Kurt Miller to be executive director, effective Dec. 1, 2023.
Miller will replace Scott Corwin, who left NWPPA in August 2023 to become chief executive officer of the American Public Power Association. Kieran Connolly has been serving as interim executive director in his absence.
Miller has been executive director of Northwest RiverPartners, a regional hydropower advocacy group, since 2019. He comes to NWPPA with over 30 years of experience in the public power industry. While at Northwest RiverPartners, Miller developed a five-year plan based on advocacy models, bringing together government affairs, public relations and grassroots/grass-tops infrastructure to improve public policy outcomes, according to a release. He increased the number of members by 25% and revenues by over 50% in four years. Miller also established himself as a national thought-leader and spokesperson for hydropower, speaking before the Western Congressional Caucus for both the House and the Senate and serving as a keynote speaker at HYDROVISION International.
Prior to Northwest RiverPartners, Miller worked for Portland General Electric for 20 years in multiple areas, including organizational change management, customer training and education, smart grid technologies and new customer programs, and power supply trading analytics. Before PGE, he founded the first successful wholesale electricity brokerage office in the U.S. Miller started his career working as an economist for the Bonneville Power Administration.
“What is so terrific about Kurt is that he brings both enthusiasm and talent to the association,” said NWPPA Board President Doug Schmier. “I am excited to start working with him on the issues that greatly affect our NWPPA membership and watch him guide us into the future. And I would like to thank Kieran for his tenure as interim and everyone on the search committee for their time and insight. Through the process, we found our next executive director and are confident in saying he is the absolute correct person for the position.”
Miller graduated magna cum laude from Willamette University with a bachelor of science in economics, receiving the Theodore Shay Prize in Economics. In addition, he has an Accelerated Leadership Development Program certificate from PGE and a Utility Executive Course certificate from the University of Idaho.
NWPPA, founded in 1940, is a regional association of over 150 public/people’s utility districts, electric cooperatives, municipalities and Crown corporations in Alaska, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming and British Columbia. NWPPA also serves the networking needs of over 350 associate members who are allied with the electric utility industry.
