The Power to be Resilient

It seems that we have veered from one calamity to the next this year; tornadoes to a derecho, topped off with a pandemic. Still to come: murder hornets and a potentially active hurricane season.

Throughout this new pandemic reality, you’ve taken extreme measures to protect your employees so they could do what they do best – keep the lights on. The service that we provide is critically important for Tennessee homes, businesses, and hospitals – even more so during this period. The damage from multiple storms and the ongoing impact of the pandemic has made this a challenging year, but our co-ops have risen to the challenge and served their communities with compassion and pride.

Backing up the co-ops in accomplishing those goals is the staff here at The Tennessee Magazine and TECA. Our team is dedicated to supporting Tennessee’s electric cooperatives in a variety of ways: youth programs, safety training, employee education, communications, community outreach, government relations, and economic development – anything that helps your cooperative better serve your consumers and communities.

Our staff, based primarily in Nashville, last met as a group on March 16th for lunch – properly separated from each other in the early days of the pandemic. Since then, we have worked mostly from home over the next two months, keeping in touch remotely with our co-ops, elected officials, the media and each other. We’ve adjusted to balancing our work responsibilities with our family responsibilities.

I appreciate the work they do and their ability to adjust to this new reality. Mostly, I admire their dedication to the job they do every day – assisting Tennessee’s co-ops and advocating for Tennessee’s rural and suburban communities.

It is unclear what the coming weeks, months or years will hold, but I am absolutely confident that co-ops will be there – serving their communities, leading with compassion and trying each day to do the right thing.