George Hawkins, former CEO of the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority, will give a virtual presentation on the future of water at 7 pm, Thursday, October 29.
This event is free and open to the public. Donations to support CCC’s work are gratefully accepted.
Registration is required to receive Zoom Meeting link.
Communities and their water utilities are facing a fistful of challenges, including aging infrastructure, lack of awareness and trust, inadequate funding, resistance to change — and extreme weather driving both more frequent droughts and floods. Yet a counterbalancing handful of opportunities founded on customer engagement, energy conservation, financial innovation and new techniques both to preserve water and manage storms makes the future of water bright.
George Hawkins faced an extreme version of this fistful of challenges when he joined DC Water in 2009, but in partnership with his board and a talented team he was able to drive a fundamental turnaround at the agency, including the largest green energy program in the mid-Atlantic and broad efforts to green the city. Hawkins will offer lessons learned from this turnaround, interspersed with fascinating stories about delivering water services to an exacting customer base in Washington, DC, and its suburbs in Maryland and Virginia.
After 11 years at DC Water Hawkins launched his innovation-focused enterprises Moonshot LLC and Moonshot Missions, where he helps communities and utilities identify and adopt strategies to deliver better service at lower cost.
Hawkins serves on the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, which advises the White House, and on the board of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. He has been a senior lecturer at Princeton University and an executive in residence at American University. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, and is a member of the Bar in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.