2019 Glass Ceiling Award Catherine Stempien

Catherine Stempien is Duke Energy’s state president in Florida, serving approximately 1.8 million electric retail customers in central Florida, including metropolitan St. Petersburg, Clearwater and the Greater Orlando area. She is the first woman to serve in this position. Catherine is responsible for the financial performance of Duke Energy’s regulated utility in Florida and for managing state and local regulatory and government relations and community affairs. She also has responsibility for advancing the company’s rate and regulatory initiatives.

Prior to assuming her current role in June 2018, Stempien was senior vice president of corporate development, where she had responsibility for Duke Energy’s corporate development activities, including external growth strategy and mergers and acquisitions.

Stempien has more than 25 years of legal and financial experience, predominantly in the energy and telecommunications fields. Before leading the corporate development function, from 2014 until June of 2018, she held numerous positions in the legal department covering virtually all areas of legal services to the company. She has served as vice president, legal, for Duke Energy’s Commercial Businesses organization. In this role, she led the groups responsible for providing legal services to the company’s commercial businesses, including Duke Energy International, Duke Energy Renewables, Midwest Commercial Generation and Commercial Transmission. Before the Duke Energy/Progress Energy merger in 2012, Stempien led the team providing state and federal regulatory, litigation and environmental legal services for Duke Energy.

Stempien joined the company in 2003 as an associate general counsel for Cinergy Corp. in Cincinnati. From 1996 to 2002, she was a senior attorney for AT&T Corp. in Basking Ridge, N.J., and AT&T Broadband in Englewood, Colo. She represented AT&T before federal and state trial and appellate courts and in mediations and arbitrations. Prior to her employment with AT&T, Stempien was an associate with Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., from 1993 to 1996, practicing litigation and environmental law.

Stempien earned a Juris Doctor degree, magna cum laude, from Boston University School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts degree in government from Dartmouth College. She also completed a joint Dartmouth/London School of Economics program in comparative political studies and participated in the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. She is a member of the District of Columbia, Colorado, U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit bars.

Stempien is currently a member of the executive board for Wake Forest University Charlotte Center. She also serves on the board of trustees for Charlotte Country Day School and is chair of the school’s advancement committee. Stempien and her husband, Jim Bolin, have two children.