Meet the Speaker: Stacy Lucchesi, Director, Enterprise Transformation, Planning & Sustainment, Southern Company

Meet Stacy Lucchesi, Director of Enterprise Transformation, Planning & Sustainment at Southern Company. Learn how this Atlanta native, avid traveler, and self-proclaimed future “world conqueror,” has been a champion of change management since her college days.

Meet Stacy in person at the 10th Change Management for Utilities Conference, March 2nd and 3rd, 2020, in St. Pete Beach, FL. Stacy and co-presenter Karen Brennan-Holton, US Power & Utilities HR and Change Management Leader at PwC, will share how Southern Company has developed a robust Change Management Office to successfully prepare stakeholders for large-scale programs, from awareness to adoption.

Q: Name, title, Company

A: Stacy Lucchesi; Director, Enterprise Transformation, Planning & Sustainment, Southern Company.

Q: Family, hometown, where you live

A: Born in Atlanta! Grew up on Southside of Atlanta and eventually came back to the Southside. A little town called Newnan, Georgia. I live here with my husband (who is from Long Island, New York) and my two girls, Avery and Emma.

Q: Utility/Change Management experience

A: Worked in the utility industry for 20 years. I have been doing change management before it was called change management. My final presentation in undergrad was about internal marketing to move employees. This was really change management and most of my roles in the company have anchored in this same set of capabilities. I now have my CCMP and my Masters in Org Learning, Performance and Change.

Q: What do you like to do when you’re not working? Hobbies?

Hands down: Travel! We travel with our kids, without our kids, and I travel once a year with just my core group of girlfriends.

Q: Notable achievements

A: Managing my family, and work – life balance is an achievement. Professionally, my most notable achievement in utilities and change management is that I have been selected or asked to speak in nearly a dozen conferences specifically related to technology and utility change.

Q: Where do you see Change Management in utilities in two years?

A: Mandatory capability living outside of HR tied to strategy, risk or technology.

Q: What is your biggest challenge?

A: Enough hours in the day.

Q: What did you do prior to working in your current role?

A: I have had a variety of roles, but most notable is that I left Southern Company to work for the hotel corporate IHG for 9 months as the Director of Readiness & Enablement, and then returned to Southern Company.

Q: Who are a couple of your role models, and why?

A: My Dad who was “street” smart. He taught me how to read tone and intent. This is a life skill! My Mom who was a farm girl in Ohio with an outhouse as a bathroom until she went to college. She is an angel on earth and is still teaching me grace and kindness. I have often said my role models are those that I truly know, as celebrities and notable folks in history are just words on a page.

Q: What is one of your biggest goals?

A: Conquer the world!!! At work: Continue to align strategic planning, knowledge management, learning, change and sustainment into a portfolio. At home: Get my kids through childhood happy, and ready for the world.

Q: What’s the biggest misconception you run into in your role, or what people seem to think about Change Management?

A: This is where I could write an essay! The biggest misconception that I have been working years to help correct is that change management is an noun, not a verb; it is a side-by-side strategic component of any initiative from planning through sustaining and requires focus and dollars. It is not magic, and it is not an afterthought. It is a series of capabilities resulting in enabling business objectives.