When Jack Simmons announced his retirement from the Tennessee Valley Public Power Association this summer after 14 years as its president, the board of the Chattanooga-based association interviewed a variety of candidates from across the country.
Ultimately, the board decided to elevate one of TVPPA’s own staffers, Doug Peters, to head the TVA distributors group and its affiliated insurance, training and power generating businesses.
Greg Williams, general manager for Appalachian Electric Cooperative in New Market, Tennessee, and chairman of TVPPA, said the search committee “began its work with a very impressive roster of candidates from inside and outside the Valley. The quality of those applicants made it a robust competition, but Doug’s 16 years at TVPPA and 18 years prior at TVA set him apart,” Williams says.
Peters is a 57-year-old electrical engineer who worked at four nuclear plants at TVA and later helped train many of the linemen who keep the power flowing across TVA’s 7-state region. But Peters is not a typical engineer, focused only on solving individual problems.
In his role in nuclear licensing at TVA and technical training for local power companies across the Valley, Peters has had to negotiate and mediate between a variety of competing parties. While still working at TVA, he earned his MBA at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where many of his colleagues thought he was as much of a salesman or a preacher as he was an engineer.