FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 
Date: Jan. 22, 2025
Contact: Lisa R. Hooker at communications@novec.com
               
 
Kristen Senechal Selected as the Next President and CEO of NOVEC
 
MANASSAS, Va. -- The Board of Directors of Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative (NOVEC) announced that Kristen Senechal was unanimously selected to be the organization’s next President and CEO effective April 2, 2025. She will succeed David E. Schleicher, who is retiring April 1, 2025.
 
Senechal comes to NOVEC from Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) in Austin, Texas. She joined the public utility in 2017, and most recently served as Executive Vice President of Transmission, as well as Chief Operating Officer for LCRA’s Transmission Services Corporation. She was responsible for more than 850 employees across multiple disciplines including transmission design and protection, system operations, project management, and business performance. Prior to LCRA, she was employed by CenterPoint Energy in Houston, Texas.
 
NOVEC Board of Directors Chairman Wade C. House says, “After an eight-month national search, the Board selected Kristen because of her extensive knowledge and more than 15 years of experience in the electric utility industry. The Board also is impressed with her leadership style of prioritizing people first.” 
 
Senechal will join the cooperative on March 17, 2025. She commented, “Like Texas, NOVEC’s service territory is experiencing a number of trends that impact both service and cost of electricity, including increased demand of electric vehicles, base load generation retirements, increasingly complex customer or member demands, and an influx of large loads that impact both cost and need for new infrastructure.”
 
Senechal has a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Houston’s Bauer College of Business. She also holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree in molecular biology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Bachelor of Science degree in molecular biology from the University of Texas, Austin. 
 
She is relocating to northern Virgina with her fiancé and two dogs.
 

About NOVEC
NOVEC is a not-for-profit electric utility corporation headquartered in Manassas, Virginia that supplies and distributes electricity and energy-related services to more than 180,000 metered customers in Fairfax, Fauquier, Loudoun, Prince William, Stafford, and Clarke counties, the Town of Clifton, and the City of Manassas Park. It is Virginia’s largest electric cooperative and the largest distribution electric cooperative in the U.S. when measured by 2023 megawatt hour sales. Learn more at novec.com, or call 703-335-0500. NOVEC is an equal opportunity provider and employer.