Communications Initiative Consultant - Reliability Initiatives

Job Description

PSE's Product Delivery group is looking for a self-starter who’ll be responsible for the development, implementation, and management of strategic communications supporting PSE’s electric and natural gas reliability initiatives. This role serves as a key connector between Operations, customer-facing teams, and cross-functional communications groups to proactively inform customers, highlight PSE’s reliability investments, and strengthen trust through clear, data-driven storytelling. This position serves as a key member of initiative teams, proactively clarifying and constructively challenging expectations and assumptions while representing the customer perspective.

This consultant role leads the development and implementation of strategic  communication plans, tactics and creative deliverables for PSE’s reliability programs, providing support to other initiative teams as needed. This includes the development and implementation of the communications/engagement strategy and work plan, materials development and team coordination, process development and improvement, as well as project management activities. This role also includes engaging directly with customers, answering questions, and acting as a liaison between the customer and project teams as necessary.

All PSE employees demonstrate commitment to conduct business honestly, ethically and consistent with our core values and Code of Conduct and ensure duties are performed in accordance with all regulatory compliance obligations.
 

Job Responsibilities

• Create regional or county-level communication plans, messaging, and materials as needed.
• Partner with Operations and customer-facing teams to communicate initiatives that demonstrate how we maintain and improve system reliability for customers.
• Develop and lead a process connecting Operations and Communications to enable information sharing, identify storytelling opportunities, and capture field visuals, while maintaining a centralized story library.
• Support companywide corporate Communications.
• Build and maintain reliability-focused, website content.
• Partner with Project Communications team members to align messaging in areas with overlapping distribution and large-scale projects.
• Coordinate with the Wildfire Communications team to align storytelling for wildfire-related reliability efforts.
• Partner with Operations to communicate measurable reliability improvements from completed projects (e.g., reduced outage frequency or duration, impact of distribution automation) and define, track and report success metrics for reliability communications in collaboration with external-facing teams.
• Lead proactive or reactive communications or community engagement efforts around outage history and planned projects, in coordination with Ops, Community
• Engagement and other customer-facing teams as needed.
• Respond to customer inquiries, UTC complaints, or community requests related to outage/reliability-related questions/comments post-storm, in coordination with System Planning, Operations, Community Engagement teams, etc. 
• Acts as a customer advocate.
• Raise issues on the customers’ behalf and work with the Program Managers to address customer concerns.
• Identify and prioritize communications, outreach, and reputation risks and develop the risk management and mitigation plan that addresses each risk in a timely and efficient manner. This requires close coordination, partnership, and communication with multiple departments.
• Performs emergency and storm duties.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in communications, media, business innovation, marketing, strategic leadership/management or related field, and 7 years relevant work experience; or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Proven experience in managing increasingly complex projects with cross-functional teams and in an ever-changing and fast-paced environment.
• Professional level competencies necessary to comprehend, analyze, and influence a wide range of complex business units, initiatives and issues.
• Ability to contribute effectively in peer management teams.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Skills and experience in collaboration and team building.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and manage multiple priorities and irregular schedule commitments.
• Proficiency in MS Office tools.

Desired Qualifications

• Previous experience working in infrastructure project communications or community engagement.
• Demonstrated strong written communication skills, with the ability to craft clear, concise, and compelling content tailored to diverse audiences and platforms.
• Practical and successful application of community and/or customer engagement strategies and tactics including the use of new media applications.
• Previous experience engaging with the public to communicate complex and technical projects.
• Familiarity with International Association of Public Participation practices.
• Advanced degree in strategic leadership, business, communications or management.
• Broad knowledge of gas and electric utility rates, business objectives, to include operations, customer service, finance, and corporate relations.

Additional Information