Executive V.P., Public Policy and Chief External Affairs Officer, Exelon Corporation
The Honorable Colette D. Honorable is Executive Vice President of Public Policy and Chief External Affairs Officer for Exelon Corporation, the nation’s largest utility. Honorable leads Exelon’s efforts to engage external stakeholders, with areas of oversight including federal and regulatory affairs, strategy and sustainability, customer engagement, branding, communications, and corporate giving. Honorable is a member of Exelon’s Executive Committee, as well as the Exelon Foundation Board.
Before joining Exelon in September 2023, Honorable was a partner and member of the Executive Committee at global law firm Reed Smith LLP. As leader of the firm’s energy regulatory group, she provided strategic counsel to Fortune 500 energy companies, investor-owned utilities, renewable energy, and technology companies on a range of areas, from mitigating the impacts of climate change to environmental justice and inclusion strategies.
Prior to the firm, Honorable was nominated by President Barack Obama and was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate to serve as a Commissioner at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. During her term from January 2015 to June 2017, she worked alongside her colleagues to oversee the reliability of the electric grid in the United States. Her areas of oversight included cyber and physical security, wholesale markets, transmission planning, infrastructure development, renewable energy and storage integration, gas and electric coordination, and ratemaking and enforcement matters.
Prior to joining FERC, she spent several years on the Arkansas Public Service Commission, including serving as commissioner, interim chairman and chairman from October 2006 until January 2015. Prior to joining the Arkansas PSC, Colette served as chief of staff to the Arkansas Attorney General and as a member of the governor’s cabinet as Executive Director of the Arkansas Workforce Investment Board. Her previous employment includes service as a consumer protection and civil litigation attorney, and as a senior assistant attorney general in Medicaid fraud before serving as an adjunct professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Law and Special Judge of the Pulaski County Circuit Court.
Honorable has testified before Congress on several occasions and is called upon to advise and conduct peer reviews for the National Academies of Sciences and several branches of the US Government. She has advised presidential personnel and transition teams, as well as members of Congress on energy, equity and inclusion issues, and has provided technical advice and counsel on these topics to several nations worldwide as a courtesy to the State Department and at the request of foreign governments.
She has served on the boards of Southern Company, the Electric Power Research Institute, Summit Utilities, Southern Bancorp (a community development bank) and served on the EPRI Advisory Council.
Honorable is active in several Washington-based organizations, including The Economic Club, the American Association of Blacks in Energy, the Energy Bar Association, National Bar Association, Women’s Council on Energy and the Environment and the Women’s Energy Resource Council. She is also a global advisory board member with the Energy Futures Initiative, a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center, and serves as vice chair of the Energy Regulators Regional Association’s Strategic Advisory Board. Additionally, she is an inaugural member of the William Jefferson Clinton School of Public Service Advisory Board. She has a passion for mentoring women and co-led an effort to establish an international mentoring program for women in energy regulation for the International Confederation of Energy Regulators. She is an Ambassador for the Clean Energy Education and Empowerment Initiative, an effort co-led by the U.S. Department of Energy and the MIT Energy Initiative formed under the auspices of the International Clean Energy Ministerial. Honorable is a life member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.
Honorable is a past president and chairman of the board of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) and previously served as a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Brookings Institution’s Energy and Climate Initiative.
Honorable’s awards and commendations include being named to the Savoy Magazine list of Most Influential Black Corporate Directors and its Most Influential Black Attorneys; named S&P Global Platts’ 2020 “Rising Star in Energy” for elevating climate change and DE&I issues worldwide; named 2019 Women’s Council on Energy and the Environment’s Woman of the Year; recipient of the 2018 Financial Research Institute’s Crystal Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Energy Sector; recipient of the 2017 American Association of Blacks in Energy’s James E. Stewart Award; recipient of the 2016 Women’s Foundation of Arkansas’ Inaugural Woman in Public Service Award; named 2016 “Alumnus of the Decade” by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law; recipient of the 2015 National Bar Association’s Congressional Black Caucus Leadership award; inducted into the 2014 Arkansas Black Hall of Fame; and recipient of the 2013 Just Communities of Arkansas Humanitarian Award.
A native of Little Rock, Honorable resides in Washington, DC. She is a graduate of the University of Memphis and received a juris doctor degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Law.