Stephen Callahan

Stephen J. Callahan’s successful career has focused on Utility industry management, consulting, and sales. He has led the creation of business and technology strategies and implemented complex processes and systems for several top global utility clients spanning the areas of T&D, network operations, Smart Grid, customer operations, finance, and telecommunications networks. Stephen is an Executive Vice President for Grid Modernization and Chief Marketing Officer at GridBright, Inc, with over 35 years of experience.

Preceding his current position, Stephen was IBM’s Vice President of Global Strategy and Solutions for the Energy & Utilities industry and a member of IBM’s Industry Academy. In that position, he was IBM’s global executive driving IBM’s EE&U industry growth strategy, point of view, solution and offering development, large deal sales support, ecosystem partner relationships, policy, eminence, and thought leadership across all IBM business units. Before his global role, Stephen was a Partner for Coopers & Lybrand, PwC, and IBM (via successive acquisitions) for fifteen years and focused on electric utility restructuring and industry business and technology strategy.

Stephen has led numerous large complex process and system implementations. He was the lead partner for implementing the California ISO and the lead US partner for the IMO in the Provence of Ontario, Canada. In addition, he led the creation of the Utility e-procurement consortium Pantellos.  Stephen was a pioneer in the large-scale deployment of AMI technology. As Account Partner, he led several large system integration projects for clients in the domains of real-time T&D, financial, asset management/GIS, and customer systems in California and Texas.

Before IBM, he held various management positions over fifteen years at Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) Company in San Francisco in commercial and industrial energy management, telecommunications network planning, and financial systems. He held positions of Director of IT Strategy and Budget, Director of Network Planning, and was the project manager for PG&E’s implementation of SAP.

Stephen is a GridWise Alliance (GWA) Board Member, a DistribuTECH Advisory Committee member, and an IEEE Life Member. He frequently contributes to industry conferences and publications focusing on the electric utility industry transformation. Stephen holds Bachelor of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Physics and a Certificate in Business and Technical Communication from Georgia Tech. He is a licensed California Professional Engineer (M 123586) and California Certified Energy Auditor (840335).