Roberta B. Bowman, Senior Vice President, Public Affairs and Chief Communications Officer for the Charlotte, North Carolina-based Duke Energy Corporation, has spent her entire career in the energy field. She joined Duke Power in 1986 as Director, Power Plant Community Relations and held three other posts before reaching her current position. Prior to joining Duke, Bowman worked at Northeast Utilities for eight years. She holds a B.A. from Tufts University.

“Initially I wanted to be lawyer,” Bowman says. “I was always interested in advocating a point of view, and found that communications was another way to do that. In fact, I’ve been in communications for all of my career – except for six months that I spent trying my hand at commodity trading. That was valuable experience, since it taught me the fundamentals of a deregulated energy market, but I found that I wanted to get back to communications.”

Bowman notes that she has never felt stifled by spending her career in a single industry. “The energy industry is so diverse and complex that whenever I felt interested in striking out into new areas, I realized that I could find new challenges right where I was,” she says. In fact, Bowman notes that she has always felt drawn toward working with emotionally charged issues, and that an energy company offers an abundance of those. “I always gravitated toward the big issues, such as nuclear energy, and found that I have a particular talent for handling complex challenges that require good analytic skills. I enjoy understanding the other points of view while advocating my own and my company’s viewpoint.”

As a person drawn to controversy and challenge, to businesses that regularly make the news, Bowman clearly chose the right industry. She points out that when Fortune did its review of the Top Ten Business Stories for 2001, the top four all related to energy. “Obviously, energy is one of the engines that fuels economic growth.  Every company was affected by September 11, but energy companies – particularly nuclear plant operators – had special security concerns. And 2001 was a year of dramatic energy shortages. It was an interesting year, and – as tough times always are – it was a good opportunity to focus on communicating a strong message.”  The current volatility in the financial markets has also posed challenges for Duke. “Then, of course, there was the collapse of Enron and the ripple effects throughout the energy industry,” she says.

Bowman, whose mandate also includes community relations and corporate philanthropy, notes that Duke’s commitment to giving increases during tough economic times, when many other companies tighten the purse strings. “We try to give a bigger helping hand to non-profits during those times. Sometimes it’s financial.  Sometimes it’s volunteerism. It’s part of the whole notion of supporting communities that goes back to our founder, Buck Duke. It’s part of our corporate DNA,” she says.

Slow economic times also offer a great opportunity to place more emphasis on marketing and branding. Bowman – whose responsibilities extend from corporate communications to advertising, marketing communications, brand management, community relations and corporate philanthropy to media relations and employee communications – believes in working hard to present an integrated message. “I learned a long time ago that whether or not we integrate the message, our customers and employees will.”

In terms of her own personal management, she uses weekly teleconferences to keep the public affairs team aligned, but also participates in weekly planning conferences with investor relations, government relations and other Duke Energy groups that communicate to external stakeholders.  She writes weekly letters to staff around the world. She lets her employees know who she is, what matters to her, and what Duke Energy’s public relations principles are. “I make it very clear that we do not want to let our PR outrun our business performance,” she says. “We are committed to letting the business results tell our story. We don’t want to outrun our headlights.”

Bowman takes keen pleasure in the breadth of her current job. “I have the chance to work across stakeholders and constituencies; my responsibilities are very focused on integrating messages and audiences,” she says.  Duke Energy invests in an in-house public relations team and professionals are located in every business and in corporate. “They’re wonderfully capable folks who do their jobs well, so I get to pick and choose the fun stuff,” she says with a smile.

Sometimes, however, the “fun stuff” can be pretty challenging. In 2001, for example, Duke Energy was one of the electricity generating companies serving the needs of the California market. “We were a relative newcomer in the state and got caught in the cross-hairs when demand outstripped supply,” she explains. “A lot of allegations were directed toward out-of-state generators, none more serious than that we were withholding power from customers.”

The charges came just at the time that people were looking for simple solutions to the California energy crunch, and some people were happy to accept that explanation. “These accusations were very serious, suggesting that Duke Energy had committed what could probably be called the greatest crime in this business – manipulating the market for corporate gain.”

Bowman and her staff swiftly went into crisis communications mode, knowing well that to earn good PR you have to run a good business, and that Duke Energy did just that. A review of the logbooks showed that those who made the allegations had only a small piece of the overall information picture. “They didn’t know that Duke Energy was following orders from the California grid operators,” Bowman explains.

“We knew that we had the facts on our side, so we held a news conference on the Capitol steps in Sacramento, with our head of California Operations. We also opened our logbooks, did advertising, got good coverage from the California media that covered the initial allegations. We took a fact-based approach on every front. We didn’t attempt to blacken the whistleblowers; we took the high road – as we always do when dealing with our customers, stakeholders and employees. And it worked.  The media turned around and began to report the story that Duke Energy was only doing what it was instructed to do by the State’s independent operation.”

Bowman notes that Duke Energy’s messages are competing with businesses all over the world. “Every hour of the day, somebody in the news media has a deadline. We’ve rebalanced resources so that we can be more accessible both to the news media and to our employees around the world. The demands for speed and quality work continue to increase,” she says.

 When all is said and done, she believes that the foremost criterion for people in corporate communications is the ability to think critically. “Plus it’s important to be both a good listener and a quick study,” she says. She admits a bias toward an educational background rich in the liberal arts, as she had. It teaches people to think and solve problems, she believes. It teaches how to break complex issues down into more simple elements.

Ultimately, Bowman believes she has succeeded at Duke Energy because her personal values are aligned with the company’s. “It is incredibly important as public relations people to trust that your coworkers and executives share a commitment to ‘doing the right thing’ and you agree on what ‘doing the right thing’ looks like. If your values don’t match up with your company’s, you won’t be comfortable or successful.”

© 2004 Heyman Associates, Inc.