Avista Corp. Names New President and Announces Senior Leadership Changes

SPOKANE, Wash., Sept. 07, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Avista Corp. (NYSE: AVA) announced that Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Heather Rosentrater will become President and COO, making her the first female President in the company’s 134 year history. Dennis Vermillion will remain Avista’s Chief Executive Officer. The changes will go into effect on Oct. 1, 2023.

At age 46, Rosentrater will be the company’s 15^th President since it was founded in 1889. Rosentrater has spent her entire professional career at Avista, starting with the company in 1996 as a student engineering technician for Avista Labs, a fuel cell subsidiary business that was later sold and became ReliOn.

In 1999, Rosentrater joined Avista Corp. as an electrical engineer and was quickly promoted to leadership roles that have built her expertise across both Avista’s electric and natural gas businesses. She’s managed departments and projects in electric transmission and distribution, system operations, natural gas supply, and business process improvement before being named Vice President of Energy Delivery in 2015. By 2019, Rosentrater was named Senior Vice President of Energy Delivery and Shared Services. And in August 2022, her responsibilities expanded to Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer.

Innovation has always been at the core of her leadership values. Rosentrater has been instrumental in building a solid foundation for the utility of the future. When Avista was one of only a handful of utilities to receive multiple Department of Energy grants under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Rosentrater led the successful implementation of Avista’s smart grid grants. She expanded upon the learnings from these grants and integrated enhancement upgrades across Avista’s electric grid. Rosentrater was a founding board member of Spokane’s civic research and technology initiative Urbanova, established Avista’s Innovation Station and Grid Edge teams to explore future business needs, and intentionally embedded innovative concepts in developing the Eco-District shared energy model that powers multiple buildings in Avista’s Catalyst project.