NEWS

NEWBERRY — Keith Avery M'23 is no stranger to leadership in critical situations.

For the past 13 years, he has led the Newberry Electric Cooperative as chief executive officer. He guides and energizes an elite team that provides electricity to over 13,000 homes, schools, churches and businesses. He keeps watch over a complex 1,590-mile network of line with direct impacts on the daily lives of tens of thousands, itself part of a larger grid, powered by an industry evolving at the speed of light. In a business where a stray finger can take a life, steady hands are required on every end of the line. Throughout his career, Avery has stood at all of them.

In December, the 64-year-old utility executive crossed the stage at Newberry College’s Wiles Chapel to receive his Master of Science degree in organizational development & leadership. Avery says the degree wasn’t filling for a box on an application, but the fulfilling of a longtime personal and professional goal.

“I had started my master’s a few years ago and never finished it. I wanted to finish it more for me than anything else, and I liked what I saw at Newberry,” he says. “Even though I can retire right now, there’s still a lot that I need to learn moving forward. Our industry is going through a lot of change right now. In looking at the organizational development part of the curriculum, and then looking at the leadership part, I’ll need both.

“Plus, I wanted to do the master’s because I push my staff to continue their education, and if I’m gonna push them, I needed to continue and to get that done,” he adds.

For Avery, education is for life, and his graduate coursework has been a continuation of the training he began as a teenager, first in the South Carolina Army National Guard, then as a groundman for his local cooperative.

“When I was 17, I joined the Guard, went through basic training, infantry school, whole nine yards,” he says. “I was in for four years, and I decided to go to Officer Candidate School, went overseas twice, and I retired after 21 years as a major. I had no intention of going to school. None whatsoever. But the Army did me a good turn because they straightened my head out. I realized real quick that I did not know everything, so I needed to go back to school.”

Avery studied industrial electricity and electronics at Piedmont Tech, went to work for Laurens Electric, “started out as a groundman and worked my way up.” He soon made it to lineman, then crew leader, moved into engineering, and then to marketing, “of all things.” While climbing the ladder for Laurens, figuratively and literally, Avery worked toward a bachelor's degree at Limestone, which would allow him to be promoted in the National Guard. He started work on a master’s several different times, and then, in 2011, Newberry Electric’s top slot came open.

“This job came up, I put in for it, and I was fortunate enough to get it,” he says.

Thirteen years into the job, Avery isn’t finished growing as a leader — a task he says is never really done, especially in an industry that is vital, dangerous, and ever-evolving. From preserving and growing reliable electricity generation sources, to maintaining local systems and load capacity, to keeping technology up-to-date, to battling the elements and ensuring crew safety, to leading a team and a community when it matters most, there’s no room for complacency.

“It’s bigger than losing a sale, or losing a client, or something like that. Our folks literally can be killed on a daily basis in the jobs that they do,” he says. “When you get into a situation to where your work impacts people's lives, you’ve got to be able to handle that with empathy.”

He talks about the rolling blackouts of Christmas Eve 2022, when temperatures plummeted into the teens, as a recent test of leadership on all fronts.

“The biggest thing is, I have to be up front. I have communications people, I have public relations people, but when a crisis happens, the leader of the organization needs to be the one out front with the plan,” he says. “I talked more to my staff than I probably did to some of my family members on Christmas Eve, until there was enough going online.

“It can be stressful. I’ve been fussed at before because somebody’s had a high power bill. But if you really want to be cussed at, lose power during Christmas Eve when mama’s trying to cook dinner,” he says. “It's easy to lead when things are going well. True leaders come to the forefront when they're involved in a crisis.”

Avery began Newberry’s ODL program in January 2023, and he says his coursework was beneficial and applicable from day one.

“The [organizational development] part of it — navigating change, developing, looking at processes, those type things — have helped me look at how to manage change better in the future,” he says. “From a leadership perspective, the biggest thing with me, in kind of like the twilight of my career, is that it’s my job to make sure that somebody in my staff is ready to move up. So the coaching part of it, and how to do the coaching, has been very beneficial.”

As a seasoned CEO, he says having experienced faculty was quintessential to his success. “All of my professors have real world experience. They’re able to relate to the students, especially the students like myself,” he says. “We can have conversations where I can articulate what I'm dealing with on a day-to-day basis and they understand it. These folks have lived it.”

Avery also says that, even though the degree was offered online, he forged meaningful connections with his classmates, who represent all walks of life. “I was talking about something that we were doing on economic development, and we were trying to determine how to attract young people to Newberry. And there was one young lady who gave me a lesson in life. She said, ‘why don’t you ask them?’ It was like a lightbulb went off in my head.

“This course has taken me to a different level. I wish I had done this 15 years ago,” he adds.

Leading by example, Avery demonstrates the power of education, not just as a way to keep the lights on, but to help oneself and others truly shine.
 

This article originally appeared in Newberry, the lifestyle magazine of Newberry County.