WAPA’s newly refreshed core values are the gauge against which everything we do at WAPA every day — our decisions, our behaviors and our actions — are measured. That is to say, everything each of us does every day should be guided by and align with WAPA’s core values.

The sixth core value, “Serve like your lights depend on it,” is a personal call to each of us to actively engage every day and do everything we can to ensure WAPA successfully executes its mission to market and deliver clean, renewable, reliable, cost-based federal hydroelectric power and related services.

WAPA’s customers, collectively serving more than 40 million Americans across its 15-state footprint, count on WAPA to flawlessly perform its core mission 24 hours a day, seven days a week, week after week, to keep their lights on.

Our customers count on you and me, and everyone around us, whether we are federal employees or contractors, to do our jobs and do them well. It takes each and every one of us and disciplines of all types, working collectively to safely, securely, reliably and affordably provide energy and transmission services to our customers.

WAPA is made up of people with expertise in many subjects, all of which are critical to the successful fulfillment of our mission. Attorneys, engineers, pilots, mechanics, biologists, accountants, linemen, contracting officers, human resource specialists, trainers, electricians, computer programmers, financial analysts, equipment operators, dispatchers, security specialists and more, each doing their individual jobs and as part of a high-performing WAPA team, to the very best of their abilities every day, as though their lights depended on it.

Serving like your lights depend on it requires preparation. Taking personal responsibility to know your job, to know WAPA, to know our business and to know our customers, both internal and external.

Whatever your functional discipline or role within WAPA, continuously improving your skillset to become the best you can be is critical to your individual success and, more importantly, the collective success of the WAPA team. Whether it be through formal education, classroom training, on-the-job training, seminars, volunteering for special assignment, details or participating in industry forums, opportunities abound to continuously improve and prepare yourself, equipping you with the skills to advance yourself and WAPA.

Serving like your lights depend on it requires building relationships. Taking personal responsibility and initiative to reach out to others within your work group, your function, your region, the electric utility industry and your customer base to get to know them and allowing them to get to know you. The most important elements to your and ultimately WAPA’s success, beyond preparation, are the personal and business relationships you develop throughout your career.

Strong relationships, the social capital you build with others, are critical to effectively serving ourselves, WAPA, our industry and our customers and building mutually beneficial partnerships. Strategic Roadmap 2024 calls on each of us to build and sustain mutually beneficial partnerships.

Serving like your lights depend on it ultimately boils down to one thing: each of us taking personal responsibility for our individual success and the success of WAPA in achieving its core mission.

Take personal responsibility every day for being the best you can be. Be reliable, show up and work hard; set, manage, meet and exceed expectations; make the hard choices; take initiative, actively engage and participate; be inquisitive and innovative; support and include your WAPA teammates; and serve your customers, both internal and external.

Serve like your lights depend on it.