Carrying on a Legacy: The Inaugural Class of the Patti Wilson Leadership Program
In 2024, the IDEA community and many others lost someone that served as a guiding light, an anchor and an example to everyone she met—Patti Wilson. In the spirit of continuing her legacy, IDEA, the Wilson family and her long-time employer, Affiliated Engineers, established the Patti Wilson Leadership Program. The first class of the program was announced at IDEA’s CampusEnergy2025 conference in February, with Patti’s husband, one of her daughters and sister in attendance. We’re excited to introduce this group of incredible women who exemplify so many of the characteristics that made Patti the irreplaceable presence that she was in the district energy community.
Big Shoes to Fill
If you attended CampusEnergy2025 this year, you saw three floors and countless conference rooms full of people making introductions, catching up and learning from their fellow district energy peers. If you spoke to any of the attendees for a few minutes, you heard stories of past conferences, anecdotes about friendships formed through years of attendance and, by the end of the week, remarks of how much people were already looking forward to the next conference in June. You also may have heard a twinge of sadness in some voices, or a comment about what was missing at this year’s conference in Boston. Amid the energetic chatter bouncing off the vaulted ceilings of the Westin Hotel, there was a name that could be heard throughout the week in stories and memories shared by many of the 1,500 attendees.
Everyone had a story about Patti Wilson, a former chairwoman and board member of IDEA. She had made them feel welcome at their first (or 15th, or 20th) IDEA conference. She had encouraged them to pursue a career in district energy. She had helped them make connections, meet a mentor, altered their path for the better. She embodied the collegial spirit of IDEA. This was the second CampusEnergy conference taking place without her, but she was still one of the biggest presences felt there. This wasn’t lost on the eight women who were recently accepted into the first class of the leadership program created in her honor.
“It is an incredible legacy,” said Madeline “Mary” Cotter, an undergraduate studying at the University of Virginia, when she was asked to offer a few words during the recognition ceremony. “We are all honored to be part of the first class of the Patti Wilson Leadership Program, and I cannot wait to watch all of our careers grow in the next year and beyond.”
Forging Their Own Paths in Fellowship
The women making up the inaugural class of the Patti Wilson Leadership Program come from all corners of the United States and Canada, and range from undergraduate to Ph.D. students, with many pursuing graduate degrees in parallel to their professional careers. In addition to a passion for district energy and leadership potential, there are many things that connect this cohort of women to each other, and to Patti.
There are the two undergrads: Sandra Turner, who is currently a student at the University of Minnesota, and Mary. They both are early in their careers and have found mentors who are longtime members of IDEA who encouraged them to learn more about district energy as a career path and connected them with other members of the IDEA community.
Mary’s mentee journey brought her to the same place as Paige Davis, a Product Development Coordinator at Austin Energy—a summer internship at IDEA. While their respective internships were almost 10 years apart, they cite the time spent learning about district energy from seasoned professionals as distinctly influencing their career paths. Paige remembers meeting Patti on multiple occasions and, as with everyone who knew her, fondly remembers Patti’s offers of encouragement and support to a recent college graduate just starting out in the field.
“She would go out of her way to speak with people individually,” said Paige. “It meant a lot to me as an intern, and I know she did that with everyone.”
Emma Luis, while not a former IDEA intern, has nonetheless spent a significant amount of time learning from experts in the field, working as a Project Manager at Circadia Group since she graduated from Tufts University. Soon after CampusEnergy, Emma embarked to McMurdo Station in Antarctica as a Construction Superintendent working on Special Projects through the Antarctic Winter. Both Emma and her fellow cohort members Grace Mwangi, Project Coordinator at Corix, and Megan Campbell, a Mechanical Engineer at SmithGroup, are early in their careers at companies that have long histories working in the IDEA community. They expressed shared interests in deploying district energy as a path to decarbonization, and a feeling that as the first group of Patti Wilson Leaders, it was their job to set the tone for the program moving forward.
Many of the women in this program are pursuing graduate studies while working full-time in the field, but only one is a full-time graduate student. Rebecca Grekin is deeply immersed in her doctoral research at Stanford University, which focuses on district energy campus systems and how to optimize their operations to reduce emissions and electricity consumption. She reached out to campuses across the country to request their data and received an enthusiastic response from the IDEA community and presented some of her preliminary findings on the final full day of CampusEnergy2025.
Reminiscent of Patti’s passion for welcoming new faces to IDEA, this year’s conference was a first for most of the Energy Efficiency Manitoba team. They came to support their colleague, Anna Schappert, a mechanical systems professional, as she was honored with the rest of the women in the program.
When she reflected on her conference experience, Anna had a takeaway that would have made Patti smile: “Everyone was really welcoming and really friendly and really easy to talk to. The whole conference experience was amazing.”
Carrying on a Legacy
Most of the inaugural cohort of the Patti Wilson Leadership recipients met for the first time at CampusEnergy - brought together to carry on a legacy and increase the visibility of women in district energy. It was a tall challenge, summed up perfectly by Rebecca: “It was clear that Patti Wilson made a huge difference within the IDEA community - something that is incredibly inspiring, particularly as there are so few women in this space. And it is often easier to remain invisible.”
Before, during and after the conference, the eight women who make up this esteemed group talked about finding ways to stay connected and support each other this year and into the future. And they wasted no time getting started. When Rebecca presented her research on the third day of the conference, it wasn’t hard to spot many of her fellow Patti Wilson Leaders in the audience, sitting together to watch her share her knowledge with a room full of district energy professionals. They were already thinking about how they could help the next group of women who were chosen for this program, a clear sign that Patti’s legacy is in the right hands.
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