At Entergy, every employee has a designated role during a response, and whether it’s a minor disruption or a major event, each role is critical to helping us restore power as safely and as quickly as possible. In this edition of Meet the Pros, we are taking a closer look at the people and roles behind the scenes that are needed to help crews successfully restore power after a storm. While their role during a response may look different from their daily responsibilities, our employees’ preparedness and expertise strengthens our readiness, resilience and commitment to serving our customers and communities.   

Meet Mallory Bower, a senior scheduler for the work management department at Entergy Louisiana, based out of West Monroe, Louisiana. She began her career at the company as a designer in the engineering department in 2019 and worked in that role for two years before moving into her current role as a senior planner and scheduler for the work management department in 2021. Bower holds a bachelor’s degree in construction management from the University of Louisiana at Monroe. 

Bower’s primary role as a senior planner and scheduler is to coordinate customer reliability needs, maintain a backlog of committed dates on work orders and communicate any safety risks to her network’s leadership teams for the north Louisiana region. However, during storms or major events, she transitions quickly into her incident response role as a crew tracker.

“My main responsibilities as a crew tracker are to communicate with our crews as they navigate across our region, assist in the planning process for mobilizing our distribution line and damage assessment crews to restore power and ensure that our storm management systems are up-to-date with the most accurate information needed,” said Bower. In the winter storm that swept across our service territory earlier this year, she managed a count of nearly 1,351 crew members in her role. 

“In this company, we have a culture of staying prepared for severe weather. We received a lot of training and multiple tutorials for our role to ensure that we were prepared for whatever the storm season may bring us,” Bower said. 

Bower also spoke about how fulfilling it was to assist in the restoration process with her fellow team members by her side. 

“Working with such dedicated and skilled team members has meant so much to me. Their collaboration made it possible for me to support our crews effectively. I’ve always admired the strength of this organization and the sincere commitment we show to the communities we serve,” she said. 

Bower says one of her favorite moments while serving in role during the winter storm earlier this year was hearing how appreciative our crews were to have staging site personnel, traffic control and debris removal teams ready to be mobilized when it was time for restoration. “It’s very important that we’re able to coordinate crews across the region to help safely and quickly restore power to our customers. Our crews navigated harsh weather from freezing cold temperatures resulting in extreme ice and snow, and I’m proud to know I played a role in ensuring that they were able to safely navigate the terrain as they worked,” she said. 

When asked about what she enjoys about working at Entergy, Bower points to the organization’s always learning culture, “I get to learn something new every day, so it’s always exciting. I also get to help power life for our communities, customers and even my own family—and that’s something to be proud of.” 

Every employee at Entergy has a role during restoration because we are driven by our commitment to serve. Our response team members, like Bower, embrace complexity, overcome obstacles and deliver meaningful solutions to our communities and customers in the moments that matter most following a storm.  

While the challenges may look different for each incident, we know the resilience of our employees and communities will help us weather any storm, together.