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Holly Troy Benz

McCormick School of Engineering

Clinical Associate Professor and Director of Master of Science in Energy & Sustainability

About

Areas of Focus

  • Microgrids
  • Sustainability reporting
  • Circular economy
  • Energy strategy and market innovation
  • Professional education in sustainability
  • Beneficial electrification and electric vehicles
  • Low/moderate income energy efficiency

Work/Research

  • Energy strategy for businesses and utilities
  • Sustainability strategy including strategy development and sustainability reporting
  • Utility program design and implementation for energy efficiency, demand response, strategic energy management and electric vehicle programs
  • Utility innovation for climate change strategy, electric vehicle charging networks, low/moderate income programs and smart thermostats

Career

Holly Benz is a Clinical Professor at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Director of the Master of Science in Energy & Sustainability Program (MSES) at Northwestern University.  She teaches graduate level courses at Northwestern and is responsible for all aspects of the MSES program including staff, budgets, faculty, courses, career placement and partnerships.  The MSES program maintains active external relationships with corporates, other universities, policy & non-profit partners. The program is administered by the Trienens Institute for Sustainability & Energy at Northwestern where Holly began work on the start-up of the MSES program in September 2018.  Holly has also co-directed Executive Education at the Kellogg School of Management.

In addition to her work at Northwestern, Holly sits on the board of Scale Microgrids and advises energy and services companies as well as private equity firms on energy & sustainability through her consulting practice, Poder Consulting.  Holly moved to Northwestern from a leadership role at CLEAResult, where she served as SVP, Commercial & Industrial and SVP, Emerging Growth to help prepare the largest implementer of utility energy efficiency programs in North America for sale to TPG’s Growth & Rise funds. 

Prior to this, Holly worked at Schneider Electric from 2010-2016 in roles ranging from P&L leadership of a high growth, US Consulting business that provided technical, financial and regulatory support to customers to an executive committee position as SVP of Strategy, M&A and Marketing Communications.  At Schneider, led a team of 225 consulting engineers working on safety, arc flash, and modular solutions for the changing electrical infrastructure landscape, collaborated on new offers such as microgrids, built innovation strategies and successfully executed M&A deals.   From 2005-2010, Holly worked at Centrica Plc where she served as VP, Business Development for Direct Energy Home & Business Services in North America, Head of Residential Markets for British Gas New Energy (BGNE) and Head of Strategy for British Gas in the UK.  In her UK roles, Holly led efforts to bring low carbon products, services & educational programs to British Gas’ 12 million residential customers and ran strategy for the £8B UK residential energy and services business units.

Before working in the Energy sector, Holly was a strategy consultant with Bain & Company in the UK and worked in Andersen Consulting’s Internet Center of Excellence in the U.S., Brazil and Argentina. She speaks Spanish and Portuguese. Holly obtained her MBA at The Wharton School and earned an MA in International Studies at The Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she majored in economics.