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Welcome from 2025 AABE MI Chapter President, Ernest Owens
Welcome from 2025 AABE MI Chapter President, Ernest Owens
Greetings,
My name is Ernest Owens Jr., President of the Michigan Chapter of the American Association of Blacks in Energy (AABE®).
I am currently a leader at ITC Holdings, a Fortis company, and come with over 20 years of power experience from various levels of the Energy Sector, from Utilities and Reliability Coordinator affairs. As an AABE member for over 10 years, from the east coast to here in Michigan, I see AABE as family. As President, I look forward to continuing to build our community engagement, networking with members and their companies, and developing our chapter to be a resource for both the members and the communities that we serve and, most importantly, to the future pipeline of youth that we inspire.
I am personally inviting my fellow energy professionals to join this non-profit organization, foster the opportunities in energy and address the challenges across the industry. More details on our mission and meetings are below:
Our Mission
The American Association of Blacks in Energy (AABE) is a national association of energy professionals, founded and dedicated to ensure the inclusion of African Americans and other minorities into the deliberations and developments of energy policies, regulations, emerging technologies, and environmental issues.
The purposes of AABE are the following:
To serve as a resource for policy discussion of the economic, social and political impact of environmental and energy policies on African Americans and other minorities.
To ensure involvement of African Americans in governmental energy policy-making by recommending capable sensitive and informed personnel to appropriate officials.
To encourage both the public and private sectors to be responsive to the problems, goals and aspirations of African Americans in energy-related fields.
To encourage African American students to pursue careers in energy-related fields and to provide scholarships and other financial aid for such students.
The Michigan Chapter meetings are held quarterly, every second Wednesday at a location convenient to AABE members from 3:00-4:00pm.
I am excited about your participation in our wonderful organization. Please contact me at eowens@itctransco.com with questions. For more information about AABE, please visit www.aabe.org
Carla Walker-Miller, President Emeritus Message: Let’s Be Optimistic About Our Future
Amidst challenges like globalization, renewable energy, the decline of manufacturing, and our industrial economy, we in the Michigan chapter might feel like a prize fighter facing the battle of his career. I might suggest that we all take a lesson from Muhammad Ali, one of the greatest prize fighters of all time. Ali believes that the right attitude can carry you through, even in tough times. “It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief.” he said. “And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things began to happen”.
Attitudes influence success. There are a number of reasons to be optimistic about our future. We’re blessed with key resources, solid values and a history as a chapter with dedicated people actively engaged in our mission to promote energy awareness and to be a voice for the people in our communities on energy issues. It is also our mission to support academic excellence in our youth, to promote the energy field in which we work and to expand community outreach efforts.
We have done an excellent job in establishing and giving scholarships to students. We have delivered on first class events to promote energy awareness and increased our contributions to the students through the George C. Turner Golf Outing, National and Regional Conferences as well as the Lewis H. Latimer Award Dinner. To the members that made this happen, my sincere thanks for you are AWESOME.
Congratulations to our chapter members that were elected to AABE National positions. Let’s commit the support of the Michigan Chapter to assist them in achieving our national and local goals.
We have many talented people in our organization. We will begin influencing our own success when we begin to commit. As you navigate through our website, please view AABE's Mission, Executive Leadership, Membership Criteria, Our Committees, Programs, Activities and Events. Let’s make it happen today!
AABE: Energy Knowledge for our Community, our People and our Tomorrow
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