Life as the GC of Regulated Utility

What's it like to be the general counsel of one the nation's largest utilities? Find out from Colin Owyang, the former Executive Vice President of Regulation and General Counsel of National Grid USA, which is a subsidiary of a FTSE 20 company and, with 7 million customers, is one of the largest utility companies in the US. In February 2015, Owyang left National Grid to become the Deputy Attorney General of Massachusetts. In January 2016, Owyang became GC of Vermont Electric Power Company (Velco).

In "Power to the People: Life as the GC of Regulated Utility," Owyang discusses his role as GC (at the time of his presentation, he was still at National Grid), energy policy, life in a highly regulated business, balancing the competing interests of stakeholders, the impact of mentors on his career, and how he came to his current role. The talk is part of Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession’s speaker series on building meaningful legal careers.

Owyang has a little bit of an unusual background for a corporate GC: he is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in Boston, a Special Assistant to the Massachusetts Attorney General, a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice's Environmental Crimes Section, and a former associate at Foley Hoag. Owyang is a graduate of University of Michigan Law School and Yale University.