Good morning. Jeanne Jones, EVP and CFO of Exelon, has been with the company for 18 years, though she hadn’t originally set her sights on becoming the utility giant’s finance chief.
It wasn’t until a boss earlier in her career at the company encouraged her to map out a path to becoming Exelon’s CFO that she seriously considered the possibility. “I had two kids under 4; I was just happy to be here,” Jones recalled telling him.
But the exercise prompted her to think strategically about her career, identifying several possible routes to the CFO role. With her mentor’s sponsorship, she became CFO of Commonwealth Edison (ComEd), Exelon’s largest operating company, before returning to corporate finance and ultimately being promoted to Exelon’s CFO in 2022.
One of the nation’s largest utility companies, Chicago-based Exelon (No. 192 on the Fortune 500), led by CEO Calvin Butler, serves more than 10 million customers through six regulated transmission and distribution utilities. Since spinning off its power generation business, Constellation Energy, in 2022, Exelon has focused solely on regulated utility operations—meaning it does not own power plants, but instead manages the infrastructure that delivers electricity and gas to end users.
In 2024, Exelon reported revenues of $23 billion and net income of $2.5 billion, reflecting solid growth in its regulated utility businesses. The company is closely watching—and actively responding to—the data center boom, Jones said. To ensure grid reliability and affordability, Exelon is working closely with state regulators and running extensive scenario planning to anticipate how much new power load will materialize and when, she explained.
“We are running scenarios on how much load or how much new customer demand is coming to the grid,” Jones said. When her team brings her 10 scenarios, “I always ask for that 11th,” she added. The company is also investing heavily in infrastructure, with a $38 billion capital plan over four years and an additional $15 billion earmarked for transmission upgrades to handle the data center surge.
A constant learner
Jones began her career as a manager in the audit practice at EY’s Chicago office. In 2007, when she interviewed at Exelon, two things stood out: the company’s culture of rotating talent through different departments and the intelligence and ambition of the people she met.
“Everyone I interviewed with had done different things,” Jones said. “If they started in accounting, then they went to financial planning and analysis, and then to treasury.” She wanted to do the same.
Her time at Exelon included roles in accounting, treasury—where she worked on mergers and credit analysis—and operations. In addition to serving as CFO of ComEd, she was also VP of finance for Exelon Nuclear, CFO of Exelon’s Joint Venture Nuclear Group, and chief of staff to the Exelon CFO for two years—a significant learning experience. “We were going through a hostile takeover of another company that ended up not working out,” Jones said.
Each move was driven by a desire to learn something new, Jones said. She likens her experience to learning a foreign language: you can study French in a classroom, but if you live in Paris and are fully immersed in the language, you truly learn how to speak it. For example, working in operations gave Jones a whole new perspective on the business, she said.
Reflecting on her journey, Jones offers the following career advice: stay open to new experiences and don’t get overwhelmed by distant goals—and don’t let the pressure of a specific end goal cloud your enjoyment of the ride. “Keep going for the next thing that’s going to develop you,” she said.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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