Wayne Bishop Jr. is Vice President of Industry Outreach and Strategy at Quanta Technology, a subsidiary of Quanta Services. He has worked in the electric power industry for over 30 years. Wayne is also IEEE PES Vice President of Meetings and Conferences, a member of the IEEE Power and Energy Society Governing Board and a member of the IEEE PES Executive Committee. He helped write and implement the Long-Range Strategic Plan for IEEE PES and is a Senior Member of IEEE. In addition, Wayne currently serves as a Senior Advisor to LUMA Energy, the electric utility in Puerto Rico.

Previously, Wayne worked at OMICRON electronics for 13 years where he was the Head of Marketing for North America. Prior to that, Wayne was employed at Doble Engineering Company for nearly 20 years in several senior management positions. In 2007, he was appointed by Doble’s Board of Directors to serve on the Executive Committee to broker the sale of Doble Engineering to ESCO Technologies.

Wayne is a graduate of Merrimack College, Harvard University, and the Executive MBA Program at Suffolk University in Boston, graduating with honors. Wayne speaks regularly at industry conferences and has published several articles and papers in industry publications including IEEE Power and Energy Magazine and T&D World Magazine.

Wayne and his family live in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts.

Dr. Shay Bahramirad is the Senior Vice President of Engineering, Asset Management, and Capital Programs at LUMA Energy, the power company responsible for electric service in Puerto Rico.  In this role, she is responsible for the oversight, planning, and execution of plans to modernize the power infrastructure.   This includes a foundation of developing local engineering talent, teams and processes, and the prudent application of new technology.  Her primary goals are the safe, reliable, sustainable, and cost-effective delivery of electricity to the people of Puerto Rico.

Shay has held several positions in the sector including Vice President of Climate and Resilience at Quanta Technology, where she was responsible for assisting cities and utilities with climate change risk assessments for their assets, operations, and services and for developing investment strategies to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Prior to that, she was Vice President of Engineering and Smart Grid at ComEd, the electric utility serving Chicago and Northern Illinois, where she had led efforts to demonstrate and deploy technologies to ensure that the distribution system meets strategic goals related to reliability, resiliency and sustainability, while developing and implementing a broader community of the future vision including a focus on industry-informed STEM education for underrepresented communities in the industry including girls. She has been an expert witness testifying on several state and federal regulatory proceedings around microgrids, energy storage, investment strategies, and the interconnection of distributed energy resources.

Dr. Bahramirad is a leading figure in the industry. She is the President-elect of IEEE Power and Energy Society, an editorial board member of the Electricity Journal, US CIGRE Executive member, an adjunct professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and a founder of IEEE Women in Power.

She is a contributor to the United Nations SG7, Affordable and Clean Energy.

Shay completed her PhD in electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and has published more than many academic articles, as well as being the recipient of multiple US patents.

Nikola Obradović

Corporate director for international and regulatory affairs, EMS – Serbian TSO

Nikola Obradović was born in 1963 in Belgrade, Serbia, where he received the B.S., and M.S., degrees from the University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia, both related to Automatic Generation Control.

His career in electricity sector started in 1990 when he was employed by the Yugoslav Electric Power Company (JUGEL) as a dispatcher. In 1993 he joined Electric Power Industry of Serbia and in 2005 he moved to EMS – Serbian TSO. He is co-convenor of ENTSO-E RG Continental Europe SG System Frequency, convenor of the SMM Block (Serbia, North Macedonia and Montenegro) WG and the chairman of STK C2 CIGRE Serbia. He participated in the UCTE team that implemented Turkey’s connection to the interconnection Continental Europe and ENTSO-E TF for the urgent synchronization of the Ukraine and Moldova power systems to the interconnection Continental Europe. He led the development of a study for TSOs of the Baltic countries with the aim of preparing them for Continental Europe LFC operation and was a member of the ENTSO-E reporting teams following the major disturbances, e.g.  9-11th  January 2019 event, 8th January 2021 and 24th July 2021 events. He is the author of several dozens of professional papers published mostly at CIGRE Serbia conferences as well as in CIGRE Paris conferences, and European Transactions on Electrical Power.