By David Steinkraus
Community service is the theme for Rich Negri?’s career. As a prosecutor, partner in a law firm and managing director and deputy mayor of Philadelphia, he sought to serve the people around him. As vice president of regulatory policy and strategy for ComEd (changing to vice president for external affairs as of Nov. 1), he said he has the same opportunity.
Negrin came to ComEd eight months ago. He grew up in New Jersey, attended Wagner College and then went to Rutgers University School of Law, but only after a short detour. He was recruited by the National Football League. He played briefly for the Cleveland Browns and then for the New York Jets.
“The truth is I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was a small-college football kid,” he said. “But what a great experience. I used to joke I suffered a debilitating injury that ended my career: They hurt my feelings when they cut me.” And he laughed.
Yet Negri? has the chance to apply lessons he learned in football as he works with others at ComEd to build a different kind of team: a team of diverse suppliers.
In 2018, the company spent $718 million on its diversity-certified suppliers, and $493 million of that was for tier one diversity-certified contractors. Diversity spending in 2018 was 39% of total supplier spending. In 2012, diversity spending was 23% of total supplier spending.
Spending is far from the total diversity picture because ComEd is working on the next generation of people to take those supplier contracts.
In its CONSTRUCT program, Negri? said, ComEd partners with construction companies, engineers, and social service organizations to help train young minority people working in companies or at community colleges. Although the program is for tradespeople, there is an emphasis on academics and technology, Negri? said, because tradespeople need a technology proficiency that was not required even 10 years ago. “It’s like, you manage a fleet department. Every car has a computer now,” he said.
For high school students, ComEd has Solar Spotlight, which teaches students about solar power while they engage in hands-on projects.
“And then you hope some of those people start businesses,” Negri? said.
To advance in business, Negri? has some personal advice: Be a continuous learner. It’s something he started doing as a young lawyer.
“When you’re in a DA’s office with 60 cases on the list, and you’re doing legal triage, it’s easy to not focus on your development. You’re just trying to get through the day,” he said.
What he did was study something every day that improved his craft, even if studying meant spending a few minutes reading a magazine article on the train home. It was uncanny how many times an issue he had just read about came up in court the next day, and this allowed him to be more successful, he said. He still follows this practice.
“If you’re doing this 365 days a year, even for 5 minutes, you’re going to develop, you’re going to grow,” he said.
By modeling this behavior, it’s communicated to the people he leads, and communication is a key to business as it is in football, he said. Successful football teams, he said, have a great culture and communicate well, and this allows them to adapt rapidly to changing situations.
