Dennis Vermillion stepped down on Jan. 1 from his role as Avista Corp. CEO—a title he’s held since 2019—allowing his successor Heather Rosentrater to take the reins of the Spokane-based energy company. Vermillion is currently the company’s executive vice president. He plans to retire this quarter. 

Vermillion, 63, is a Spokane native, and like his successor, attended West Valley High School. During his undergraduate career at Washington State University, Vermillion was a summer intern at Avista, and shortly after graduating with a degree in electrical engineering in 1985, started his career there in the power supply department. In 1997, he helped start up Avista Energy, a subsidiary of Avista Corp. When the subsidiary became fully operational in 2001, he was named president and CEO of Avista Energy, his first leadership role. From there, Vermillion went on to serve on other leadership roles with Avista and its subsidiaries.

The Journal recently met with Vermillion to discuss what led him to work in the utility sector, who his mentors were during his career, and the challenges he led the company through during his time at Avista.

What drew you to electrical engineering?

Well, I was pretty good at math, and like a lot of kids, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I had a cousin who was an engineer, and he seemed to be doing pretty well. My dad, who worked in the energy industry for a company called Pacific Gas Transmission, encouraged me to pursue engineering. At WSU, I quickly learned that I was just average at best at math. But I stuck with it and persevered and really enjoyed my time. 

You were an engineer for 12 years. Did you want to go into leadership? 

At first, I just really wanted to work for a good company where my values aligned with the company’s values and where I could have the opportunity to contribute in a meaningful way. That was my goal, get married, have a couple of kids, and live the American dream. With leadership, I wasn’t purposeful about it, but it just started to happen. I saw an opportunity to contribute in a way that I thought would be beneficial to the organization, and I was encouraged by other leaders and mentors in the company to go down that path. They must have seen something in me. And with my experience at Avista Energy where I had some good outcomes, I think that put me on the path that ultimately got me where I’m at now as I retire. 

Who were your mentors and people who encouraged you throughout? 

Early on, it was Greg Precogies, Doug Young, and Les Bryan. Later on, I was really fortunate to work with some really great CEOs here too: Paul Redmond, Gary Ely, who was the Avista CEO when I was at Avista Energy, and Scott Morris was the CEO here for many many years. They are wonderful people and great leaders. So I was really fortunate to be given that opportunity to work with them and have them mentor, teach, support, and push me.

What did they teach you that you would want to impart to others who want to follow in your footsteps? 

It’s about people and servant leadership. I learned I had a knack for taking a diverse group of folks, putting them together, and forming high-performing teams. The Avista way is encouraging people to learn and grow and empowering them to do that in this organization. I was encouraged to do that by these leaders. For example, I learned from Gary Ely to trust your gut and trust your intuition and your business sense.

Scott Morris is the ultimate servant-leader, putting others before him. Building teams and helping them succeed is the ultimate satisfaction as a leader. With Heather coming in, I’m so proud of her and her team. I think they are poised to do great things, and I’m able to finish my career with the ultimate high-performing team that I had a big part in melding. 

What were some of the big obstacles in your career? 

When I think about my career, there is always something that comes along, right? Even earlier in my career, we had fire storms, and then ice storms, windstorms, and we had fires. It seems like especially during my tenure as CEO, we had a lot of those things happen. One of the things that has always impressed me from early in my career to this day is how this company rallies and the people rally around each other, and the community and our customers in times like that. 

The energy crisis in the West was 25 years ago, and we were all really impacted by it. Right now, it’s a challenging time for the industry. In addition to the pandemic, we went through a period of really high inflation that impacted all parts of our economy, and our customers really feel that in everything they do. We’ve worked hard to manage our costs and try to minimize the impact of inflation and other cost pressures that ultimately go to the customer. 

What are some of the achievements you’re proud to have made? 

I’m proud of the work we’ve done around wildfire risk mitigation. We see what’s happening in California, and it’s just awful. We’ve seen more of that type of wildfire risk in the Northwest, certainly with the experiences that we’ve had in our communities over the past couple of years. So it’s a big focus in our industry, and I think Avista over the last five years has come a long way.

We’ve done a very good job of designing and implementing our wildfire resiliency plan. We’ve got a great team of people here who are making it happen and there is always work to be done in that regard. 

Where is the energy industry now?  

We continue to invest in renewable resources to try to decarbonize our systems. We’ve always been a very clean utility, and we want to be as clean as we can, as fast as we can. That has been a goal of mine during my tenure and will continue to be a goal in Heather’s tenure.

That creates more challenges, too, with increased demand. Renewables are intermittent resources, so the reliability of the grid becomes more of a concern. Ultimately, we just got through an inflationary period. Investment in new infrastructure drives costs as well. We need to get there in terms of clean, but we also need to be mindful of affordability and cost incurred by our customers and make sure our system remains reliable. 

Why are you retiring now, and what are your plans?

I’ve been here 40 years almost, and that’s a long time. My wife and I have been thinking about it a bit and I felt like it was the right time. We’ll do some travel and spend more time at the lake in the summertime. We just came back from visiting San Diego to attend a WSU football game. 

Any last thoughts? 

I’ve always been one to believe it takes a team to accomplish great things. You can do it yourself but you can only go so far. If you’re going with a group of people, you can go a long way. That has been my experience here at Avista. It requires deep collaboration, care for people, integrity, honesty, and trust. If you want to build a high-performing team, you have to have trust in one another and your people.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.