JEA announced July 14 it filled two senior leadership positions with Raynetta Curry Marshall named chief operating officer and Joseph Orfano promoted to vice president of financial services.
Marshall’s hiring is effective Aug. 30 at an annual salary of $350,000. Orfano, the municipal utility’s treasurer and interim chief financial officer, will start his new role July 15 at $200,012 per year, the utility said in a news release.
Marshall is a former director of water/wastewater planning and development at JEA. The release says she left in 2019 and for the past two years was the city of Tallahassee’s Underground Utilities & Public Infrastructure Department general manager.
Marshall was a leader at JEA from 2011-19, including director of water/wastewater project engineering and construction.
“Marshall has more than 35 years of experience in the water, wastewater and utilities industry in Florida, Maryland and Virginia,” the release said. “In her new role, she will have oversight of JEA’s electric, water and wastewater systems.”
Orfano started working at JEA in 2013. He also serves on the Finance and Audit Committee of The Energy Authority.
Orfano was director of treasury at a mining company in Scottsdale, Arizona, and has more than 20 years of electric utility experience.
“I’m pleased to have Raynetta back and to have Joe as our permanent VP of Financial Services,” JEA Managing Director and CEO Jay Stowe said in the release. “Both of them have provided strong leadership at JEA and have proven time and time again that they are highly skilled and unmatched in what they do. I’m proud of the team that is helping to make JEA the best utility in the country.”
The announcement leaves the external affairs officer as JEA’s only vacant executive position, the release said.
JEA has named six senior executives since Stowe announced in February he would restructure the utility’s executive-level staff.
In July 2020, then-interim JEA CEO Paul McElroy fired the nine remaining executives who were on fired CEO Aaron Zahn’s team.
Stowe became JEA’s chief executive in November.
The latest hires come about one month after Stowe named former Huntsville Utilities Chief Financial Officer Theodore B. Phillips as JEA’s CFO.
Marshall and Phillips will report directly to Stowe along with five other executives:
• Chief Administrative Officer Jody Brooks.
• Chief Human Resources Officer David Emanuel.
• Chief Customer Officer Sheila Pressley.
• Chief Strategy Officer Laura Dutton.