Melissa Dykes had all intentions of becoming a biochemical engineer, but having to choose an elective course at the University of Florida changed her path.
After graduating from high school at age 17, she selected economics and then changed her major after discovering her talent with mathematics could be applied to finance instead of developing new ways to manufacture pharmaceuticals or food additives.
“I’m a math person. I’m truly a geek,” said Dykes, JEA’s chief financial officer since 2013.
She is responsible for all aspects of the utility’s finances, including budgeting, supply chain management and ensuring compliance with regulatory, reporting and tax requirements.
She was hired by JEA as treasurer in 2012 and became its top financial executive a year later, after then-CFO Paul McElroy was named the utility’s managing partner and CEO.
McElroy said Dykes’ position as treasurer put her on the committee that conducted the national search for his replacement.
By that time, she had developed over 10 years an “exceptional national reputation in the municipal bond marketplace,” McElroy said.
The search process identified many qualified candidates, some with experience working for the most well-known utilities in the U.S., but the search committee concluded the top choice already had an office at JEA headquarters.
“Melissa was clearly the best and most qualified person for the CFO position — a decision which is confirmed every day,” McElroy said.
Dykes got her first job in economics before she graduated from UF at age 20. She worked for the university’s Warrington College of Business Public Utility Research Center, where she helped research strategies for utility regulation and infrastructure policy.
Dykes then was hired by The World Bank, where her focus was studying how private companies develop utility systems in Third World countries.
After a while, she wanted to make sure her true calling was finance. Dykes headed to Wall Street and JPMorgan, where at age 27 she became the youngest vice president in the investment banking division.
She worked in Manhattan for four years in an office three blocks from the World Trade Center. Dykes was at her desk the morning of 9/11.
“I still haven’t been to the memorial,” she said.
During her nine years with JPMorgan, Dykes worked in Los Angeles, as well as New York.
She came back to Florida after getting married and worked as chief financial officer of NTE Energy, a St. Augustine-based private equity energy firm, before being hired at JEA.
Dykes and her staff work to maintain the financial stability of the nearly $2 billion a year provider of electricity, water and sewer services.
She said it’s a balancing act to sustain the not-for-profit operation while providing high-quality services at the lowest possible rates.
Dykes and her staff of commodities futures analysts studied for more than a year the data that led to the $6.85 across-the-board monthly rate reduction in the fuel charge that went into effect this month.
“There were a million little pieces,” she said.
While JEA has rebated to its customers in the past few years $170 million based on the cost of coal and natural gas, it took a high level of confidence to propose a permanent reduction in the basic rate for electricity.
“It was a waiting game to get a high enough degree of certainty to recommend it to the board,” she said.
Dykes met her husband, Robert, through their mutual love of surfing and choice of Costa Rica as a vacation destination. He’s an attorney with EverBank. The couple has two sons and lives in Jacksonville Beach.
She said Jacksonville and JEA are her true homes.
“I love this business. It’s woven into the community and touches everyone, whether they think of it or not,” said Dykes. “And I love Jacksonville. I can’t imagine raising our children anywhere else.”
Even if the surf can’t compare to Costa Rica.
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