In this episode of The Co-op Heroes Podcast, we sit down with Rachel Johnson, CEO of Cherryland Electric Cooperative.

Rachel speaks candidly about her unusual path to the corner office, starting as a grassroots advocate at Cherryland in 2012, moving into member services and communications, and eventually earning an MBA in finance to prepare herself for the CEO seat. She reflects on the value of intellectual curiosity, self awareness, and building a leadership team that complements her own blind spots.

Six months into her tenure as Cherryland's first female CEO, Rachel was diagnosed with breast cancer. She opens up about navigating that diagnosis while leading a cooperative, choosing to be public about her treatment, and how her board and team rallied around her in ways that strengthened trust across the organization. She also shares how leaning on her own intellectual curiosity, researching her diagnosis and eventually sharing what she learned with online breast cancer communities, helped her cope during treatment.

The conversation turns to what makes cooperatives different, including the mutual aid Cherryland provided to neighboring Michigan co-ops during a devastating ice storm, and closes with Rachel's advice for women considering a path to co-op leadership.

Featured topics:

• Rachel's path from grassroots advocate to Cherryland's first female CEO

• Getting an MBA in finance to prepare for the CEO role

• Being diagnosed with breast cancer six months after taking the job

• How her board and team responded and what it did for trust

• Cherryland's mutual aid support during the northern Michigan ice storm

• Advice for women pursuing leadership roles in the cooperative space

Rachel and Pablo close by reflecting on what sets the cooperative model apart: a culture built on service, trust, and people who show up for each other, not shareholders or competition.

This is a conversation about vulnerability in leadership, resilience through crisis, and why the people who make up electric cooperatives are the reason so many, including Rachel, never want to work anywhere else.

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In this episode of The Co-op Heroes Podcast, we sit down with James Tanneberger, CEO of South Central Indiana REMC, to talk about one of the more unexpected questions in the cooperative world: can the co-op model work anywhere else?

James speaks candidly about what it actually felt like to walk into an electric cooperative after years at investor-owned and municipal utilities, and how handing margins back to members changes something deeper than the balance sheet. He walks through what he calls "thinking long," the idea that real relationships in business come from generosity rather than squeezing every dollar out of every deal, and how that mindset built trust that outlasted any single transaction.

To make the principle concrete, James shares how his co-op built a debt-free middle-mile fiber network through an equity-based deal with its members, then gave away the entire playbook, legal work, consulting, and processes included, to other states rather than guarding it. That decision has since grown into a shared model across 15 states, built entirely on trust rather than competition.

Featured topics:

• Why "thinking long" and radical generosity build trust that competition can't buy

• The debt-free fiber network built through member equity, and why it was given away for free

• What happens when private companies try to sectionalize off a piece of their business for the greater good

• Lessons from the EV charging and nuclear industries on when competitors must agree on standards

• Why data interoperability, not proprietary advantage, will define the next generation of vendors

• How the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) model points toward shared standards across the industry

James and Pablo close with a challenge to private companies everywhere: the businesses willing to open up, share data, and build trust will outlast the ones trying to protect a proprietary edge.

This is a conversation about what happens when a nonprofit mindset meets a for-profit world, and why the co-ops that gave the most may end up gaining the most in return.

In this episode of The Co-op Heroes Podcast, we sit down with James Tanneberger, CEO of South Central Indiana REMC, to talk about one of the most pressing challenges facing electric cooperatives today: the coming wave of retirements and how to manage the knowledge transfer that comes with it.

James speaks candidly about the generational gap co-ops are facing, roughly 9 million fewer people in Generation X than in the Baby Boomer generation, and what that means for building a bench deep enough to replace 30-plus years of institutional expertise. He walks through the real risk of a "transition mismanaged," drawing on an experience at one of the country's largest utilities where an entire engineering discipline rested on a single expert with no one behind him.

To bridge that gap, James's co-op is bringing retiring staff back on contract to capture their knowledge before it's gone for good, and building a private AI tool the team affectionately calls "Shirley," trained on the co-op's own board minutes, business documents, and communications so institutional memory doesn't walk out the door with the people who hold it. He's candid about what it actually takes to get that kind of system to work: not just the technology, but the discipline of getting good data in, and giving people a real sense of mission around capturing it.

Featured topics:

• Why succession planning starts with leaders figuring out how to replace themselves, sooner rather than later

• The generational math behind the co-op workforce gap, and why AI is becoming the bridge

• Building "Shirley," a private AI trained on institutional knowledge, business records, and email

• What a mismanaged transition looks like, and how a short bench can cripple even the largest utilities

• How cooperatives lean on trust and shared learning across the industry instead of competing on it

• Why interoperability and a "listen first" approach from vendors will define the next generation of co-op technology

James closes with a look toward The Great Progression, a coming book on AI, clean power, and bioengineering, and the case that the next 25 years could be the most productive in cooperative history, if co-ops are willing to think ahead now.

This is a conversation about turning a demographic challenge into a technological opportunity, and making sure decades of hard-won expertise outlast the people who built it.