Biographical profile

Van Wardlaw

Executive Vice President, Customer Relations

Van M. Wardlaw, TVA’s executive vice president of Customer Relations, has 30 years of diverse leadership experience, encompassing the planning, operating, commercial and customer sectors of the utility business. He is responsible for maintaining and enhancing customer relationships with the 155 distributors of TVA power and 59 directly served customers. Wardlaw directs a staff that manages customer accounts totaling more than $10 billion in annual revenue.

Before accepting his current role, Wardlaw served as executive vice president of Enterprise Relations. He has also served as executive vice president of Strategy & Planning; executive vice president of Power Supply & Fuels; and senior vice president of Commercial Operations & Bulk Power Trading.

Previously, Wardlaw was responsible for real-time control of the company’s generation fleet and transmission system, which included reliability coordination for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation with five other regional utilities, overseeing transmission grid reliability for 12 states in the Southeast and Midwest.

Other leadership roles have included management of field based organizations ranging from Transmission Maintenance to Customer Service & Marketing.

A native of Memphis, Wardlaw received an electrical engineering degree from Mississippi State University and an MBA from the University of Mississippi. Wardlaw is a Distinguished Fellow of the Bagley College of Engineering at Mississippi State University.

Wardlaw is a former executive committee and board member of the SERC Reliability Corp. and has served in numerous committee positions with the North American Electric Reliability Corp. He was chair of the Combined Federal Campaign for the Greater Chattanooga Area in 2008 and 2009. The annual campaign encourages donations from federal employees for non-profit organizations.

He and his wife, Jan, have two daughters.