Julie Estey

Julie Estey has one of those rare gifts of being able to explain complicated things. For example, how electricity gets to your home, and what it takes to keep it coming.

Julie is Matanuska Electric Association’s Chief Strategy Officer. Her job has evolved from just explaining energy. In recent years she has helped MEA navigate the complicated world of energy regulation and led a long-term effort to allow Alaska’s Railbelt electric cooperatives to work together to increase reliability and efficiency.

Add to that, these days, to insure a future supply of electricity that’s affordable.This is important because like other Southcentral utilities MEA mostly depends on natural gas to power its generation. Cook Inlet gas fields are in decline and liquefied natural gas will have to be imported to make up for the shortfall, at least temporarily.

Alaska is an energy-rich state and Alaskans don’t like the idea of having to import it, particularly because it won’t be cheap. A challenge for Estey and others at MEA is to make importing as brief as possible and create a diversified energy portfolio for the future.

Julie has been with MEA for over 10 years and she has had an unusual career path. Her university degree is in management, from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. She spent time working with Arthur Andersen, the Chicago-based consulting firm (now Accenture), and after travelling in the U.S. west decided she loved the region and its outdoors.

In Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Julie encountered dog mushing and fell in love with the sport. This prompted a big career change from business consulting to mushing and a change in location to Fairbanks, Alaska. Once there was able to combine business skills and interest in mushing by becoming the executive director of the Yukon Quest, one of the toughest and most brutal long-distance race with a trail spanning 800 miles from Interior Alaska into Canada’s Yukon.

Julie wound up mushing one year in the Yukon Quest, although she had to “scratch,” or quit from the race after encountering a long stretch of tough “jumble ice,” or rough ice on the Yukon River where she injured her knee. Luckily, she was able to make it with her team to a National Park Service cabin where race volunteers were able to lend assistance and help get her and the team back to Fairbanks.

“I hated having to scratch but this was the worst jumble ice people had seen in a while on the river and I had many miles of it in front of me,” had she continued, with the injury.

It was at that point that Julie made another career change, this time into energy. She began working with Gwen Holdmann, who was establishing the new Alaska Center for Energy and Power, or ACEP at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Working in both Fairbanks and Anchorage Julie built partnerships with business, university and community leaders to help ACEP gain recognition and relevance by solving energy issues across the state.

That, in turn, led her to working in public relations at MEA in 2013. She has been there since, her job evolved to include management of complex regulatory affairs and now business strategy. Julie lives in Palmer with her two boys, Dawson and Dylan, 11 and 14. The boys attend Academy Charter School in Palmer, and stay busy with soccer, skiing and other activities.