Human Interest Soon, Ghartey-Tagoe was moving from Canada to Durham, with little more than $250 in his pocket. After his first year at Duke didn’t go well (admittedly, Ghartey-Tagoe notes that his initial goal was simply to graduate), he finally decided to change his point of view. “I decided, if I was going to do this, I was going to thrive, not just survive,” he says. And thrive he did. After graduating three years later, he was fortunate enough to find a position within Washington D.C. firm Spiegel & McDiarmid working in energy regulation and litigation, although he still planned on heading back to Ghana after the year was up. While in D.C., however, he decided to reach out to one of his law school professors—a man who offered his contact information to students who desired to connect. Together with a mutual friend, they went to lunch, and it was there that the professor asked Ghartey-Tagoe about his further interests. “That was the first time I had said out loud that I wanted to stay,” he remembers. “He said, ‘Good. I have the best immigration lawyer around. Come with me.’” That connection—made simply by reaching out to someone who had offered it—ended up providing Ghartey-Tagoe with a work permit and eventually, a green card. And what’s more, the professor—the late Allen Siegel—wouldn’t even let him pay for the legal work. While at Spiegel & McDiarmid, Ghartey-Tagoe represented municipal and cooperative electricity providers in contract litigation and federal level utility regulation; in his next career move, to Richmond-based Mays & Valentine, he focused entirely on local and state regulations. His first case out of law school involved representing several municipalities in North Carolina against a company called Carolina Power & Light for cost overruns in the construction of the Shearon Harris nuclear plant outside Raleigh, North Carolina. There, too, he made a connection with Ed Flippen, a partner at the firm, whose leadership and mentorship shaped his professional future and perspective on always being open to helping others. He also worked at Richmond-based McGuire Woods where he represented investor owned electric, gas and telecommunications companies on regulatory matters. Ghartey-Tagoe’s introduction to Duke Energy came later along his career path, as he began to interact with a few of the company’s lawyers. Then, in Spring of 2002, he was offered a position by the energy company and for a number of years, served within the regulatory group of the legal department there, then moving up to general counsel for litigation, and then vice president of commercial business legal support. In 2011-2012, he assisted with obtaining approvals for the merger of Progress Energy and Duke Energy, and with that task, had closed a circle within his own career. “Because of my background, I have worked on every merger that Duke Energy has had since I joined the company,” Ghartey-Tagoe says. “Fast forward to 2015, and my team and I represented Duke Energy to buy back the nuclear assets at issue in my first case with Carolina Power & Light.” (Carolina Power & Light eventually became Progress Energy, which merged with Duke Energy in 2012.) Life, Ghartey-Tagoe says, is a big circle. Eventually, Ghartey-Tagoe was asked to return to regulatory work as senior vice president for state and federal regulatory legal support, where he and his team were responsible for all the public utility regulation matters in six jurisdictions, including
Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. Then, in early 2017, he was named state president for Duke Energy in South Carolina—a job that surpasses simply the legal aspects and branches into all avenues of the business in the Palmetto State. “In my previous role, I was focused on the regulatory outcomes, primarily,” he says. “Today I’m focused on the entire pie, and the business implications. But most importantly, I work to ensure we are serving the needs of all of our customers.” In addition to his growing position within Duke Energy, Ghartey-Tagoe is involved with other organizations that keep him connected to the communities he is most fond of. He sits on the board of visitors for Duke University Law School, and is a member of the Executive Leadership Council, a nonprofit dedicated to the growth and success of African American leadership, primarily in Fortune 1000 companies. Still, a piece of his heart remains in Ghana, and it is there that one of his greatest personal projects lies. “In many high schools in Ghana, once you’ve been gone 10 years or so, you go back and do something to help your school,” Ghartey-Tagoe explains. “We were considering what to do for our 20th anniversary, and someone said, ‘Why don’t you do something bigger?’ So, we decided to focus on the entire country.” It was out of this that Progress in Education was born—a 501(c)3 designed to forward the mission of helping secondary schools in Ghana gain the equipment they need to teach. “When I was in school, there were five to seven of us around one science experiment,” he notes, adding that his school was rather wellequipped when compared to others. “Today, in many schools, if they do them at all, it’s a full class around a one experiment.” Formed in August of 2000, Progress in Education has since provided more than 50 schools with more than $300,000 in science and technology equipment—covering schools in all 10 regions of Ghana. In addition, they have provided scholarships to exchange students who have travelled to the U.S., and to several college students in the U.S. or who show interest in intercultural relations.“The world is getting smaller and smaller every year,” Ghartey-Tagoe says. “Students are finding ways to interact across borders. I think it’s important to help them get the same vernacular so they can communicate on the same level.” Back at home, at Duke Energy, Ghartey-Tagoe is rounding out his first year in his new position with big plans. The company plans to invest more than $3 billion to make the grid more resilient and secure, which will include undergrounding cables and improving cyber and physical security, and will require large-scale hiring efforts. The company plans to institute self-optimizing grids to re-route power in cases of an outage, as well as ensure that the security of information they possess is as safe as possible. With more than 740,000 customers, he has a lot of work to do.
Still, the work required doesn’t scare him—just as it didn’t throughout his career. After all, in the end, it’s really about making the connection, and making a difference with what you’re given. “My mission is to make all the difference I can,” he says. “It’s an exciting future ahead of us.”
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