Engineering alum Jené Reese awarded OPPD’s highest honor

We have a passion to serve. We honor our community. We care about each other.

Jené Reese Senior Account Executive, OPPD

Jené Reese, a chemical engineering graduate (2009) with a Master of Engineering Management degree (2019) from UNL, was honored in December with OPPD’s highest honor - the President’s Award - for coming to the aid of an injured motorist last summer.

Reese, a senior account executive in Customer Sales & Service at OPPD, was driving to a job site meeting last summer when she stopped and approached a crashed vehicle on the roadside to find an injured driver, who was disoriented and badly bleeding from a leg injury. With help from another motorist, Reese fashioned a tourniquet using a strap from a sleeping bag from her vehicle and a tree branch from a nearby bush. She also called 911 and stayed with the injured driver until paramedics arrived. Once the ambulance left with the injured driver, Reese cleaned herself up and continued to her appointment on behalf of OPPD.

In addition to her heroic actions on the roadside, Reese has received praise for her work in OPPD customer relations – most notably after a July 2021 storm left more than 188,000 customers without power. She’s also been lauded for her communication and coordination skills in solidifying partnerships with the Douglas County Commissioners, the City of Lincoln and the General Service Administration.

“Jené is an amazing leader who thinks beyond the picture in front of her,” noted Sonja Golembiewski, an OPPD colleague, in an article that appeared in OPPD’s online newsletter “The Wire.” “(She) always seems to have time or energy to read another book or research a new idea.”

Reese, a native of Auburn, Nebraska, began her career at OPPD’s Nebraska City Station in 2008 as an intern while she was a UNL student. After graduation, she went to work full-time at OPPD’s Fort Calhoun Station. Before becoming a senior account executive in Customer Sales & Service, Reese was a senior design engineer living OPPD’s core values: “We have a passion to serve. We honor our community. We care about each other.”