Final Year For Four: Longtime state executives reflect on careers in propane industry

Jenni McKeen

McKeen

It was friendship that brought Jenni McKeen into the propane industry, and that’s what she will miss most when she retires Dec. 31 after 24 years helping Georgia’s marketers and suppliers thrive.

Like Clark, McKeen will step down from her post after turning over leadership to SEPA and Jessup, its president and CEO and her longtime friend and colleague.

“The timing is good for me because of my age,” McKeen says. “It all came together. We made this alliance because of the contraction of the industry. But John has a staff, and Corky and I have always done our jobs ourselves, so this will allow us to provide more service to the members.”

McKeen had attended “a lot” of conventions with friends in the industry well before she considered joining it.

“I got divorced, and the Georgia group was looking for a change in the executive director position,” she explains. “They were out on the golf course one day, and my name came up, and they called and asked if I’d consider it.”

McKeen learned about regulatory measures, event planning and how to advocate for members’ interests. She’s proud of the association’s work to become the only state in the country to successfully prevent municipalities and other rural electric cooperatives from using their profits to come into the propane business.

“That was huge,” she says.

The association succeeded in getting the Georgia legislature to approve a state check-off program in 2019 to create funds for safety and training, and marketing tools, and a limited liability bill passed in 2006.

“We’ve been able to endow some scholarships for some former members who’ve since passed,” she says. “We’ve done work with the technical schools, getting a better curriculum geared toward propane. And just really established a great relationship in the Georgia legislature for some of our members.”

McKeen says a lot of dealers are still “mom and pops” who rely on a larger association to protect their interests.

“They need to be protected from people encroaching on their business and unnecessary regulations,” she says. “They don’t have time; they’re out running their business, and they don’t have time to focus on that, so we keep them up to date. That’s important to their business and being able to thrive.”

Still, consolidation is impacting how many are active in the association.

“We’re only as strong as what our numbers are, and that is an issue,” McKeen says. “Associations are evolving just like our industry is. We have a lot of older people in our industry, and that’s something we’ve been trying to cultivate, a younger presence in our leadership to streamline things, make them more effective.”

With the alliance securely in place, McKeen is satisfied that she can soon redirect her ambitions to those seven-letter words on the Scrabble board, solving puzzles, and that which brought her to the propane industry in the first place: golf.

“I’m going to be plenty busy,” she says.

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