About

‘Joanne H. Raphael is the senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary for one of the largest investor-owned companies in the US utility sector. As general counsel, Raphael has overseen a number of major, successful initiatives, and the legal reorganisation of PPL in the wake of the transformative spin-off of the company’s competitive power generation business in 2015. In connection with this transition, she successfully reorganised PPL’s legal team to better position it to support corporate and business line interests post-spin. She has fostered enhanced coordination among PPL’s Pennsylvania, Kentucky and UK legal teams. Moreover, she and her team have implemented a number of cost-savings initiatives, including the improvement of the company’s claims functioning and records management systems. PPL has been a long-time supporter of diversity and inclusion efforts, as illustrated in part by the company’s long association with the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD). Raphael has continued and expanded upon this support. For the first time, a member of the company’s Kentucky operating unit has been named an LCLD fellow, joining a list of past company participants from the company’s headquarters in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Moreover, she is particularly proud of the fact that the legal department is a leader on diversity and inclusion. Many members of the company’s legal department are leaders of affinity and employee resource groups aimed at strengthening diversity and inclusion. Raphael actively encourages this and seeks to engage her whole team in driving PPL’s success. Although the company has a market cap that exceeds $25bn, its legal team is relatively small and operates incredibly efficiently, with about 30 lawyers across the enterprise, along with additional highly qualified and dedicated legal professional staff. While she currently serves as senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of PPL and leads the legal department, Raphael’s responsibilities have been much broader than her title indicates. She is also presently responsible for PPL’s government relations, corporate communications and philanthropy functions. Moreover, having been at PPL for nearly 30 years, during which she has served in a variety of roles both inside and outside the legal department, including as senior vice president and chief external affairs officer, reporting directly to the CEO, she has gained a broad and unique perspective that has enabled her to manage a wide range of operations and to navigate the multifaceted challenges faced by the company. For these reasons, I strongly support Joanne Raphael’s nomination for the GC Powerlist’.