Chris Riley (MBA 2008) didn’t have any experience with renewable power when he cofounded Guzman Energy in 2013. Riley, who had spent most his career as an officer in the US Navy and later as director of investment banking at Guzman & Company, was more concerned about the type of company he wanted to launch than the sector in which he would be working. “We wanted to start a company that helps people and benefits society,” he recalls. The energy sector, which was at the beginning of what Riley calls the “renewable power revolution,” seemed ripe for that kind of disruption.

Riley and his cofounders saw an opportunity to create a new kind of energy company—a hybrid of a traditional utility and a financial entity. Guzman Energy, a subsidiary of Guzman & Company, would not be weighed down by the same legacy investments in carbon-based power generation of many traditional utilities, nor would it be limited by the financial restrictions that govern nonprofit electrical cooperatives. Instead, the company would have both the incentive and the flexibility to bring renewable power to communities that would benefit economically from the change.

To date, the company has focused its efforts on rural communities in the American West, in places not unlike the small coal town in Utah where Riley grew up. He knows that his business model to provide cheaper green energy will hurt the job prospects in communities like his hometown. But Riley thinks Guzman Energy has a role to play in that transition. “I’m trying to cultivate a culture inside of the reusable-energy sector that advocates for these changing communities and helps them find ways to move forward, too.”

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