Behind the (Hockey and Turbine) Blades: Suzanne MacDonald Champions Community Solutions for a Brighter Future
From the Hockey Rink to the Wind Farm, Suzanne MacDonald Bridges Communities and Clean Energy Solutions With Passion and Purpose
Suzanne MacDonald is a hockey mom, and not just in the sense that her 11-year-old son plays hockey. MacDonald is a mom who plays hockey. When her 11-year-old son began playing the sport, he encouraged MacDonald to try it too. To her surprise, MacDonald fell in love.
“I play in a women's hockey league, which has been incredibly rewarding,” MacDonald said. “The physical intensity of the game combined with the strong support these women give each other makes it such a fun and energizing experience. It's an hour of my life that helps me put aside stress and refocus.”
For MacDonald, who manages stakeholder engagement initiatives for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) wind energy program, the best part of playing hockey is the experience of being a beginner.
“We’re so often pushed to specialize and excel in our professional lives,” MacDonald said. “It’s refreshing to try something new and not be good at it right away, to lean in to being humble and brave, to push ourselves to try challenging things.”
The “Leading Edge” caught up with MacDonald to learn how embracing challenges, fostering collaboration, and supporting local action drive her approach to clean energy transitions.
Pretend I’m a reasonably intelligent middle schooler. How would you explain your job to me? What problems does your work attempt to solve, and how?
In addition to managing wind energy stakeholder engagement efforts, I lead projects in NREL’s State, Local, and Tribal Governments program. Basically, I work to ensure NREL’s efforts are accessible and practically helpful for communities navigating the clean energy transition. My experience learning from communities helps us tailor our initiatives to center on their realities and provide responsive resources and support.
A key focus of my work is addressing capacity challenges—limited people, time, and expertise to consider, develop, and maintain energy systems, for example—particularly in rural America. At this stage in my career, I’m blending 20 years of community-centered work with organizational leadership experience to strengthen how we do our work. I’m constantly looking for opportunities to break down silos, foster cross-sector collaboration, and utilize people-first and other agile practices to ensure that we are maximizing the impact of our work. But nothing gets me more excited than the idea of "building a deeper bench" for the energy transition.
What led you to this role? Were you always interested in stakeholder engagement and the clean energy transition?
Before joining NREL, I spent nearly 20 years in the nonprofit sector, focusing on community development and policy, with clean energy as a consistent theme. Early in my career, I worked with communities hosting metal mining and oil and gas operations, helping them navigate industry benefits and challenges. Later, I shifted to focus on island and coastal communities, exploring clean energy solutions to reduce costs and enhance community resilience.
Building local capacity to navigate complex change has been the main theme in my career, and wind energy has been a significant part of that work. I’ve helped small island communities explore the potential of community-owned wind power to lower energy bills and enhance energy independence. I worked on a community-owned wind project in Maine and assisted several other communities to evaluate wind technology. Around that same time, I got involved in offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine and New England, supporting primarily small fishing communities to help them understand the potential challenges and opportunities of offshore wind energy and have a voice in the process.
Later, my work expanded to a broader portfolio that included supporting teams working to expand rural broadband access, diversify Maine’s fishing industry, and help communities prepare for sea level rise, all alongside clean energy goals. These experiences highlighted the importance of lifting up local leaders as they grapple with more than one challenge at a time and to place clean energy in a broader context of pressing priorities.
Before I joined NREL, I collaborated with NREL and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on several projects, so I was already familiar with the lab’s capabilities in addressing community-level needs. I came to NREL because I saw an opportunity to apply the lessons I had learned working locally and regionally at a moment when community engagement in the transition and NREL programs were rapidly expanding. I’m proud to work alongside some of the nation’s top technical experts and other skilled community-focused practitioners to ensure our work is accessible, relevant, and meaningful to hardworking community leaders across the country.
What projects make you excited to get out of bed and sign on to work these days?
I spend a lot of time thinking about capacity and partnerships and how they intersect with our wind engagement work. For example, I’ve been thrilled to deepen our connections with the National Sea Grant Offshore Wind Energy liaison team, which supports coastal communities in understanding and engaging with offshore wind. By collaborating with Sea Grant, we can hear firsthand about research and engagement needs at the local level, as well as expand the reach of our resources and convenings, all in the hopes that community leaders can get answers to their questions and feel better prepared to engage in discussions about the technology. Exploring different dimensions of community benefit mechanisms has also been an exciting part of this collaboration, informing the development of the DOE WINDExchange initiative’s Community Benefits Guide and related convenings on this topic. A key part of my work is ensuring that NREL’s research and resources are accessible to Sea Grant staff, enabling them to better support their communities.
Another area of focus is developing partnerships in the distributed wind energy engagement space. Through the Rural and Agricultural Income & Savings from Renewable Energy (RAISE) initiative (a partnership between DOE and the U.S. Department of Agriculture), we’re gearing up to partner with a set of agricultural organizations to assist small- and medium-sized farmers across the country to explore how small- and medium-sized wind turbines can provide them with an additional source of income. Connecting our research to practical, on-the-ground needs is central to what I do.
Beyond wind energy, I’m excited about launching a Regional Navigators Pilot Program in early 2025. This initiative will ultimately provide six regional organizations who have a deep understanding of local needs and context to expand access to technical assistance, funding, and support for communities in their area. These navigators will act as a "pit crew" of sorts, helping community-level entities identify and leverage resources they might otherwise overlook or not have the time to fully evaluate.
What do you hope to celebrate a year from now?
It all comes back to building new partnerships and strengthening the capacity of organizations that understand clean energy from different perspectives. Collaborations with groups like Sea Grant and agricultural organizations will help us tailor our efforts to local needs while empowering these groups to address critical questions, so I look forward to seeing what comes of those collaborations. I also look forward to sharing how these questions and insights are shaping the next phases of our community benefits research that will be published in the coming year.
Also in about a year, we aim to wrap up the Regional Navigators Program pilot, evaluate its impact, and find ways to expand that work. By leveraging each Navigator’s extensive experiences and networks, we know we will be able to strengthen the pathways to making clean energy more accessible and actionable for communities across the country.
What do you do when you’re not supporting stakeholder engagement?
In addition to playing hockey, MacDonald enjoys adventuring along the Maine coast with her husband, son, and daughter. Photo from Suzanne MacDonald, NREL
My kids—both my son and my 8-year-old daughter—keep my husband and me busy. We feel fortunate to live on the beautiful coast of Maine and love to explore the islands. As you know, my son plays hockey too. We’re huge fans of the University of Maine Black Bears hockey team and cheer them on whenever we can. We even build our own backyard rink every winter which creates a lot of joy.
Hockey also reminds me of the importance of taking care of my well-being and pursuing passions outside of work. I try to share this ethos with my colleagues. Whether it’s hockey, pottery, painting, or something else, I try to encourage others to make time for themselves too.
When I’m not playing hockey or running around with my family, I also serve on several local boards. I’m on the board of Efficiency Maine, which administers the state’s energy efficiency and electrification programs. Many people don’t know this, but Maine is the most rural state in the nation, with 61% of people living outside population centers, which presents unique energy challenges. I was the first-ever woman to serve as chair, which is a great honor. Thanks to Efficiency Maine’s leadership, Maine is outperforming other states on many fronts, and I’m proud to play a small but meaningful role in the organization’s success. It’s an important piece of Maine's energy future, and its rural-focused approach is a great example for the rest of the nation.
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