3rd-Generation Employee Earns Con Ed's Most Prestigious Honor

by Allan Drury

Just before she began seventh grade, Michelle Hicks went back-to-school shopping with her mother and her three siblings and got a treat she did not expect.

Their mother took the children to a road in Mount Kisco where their father was working on overhead electrical lines for Con Edison.

“I remember when we got there we saw the Con Edison trucks and my mother said ‘There’s your father up there,’” Hicks recalled. “I was so proud to see my dad in action. I thought he was so amazing up on the crossarm in his Con Edison gear.”

More than three decades later, Michelle Hicks knows she has made her parents, Ronald and Muriel Hicks, proud by being chosen a winner of Con Edison’s highest honor, the Living Our Values Award. The award recognizes employees who exemplify the company’s values of customer service, teamwork, excellence and helping their community.

“My parents instilled the importance of family, faith, integrity and hard work in everything that my sisters, MaryEllen (Odell) and Laura, and my brother Brian and I did,” said Hicks. “I am delighted to be honored with the Living Our Values Award because it signifies that I am a reflection of everything my parents taught me. It is because of my parents that I have become the person I am today.”

Hicks, an Energy Services manager at Con Edison’s Rye offices, joined Con Edison in 1983 as a customer service representative in Yonkers.

Her father spent 44 years working in various management positions with Con Edison before retiring in 1999. His mother, Mae Cunniff – who just turned 101 years old – spent more than 30 years with Con Edison, working mostly in customer service roles.

David DeSanti, Con Edison’s general manager of Energy Services, said customer service is always the priority for Hicks.

“When you see Michelle do her job, you know right away that she considers it a privilege to serve our customers reliably and with courtesy,” DeSanti said. “The customers’ interests come first for Michelle in every decision she makes.”

DeSanti said Hicks has been an advocate for women taking leadership roles and has helped many women advance by mentoring and encouraging them.

He recalled how Hicks saw ability in a temporary employee who was doing office work and recommended that she be hired. That woman is now a supervisor in Electric Operations.

Hicks, who grew up in Carmel in Putnam County and still lives there, has been active in the Hamlet of Carmel Civic Association and has volunteered for the association’s annual Holiday on the Lake program.

She has coached softball and basketball for the Carmel Sports Association as well as basketball for the Catholic Youth Organization at St. James the Apostle Church.