What are we looking for?

At the meeting was of course the current slate of officers, Konstantin Papailiou (President), Rannveig Loken (VP Technical) and me (VP Finance), as well as Philippe Adam our Secretary General. New to the meeting was our President’s unique and excellent strategy of having past officers participate as extended leadership adding to the experts on the CIGRE Steering Committee. There were four past Presidents, four past Technical Council Chairs, and one past Treasurer. My goodness, the CIGRE family deliberating together our future made me humble to say the least. Not all was agreed, for if we all agreed, you’d only need one of us, but all was deliberated for the better of CIGRE.

It made me think of another CIGRE moment long ago that expresses well the CIGRE family and the CIGRE way. At every annual meeting of the CIGRE United States National Committee, there was a gentleman, Dale Douglass, who attended and I met personally during my term as USNC President (2010-2016). Then later I heard he passed away. At the time, then CIGRE President Rob Stephen told me that Dale provided comments to a CIGRE document on his deathbed. My goodness the dedication. I asked that for the USNC we name the technical award in his name and it remains to this day. Dale is family to CIGRE.

This is all to say that the CIGRE way is family and is extraordinary for the Common Good. Our mission is to share technical knowledge about our electricity future without bias, commercialism, or politics. As I said many times, sitting at the global table of CIGRE is honorable and directly relevant to society’s betterment and to our own professional development.

So back to the conversation at dinner. I wrote a book that took six years in the making that was published on Amazon.com in January 2026. It is titled “What Are We Looking For?” All my proceeds go to charity so do not take this as a sales pitch. I want to relate my emotions at the CIGRE Steering Committee that makes CIGRE the best with a few relevant excerpts from my book.

My book is about how my faith intersects with my 32-year elected political office in the United States. Yes, there is family in the book, especially my wife Fernanda. We are married 52 years in June this year and counting. Relating to CIGRE, there is also mention about how I became an electrical engineer and how our profession and our CIGRE relates to the Common Good. Let me excerpt a few areas that relate to CIGRE. Yes, the book is autobiographical as well.

Excerpts from "What are we looking for?" by Michael Heyeck

Public service includes CIGRE

Beyond the traditional view of an elected official, I consider my professional career with American Electric Power (AEP) and my business in retirement as public service as well. Working for a company and my services in retirement provide a foundational value to society, as electricity is fundamental to public service. So are many other professions, but I find it useful to think of it that way. You’ll see parallel threads on this as well in this book. Yes, I was paid for my profession, but my point is to think about public service more broadly. I also consider my participation in nonprofits as public service. The point is that public service comes in many forms and does not need to be a politically elected office.

Why engineering?

The moon landing of 1969 played no small part in my engineering aspirations. I was fascinated with the space program and aircraft in general, being influenced by the fact that my boyhood home was near the flight paths to Newark [New Jersey] Liberty Airport. You can almost walk to the airport from my boyhood home.

It was the space program and the advancement of aircraft and spacecraft that led me to the chosen field of engineering. I wanted to be a teacher early on, but my mother said, “you should be an engineer.”

It was more than a nudge by her; it was a look. I took that look seriously and went into engineering. She was right, as she knew I loved math and science. I eventually was led to power system engineering with electricity, my calling and my first public service.

I was fascinated with space and rockets. In my youth I wondered how a rocket could propel itself in space as in a vacuum. Then I read Arthur C. Clarke, found the answer, and use it today as trivia. The rocket propels against itself and accelerates as the fuel is depleted. When you watch videos of rocket launches you can see how they accelerate just past the tower.

This initial fascination led to an excursion with Einstein’s theory of relativity. Einstein was a fascinating individual and had to visualize his theories. From his boring job at the Lucerne, Switzerland Patent Office, he wondered about the relative nature of himself at the window, an observer on a train platform, and a person on the train all looking at a clock. This was simple yet complex. He further found that, in a solar eclipse, light would bend. He visualized this and measured it. This sort of thinking illustrates one of my favorite quotes from him: “imagination is more important than knowledge.” He had to visualize concepts to further his work, but he had problems visualizing quantum mechanics. 

My mission statement

I was generally not one for picking up “self-help” books during my career, but I did like Stephen R. Covey’s books. The first one I read was The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Habit two was “Begin with the end in mind.” Maybe the best way of thinking about habit two is as simple as “What would you like your children to say for your eulogy?”

That, in effect, is my mission statement, and it relates to “What are you looking for?”

My mission statement is simply to be a good husband, father, friend, and person. I want my children to say after I’m gone, “He was a good Dad. He did the best he could, and that’s good enough for me.”

It takes a team to win a CIGRE award

[Addressing public opposition to 765kV] I asked our team how we could develop a more compact double-circuit line design at lower voltage and higher power capacity that could be used with the same land as higher voltage lines. In addition to easing concerns of the public, I wanted AEP to advance a bold new line design technology that could be patented. 

A young civil engineer developed a more aesthetic appearance for our lines with a beautiful steel arch to hang them. (Well, they are beautiful to me, as I love transmission line designs.) She and the electrical engineer won an award and patent for their design. I could not be prouder of the two of them. This is what excites me in my leadership career: technology advancement and helping others grow in their careers. [I received notification from then President Rob Stephen that the design won a CIGRE award at an event in South Korea.]

My CIGRE entry

Today, I’m traveling the world for CIGRE, a nonprofit trade organization based in Paris since 1921. CIGRE focuses on power system expertise, sharing knowledge on “sustainable electricity for all.” It was a slogan I uttered in 2016 at my first meeting of the international steering committee. From that one phrase, I was appointed marketing committee chair and helped develop CIGRE’s modern branding campaign. I then chaired their strategic planning exercise for the 2030 horizon. As of this writing, I’m still serving as CIGRE’s vice president of finance and treasurer, a role I have held since 2020. In 2025, at the inspiration of the CIGRE President, I helped develop the CIGRE Innovation and Education Fund, an endowment to continue CIGRE’s mission in perpetuity as an unbiased, apolitical, nonprofit for global technology knowledge sharing for power system expertise.

To conclude, I cannot be happier to be affiliated with CIGRE. You are family. Together we have accomplished a lot, and the future will be even better for society’s benefit and the Common Good and One Grid.