The U.S. WIN Champion award recognizes an individual who serves as a strong advocate, mentor, collaborator, and sponsor of women in the nuclear industry.
This award was established in 2021 to celebrate the executive advocates who openly support and empower women to achieve their professional goals. This award recognizes an individual who serves as a strong advocate, mentor, collaborator, and sponsor of women in the nuclear industry.
Awardees have demonstrated results in the following areas:
- Actively contributes to the advancement and development of women either inside or outside his/her own organization and publicly celebrates the work and accomplishments of females
- Supports the development of women and empowers them to engage and leverage their influence
- Promotes education, career development, and mentorship for women in his/her organization
- Supports initiatives or programs that enable development and advancement of women in the industry.
U.S. WIN Champion Awardee – Matt Herr
U.S. WIN would like to congratulate Matt Herr, Senior Vice President of Mid-Atlantic Operations for Constellation Energy Generation.
Throughout his career, Matt has been engaged in supporting female-focused groups such as U.S. WIN and Constellation’s Women in Leadership. During Matt’s tenure of supporting U.S. WIN as a Plant Manager and SVP, the Peach Bottom U.S. WIN chapter has been recognized by U.S. WIN with chapter awards for engagement and outreach. Matt has graciously supported development activities for women either through direct participation in panel discussions and activities and by providing sponsorship for employee resource group activities, including U.S. WIN. Different than most leaders who often offer executive support, Matt has tried to put himself into the shoes of the diverse groups and embraced uncomfortable situations, such as being the sole white male among a collection of women or underrepresented groups, allowing himself to be educated and openly challenged on how he “as a white male leader” is ensuring that he is getting results and moving the needle toward a move diverse and inclusive workplace. Matt has allowed these experiences to continue to fuel his commitment, and he consistently shares his learnings from these experiences to elevate the voices of others and influence in the circles in which he leads.
He has set a great example for his male counterparts throughout his career by partnering with and supporting female counterparts, while actively influencing and educating male counterparts to recognize the unique strengths and needs of female talent. Matt has also motivated other male senior leaders to seek out opportunities to become mentors, sponsors, and advocates for women in the organization. Matt has actively recruited and promoted talented female leaders into his team, and he has also held his direct reports accountable for recruiting and developing diverse talent.
Matt established forums within his organization to solicit feedback and input from women and diverse employees to inform the talent development strategies for his team and Constellation. Through these forums, Matt has fostered an environment for all to learn through hearing the unique experiences and challenges faced by under-represented groups in the workplace. This shows his commitment to educating himself and educating his team, so that leaders and employees could better understand how to shape an inclusive culture in the workplace. His leadership in these efforts has created a conversation that had has continued to flourish and remains active today.
Matt was influential in establishing accountability goals for all leaders within the Constellation company that were designed to ensure that each leader was accountable for recruiting, supporting, and developing diverse talent. This has included support for programs that were directly designed to foster advancement of female leaders, such as the NEXT program, where he has directly sponsored two of the six Constellation cohort members since the program’s inception.
Previous Award WINners