COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER 2025

Theresa Hopkins-Staten
President, Eversource Energy Foundation and
Vice President, Corporate Citizenship and Equity

Theresa Hopkins-Staten leads Eversource’s enterprise-wide focus on Pro-Equity, driving foundational understanding to ensure stronger equity, accountability, inclusion, and fairness by employees in their daily practices and interactions with our customers and communities — particularly those that are underserved, economically challenged, and environmentally burdened. She also oversees the company’s foundation, investing in initiatives and organizations aligned with the foundation’s focus areas that help to build a healthier, more sustainable and equitable future for our customers and communities.

Previously, as the Connecticut Director of Regulatory Affairs, she worked with business partners to develop regulatory strategies for procedural hearings and company filings and worked with the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority staff and other consumer advocates and agencies to respond to customer issues and concerns. She also directed the oversight of escalated customer complaints for Eversource in Connecticut and western Massachusetts.

Hopkins-Staten began her career at Eversource in the Legal Department as Senior Counsel and Assistant Corporate Secretary and after several years of practicing law accepted a position in management, becoming President of the company’s foundation and Director of Corporate Community Relations.

She is currently a member of the E-Source Executive Committee, Co-chair of the University of Connecticut African American Alumni Council, a Board member of the iQuilt Partnership, Community Renewal Team, and Diversity Committee of the New England Women in Energy and the Environment.

Hopkins-Staten has received numerous recognitions and awards for her unwavering leadership and dedication to community service, including the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Connecticut 2025 Visionary Leader Award, 2024 Women for Whittier award recipient, having her photograph unveiled in celebration of UConn Law School’s 150th anniversary in a “Gallery of Pioneers” honoring alumni for their community service and professional achievements, receiving the 2018 Connecticut Bar Association “Citizen of the Law Award”, receiving the Inaugural 100 Women of Color Award, Greater Hartford NAACP Queens Gala Award, University of Connecticut Alumni Association Service and Inaugural Diversity Alumni Awards, Urban League of Southern Connecticut African American Woman of Distinction, Connecticut Valley Girl Scouts Woman of Merit Award, Hartford Business Journal Remarkable Women in Business Award, Allstate Insurance Sankofa Award, and the Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Community Service Award.

Hopkins-Staten graduated from the University of Connecticut with a B.A. in Sociology, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. In addition, she earned a Juris Doctor Degree from the University of Connecticut School of Law and received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree (PhD) from Goodwin University.

She was Awarded a Certificate of Completion for the Promoting Racial Equity in the Workplace Program, March 2023, John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Executive Education.