Born in Camden, New Jersey, a stone’s throw from Philadelphia (“Go Birds!”), Dwayne Pickett always carried infectious energy. While earning a Political Science degree from The Ohio State University, he had the opportunity to serve as an unpaid intern in the state House of Representatives.
“It was actually costing me money,” Pickett says with a smile. “I had to buy a suit, bus tickets to get to work, and I was like ‘Someone help me here. I need to make friends and get out of this.’”
That plea for help was answered when Pickett’s boss connected him with people in the Ohio Senate, who paid their interns. Despite only making $7.50 an hour, “I had my own desk. I worked on one of the first texting and driving laws in the country,” remarks Pickett. “I was working my way up to be Senator one day in my wild dreams.”
It was during this formative time in politics, as the first Renewable Portfolio Standards for clean energy became law, that Pickett found a passion for energy policy. Jade Davis, one of Pickett’s mentors in the Governor’s mansion, invited him to work for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. Despite Pickett’s assumptions about the mundane nature of the utility work, he enjoyed the shift, and the $4 pay raise. As a Junior in college, he moved all his classes to night classes and started working nearly full time at the Commission. Following graduation, and amidst the Great Recession, Pickett recalls how he was the only person from his college friend group that had a job.
However, after the last Democratic governor in Ohio, Ted Strickland, lost re-election to John Kasich in 2010, Pickett and all his government connections were let go. That’s when Pickett’s, now-wife, Tina, gave him the greatest piece of advice that he’d ever received: “How about you ask them not to fire you?”
That night, Pickett put together a binder of information, with everything he knew about energy, energy competition, and clean energy and presented to new leadership why he was the man for the job. Impressed, he was put in charge of energy competition.
Now serving as Vice President of Clean Hydrogen Market Development and Regulatory Advocacy at Constellation, Pickett works to promote Clean Hydrogen, which only emits water vapor, as an alternative to Natural Gas and other fuels that emit carbon dioxide.
After moving to Chicago in the middle of the polar vortex of 2019, and in a search for warmth and community, Pickett joined the RHA Associates Board thanks to a friend’s suggestion and a personal passion around climate change and clean air.
“I knew that about the impacts of particulate matter and pollution on lung health, but I was focused on clean energy policy…then I had kids,” says Pickett.
After Pickett’s son, Lincoln, was born that drive became even more personal. Every time Lincoln got sick, he would struggle to breathe. His breathing would become labored. “Our doctor told us. ‘If this guy starts breathing labored; If you see his collarbones; If you see his ribs checking in, you got to take him to the ER,” says Pickett. “We were like, okay, that’s not going to happen, right? That’s an unrealistic thing to happen. It happened twice. Both when we were out of town.”
A test confirmed Lincoln’s asthma diagnosis. This requires him to take daily steroids through a rescue inhaler.
After informing his family, the pieces started falling into place. Pickett’s dad, who had grown up in South Carolina, had a breathing problem growing up. According to his dad, he grew out of asthma around the age of 10 after they tied him to a tree. While disclosing Lincoln’s condition to his mom, Pickett found out that she also struggled to breathe when she got sick and was prescribed a rescue inhaler because of it. A similar story unfolded after talking to Tina’s mom. And last year, Pickett was also prescribed an inhaler for his spring allergies.
“I always thought that everyone kind of struggles to breathe when there’s pollen around,” Pickett says with a laugh.
While energy policy takes up most of Pickett’s time these days, its anti-smoking campaigns that are some of the most impactful for him.
“Smoking is prevalent in Black culture,” said Pickett, detailing the history of smoking in his family. “My dad quit, my granddad quit, but my aunt died of lung cancer when she was young. She was a two-three carton a day person. And her daughter, who was my favorite person; She was in her 40s and she died of a heart attack. She was a like her mom, two cartons a day.”
Reflecting on Black History Month, Pickett speaks to the power of collective action:
“African American populations see a disproportionate impact of lung ailments and pollution, but just being educated is a big part of what we do here at RHA. Having the ability to connect the dots of what’s happening with your health and what treatments might be. People think of the future as some distant point off, but the future happens every day. Tomorrow is the future; The next minute is the future; The next hour is the future. Everything you do right now is part of the future. And when you’re Black in America, this idea about collective action making an impact can be life or death. In lung health, it is life or death. So, I urge folks that are thinking about doing the Hustle Chicago stair climb, folks that are thinking about contributing to RHA, folks that have kids, that want their kids to be part of a future that has clean air and that’s free of secondhand smoke, you’ve got an opportunity to create that future today. Don’t wait for tomorrow. Don’t wait for someone else to do it right. Make an impact right now.”
Pickett’s leadership philosophy is influenced by one of his heroes, Abraham Lincoln. Flanked by a stacked bookcase and a portrait of the 16th President, Pickett recounts Lincoln’s interactions with General George McClellan, a man who despite his contempt for the President, still received his unwavering support.
“I keep this picture in the office because it reminds me of the type of leader I want to be at work, even when things go bad, or when someone aggrieves me, or aggrieves our company,” says Pickett. “Having humility; Making it about the mission and not about yourself; Being team oriented. Don’t be goal oriented. Be values oriented. If you have the right values as you approach the goal, like being a humble leader, then that will have people buy in to get you that success in the goal.”
During his tenure at ComEd, Pickett led their Hustle team, rallying colleagues to participate in RHA’s signature fundraising stair climb event. When he returned to Constellation, there was no corporate tradition of participating in Hustle Chicago.
“I said, ‘We’re sponsoring it and we’re doing it.’ People were like ‘We’re gonna do what? That’s insane. You’re insane. I don’t want to do it.’ But I’d say to people, ‘A 90-year-old woman with one lung climbs these stairs this every year. This is something you can do’ Within months, our team was fully subscribed, and people were reaching out to share how lung disease had impacted their lives.”
Since 2023, Pickett has served as a member of RHA’s Board of Directors.
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