Areas of Expertise

Jennifer Harrington is an accomplished operations and finance executive. She is currently the Chief Operating Officer at the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority where she has P&L responsibility with the CFO as she is responsible for all revenue generating functions within the Authority and leads, with management authority, the majority of the staff.

Jennifer has robust operations oversight experience across varied business functions ranging from engineering to gas pipe installation and regulatory compliance to community outreach. In addition, she is skilled at connecting the dots in an organization to set company goals and direction but also to analyze and identify trend insights to find strengths and weaknesses in an organization. She has expertise in risk management, regulatory compliance, and strategic planning in the utilities industry and in finance functions. Jennifer has experience in emergency and crisis management in both physical work and financial services.

As Chief Operating Officer, Jennifer is responsible for running the Authority profitably and providing strategic direction that aligns with the mission of the organization. She works directly with the board members to ensure governance guidance is translated into strategy and direction and then successfully implemented. As Director of the Natural Gas business at Alliant Energy, she had P&L responsibility resulting in increasing the return on equity for that business line and growing the customer base. This opportunity arose from Jennifer’s previous work with that board in managing and facilitating the strategic planning process and analyzing market information that resulted in major change to the strategic direction of the company.

Her career contains multiple opportunities where her qualitative and quantitative analysis and research-based conclusions have created new business functions and opportunities, and innovative organizational relationships. As an independent consultant, she worked with the board of investors to design and build required corporate functions necessary to operate a regional utility business divested from a significantly larger utility.

Jennifer served on the South Central Library System Board of Trustees, an entity organized under Wisconsin Statute and established to coordinate and improve library services, as President, Vice President and board member. In addition, Jennifer currently serves as Treasurer of the Regent Market Cooperative board where she is guiding the organization through a critical financing initiative to establish sound financial stability to manage long-term cooperative debt and strategic needs.

Jennifer holds a bachelor’s degree in Finance and a master’s degree in Business Administration from The Ohio State University. She loves food, doing just about anything outside and her rescue dog. She is a happy transplant to Madison, Wisconsin but remains a Buckeye fan.