When addressing an audience of young women pursuing business careers a few years ago, Theresa Hopkins-Staten ’81 (CLAS), ’84 JD advised that “opportunity doesn’t always come in pretty packages.”

“Opportunities present themselves in different forms at different times and seasons in your life, and most of them require you to dig deep within yourself,” she says. “For me, it’s always meant that if God brings me to it, he certainly will give me what’s necessary to get through it and faithfully do so.”

Asked a few years ago to take on a newly created role at Eversource Energy, Hopkins-Staten embraced the opportunity and was named vice president for corporate citizenship and equity.

“The position was created because of the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Eversource, like many corporations, began to talk about and to think about systemic bias and racism and what it meant for the company, what it meant to its employees,” says Hopkins-Staten, who began her 30-plus-year career there as senior counsel and assistant corporate secretary.

After several years, she was named president of the Eversource Energy Foundation and director of corporate community relations, where her team developed programs to assist customers with limited incomes and invested millions of dollars in Connecticut, western Massachusetts, and New Hampshire on initiatives aligned with the foundation’s focus areas, including community wellness and basic human needs; education, clean energy, and environmental stewardship; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and community, economic, and workforce development.

Read on for more.