Beth McFarland was named to her current position in January 2020. She has more than 25 years of experience in the electric utility industry.
McFarland joined LG&E and KU in 1997 as an engineer in power delivery. She previously worked three co-ops at Bellsouth Communications and several years at Ford Motor Company’s Kentucky truck plant, where she held positions in both engineering and operations.
In 2007, after advancing through various engineering positions with LG&E and KU, McFarland was promoted to the position of lead engineer on the Louisville Arena Project, completing engineering and design of a major LG&E substation in downtown Louisville. In 2010, McFarland was promoted to manager of Substation Construction and Maintenance where she managed personnel and activities in Electric Distribution Operations. Her duties included substation construction and maintenance, field operations, transformer services, and substation engineering and design. In 2013, McFarland was promoted to director of Asset Management for Electric Distribution Operations where she directed strategic, tactical and business plan activities for the company’s electric system engineering and planning, asset strategy, substation engineering and design, asset information, distribution operations support, and electric substation construction and maintenance. In 2017, McFarland was named vice president-Customer Services, in which she had wide range of responsibilities for the customer relationship including metering, customer call center operations, marketing, revenue collection, economic development, customer renewable energy offerings, electric vehicle charging strategy, corporate security, business continuity and overall energy efficiency operations.
In her current role, McFarland is responsible for the safe, reliable and strategic operation of LG&E and KU's electric transmission systems and for effectively meeting evolving operational and regulatory demands. Her responsibilities include overseeing line and substation engineering and construction, system planning and operations, policy and tariff administration, and reliability compliance.
McFarland holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Louisville J. B. Speed Scientific School and is a graduate of the Louisville Ignite class of 2008. She also completed the Executive Education Program at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in 2017 and is a graduate of the Leadership Kentucky class of 2019.
