July 22, 2021

Today, the company announced that Soubhagya Parija has been named vice president and Chief Risk Officer, effective Aug. 16. In this role, he will develop and execute a risk program that reflects FirstEnergy’s core values and behaviors; establish standards and implement robust processes and procedures to ensure risk controls are effective and efficient in identifying, mitigating, and preventing risk across the company; and support efforts by the Board of Directors and senior leadership to implement, review and approve the company’s enterprise-wide risk governance and compliance framework.

Soubhagya will report to Jon Taylor, senior vice president and Chief Financial Officer. Soubhagya joins other new members of FirstEnergy’s leadership team that have been added in recent months, including Hyun Park, senior vice president and Chief Legal Officer, Antonio Fernández, vice president and Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, and Michael Montaque, vice president, Internal Audit.

“Soubhagya is a respected leader in the risk management field with demonstrated experience building and leading best-in-class enterprise-risk programs at utilities and other key industries,” said Steve Strah, president and Chief Executive Officer. “His track record of managing risk across large organizations – while embracing an unwavering commitment to integrity and ethical behavior – makes him an excellent addition to our leadership team.”

Soubhagya has decades of risk, compliance, and governance experience and is a former board member of the Risk & Insurance Management Society (RIMS), a global risk management organization. From 2015 to earlier this year, he served as senior vice president and chief risk officer at the New York Power Authority, the nation’s largest state-owned utility. He was recruited to revamp its risk management organization and streamline reporting to the Board of Trustees, ultimately leading a 20-member risk management team that successfully ran enterprise risk, operational risk, risk analytics and insurance programs.

Previously, Soubhagya served as director, Risk Strategy, for Walmart, building and implementing an enterprise-wide regulatory compliance risk management program for the company’s international division. He also was director, Enterprise Risk, at Akron, Ohio-based Signet Jewelers, the world’s largest specialty jewelry retailer, where he designed and built an enterprise-risk management program from the ground up. At Duke Energy, he served as director, Enterprise Risk and Portfolio Analysis, working his way up after being recruited as a management trainee.

​Soubhagya graduated from Jawaharlal Nehru University in India with a master’s degree in Economics. He received his Master of Business Administration and Finance from Indiana University.