Deneen Donnley Guides Con Edison’s Legal Team with a Steady Hand

Deneen Donnley leads the legal arm of one of the country’s largest publicly traded energy distributors at a time when utilities are grappling with sharply rising costs, frustrated consumers and regulatory hurdles.

It helps that she has established a reputation as a commanding presence who ably manages the pressures of being senior vice president and general counsel of Consolidated Edison Inc., which has a roughly $35.1 billion market cap.

Donnley has a long to-do list with the utility, which serves 10 million people as the major power distributor for New York City, Westchester, Orange, and Rockland counties. But one issue stands apart.

“Right now, if you pick up a newspaper, affordability is probably the biggest challenge we have,” Donnley said.

Con Edison, helmed by CEO Timothy P. Cawley, had recently proposed to the New York State Public Service Commission a one-time 11.4% rate increase for residential customers and a 13.4% increase on gas bills starting in January 2026, saying it needed funds to strengthen infrastructure.

But after pushback from elected officials, their constituents and the commission, the company on Nov. 6 reached an agreement with New York City and Westchester County municipalities to roll back that request. Now Con Edison is proposing a three-year plan for New York City and Westchester with a 2.8% increase for electric bills and 2% for gas each year over three years.

“My time is deeply involved in the rate case and spending a lot of time on our investment plan and supporting the company in that, and supporting the enterprise in whatever it is trying to achieve,” Donnley said in a recent interview in the company’s building overlooking Union Square in Manhattan.

“Affordability, litigation generally, and the clean energy transition. The legal issues are similar to what you would find at many utilities,” she said.

While Con Edison receives a lot of the public’s ire for rising energy bills, the company sold off its electrical power plants in the late 1990s and is now mainly a distributor—not a generator—of electricity and gas.

“We are certainly concerned that people can afford their utility bills but our ability to control that is limited,” Donnley said.

At Con Edison, Donnley is in charge of a legal and compliance department of about 220 lawyers, including an in-house litigation team. Other staff attorneys manage transactions, ethics, and regulatory matters. The company employs about 15,000, according to its most recent SEC filing.

Kimberly Strong, vice president, chief ethics and compliance officer and Donnley’s direct report, when asked to use one word to describe Donnley called her “collaborative.”

“Up, across, and also down, she has great working relationships with everyone,” she said, from the CEO, to the board of directors and others in senior leadership.

Donnley said when the company uses outside firms, they include Troutman Pepper Locke, Thompson Hine, Seyfarth Shaw and Jackson Lewis, and for mass torts and other “very significant matters,” Davis Polk & Wardwell.

“We are very price sensitive,” she said. “We are using customers’ money,” she said.

Deep Experience

A New York City native, Donnley joined Con Edison as a senior vice president in October 2019 and was named general counsel in January 2020, after nine years at financial services company USAA in San Antonio, Texas. At USAA she was executive vice president, chief legal officer, general counsel and secretary in the four years preceding her coming to Con Edison. Earlier, Donnley managed legal and compliance matters for ING Direct USA.

Donnley said she faced some of the biggest challenges in her career during the financial crisis starting in 2008 because of the general upheaval and introduction of new regulations like Dodd-Frank resulting from it.

Both USAA and Con Edison attracted her, she said, because “each organization has been mission-aligned.”

Herman E. Bulls, international director and vice chairman, Americas, at commercial real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc., who served with Donnley on the USAA board during her tenure, said she had “towering strength.”

“She can be dispassionate about the issue, not get emotionally involved in it, and she has the ability to articulate very complex situations in a manner that is understandable while yet still articulating what the risk may be,” Bulls said.

“I would put her in the top of general counsels I have worked with,” he said.

Donnley also serves on the board of Fordham Law Alumni Association and co-chairs the National Bar Association’s national convention slated for July 2026. She also serves on the boards of the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity and Piedmont Realty Trust.

Pamela Maraldo, CEO of Girls Inc. of New York City, where Donnley is vice chair of the nonprofit’s board, said: “She is a commanding presence and naturally suited to leadership roles and speaks with a high level of expertise and authority. She knows all the key players in the city and is mission-driven and has a good heart that is really invested in our mission and helping the girls throughout our city.”

A Bronx Tale

Donnley was reared in the Bronx’s sprawling Co-Op City development, by a single mother who was a New York City correction officer.

She attended public schools and graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Inspired by jury duty in the Bronx, she enrolled at Fordham Law School, where she earned her J.D. in 1992. She began her legal career as a staff attorney for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in Washington, DC, and was a banking attorney at Pepper Hamilton (now Troutman Pepper Locke.)

Donnley has the reputation of being unafraid to discuss difficult topics on boards, though colleagues and friends say she is always diplomatic.

“She’s pleasant, thoughtful, considerate and can put the hammer down if she has to in terms of looking at an issue and again being dispassionate about what needs to happen and what’s in the best interest of the organization,” Bulls said.