Immediately after news broke of the Supreme Court ruling against Trump’s tariffs, we reached out to several senior executives across power generation to get their unfiltered reactions. The responses were candid:

• “Ha! Waiting to see what drops next.” — CEO, IPP
• “It’s possible it gets replaced by something else.” — CDO, IPP
• “I’m sure the administration will find another pathway to impose tariffs.” — CDO, IPP
• “He’ll use other legal means to impose tariffs.” — CEO, BESS
• “Still digesting.” — CEO, IPP
• “I think it will be litigated in some form.” — Partner, Infrastructure Fund

In other words: no victory laps.

Most power generation executives assume this is a pause, not an endpoint, and that trade policy uncertainty will remain part of the operating environment. As one executive put it; “…people want so much power that they’ll pay whatever it costs to get it. It’d be nice if we could all agree on what it costs.”

That said, the broader fundamentals remain compelling.

Rising electricity demand, aging grid infrastructure, and still-supportive capital markets continue to create powerful tailwinds for power generation and digital infrastructure. At the same time, utilities are increasingly oversaturated with interconnection requests, and, in many cases, lack both the development capacity and institutional appetite to bring new generation online at the pace required.

Still, high tide rises all ships. The question isn’t whether growth continues, but who is best positioned to execute in an environment defined by volatility, constraint, and opportunity.

About Joe Amara Executive Search

Joe Amara Executive Search is a boutique executive search firm focused on power generation and digital infrastructure, serving independent power producers, developers, private equity backed platforms, and infrastructure investors across the United States. The firm specializes in c-suite, senior leadership, and highly technical roles critical to scaling complex energy and data center platforms.

Chicago, IL — [February 23, 2026] — Joe Amara Executive Search is pleased to announce the successful placement of a Vice President of Project Development East for a leading utility-scale power generation and energy storage platform in the United States.

The newly appointed executive will oversee a multi-gigawatt, technology-agnostic development portfolio spanning SERC, MISO, PJM, NYISO, and ISO-NE, with responsibility across wind, solar, PVS, and standalone battery storage projects. The role is responsible for leading geographically distributed project development teams.

This placement supports the company’s continued growth through a combination of disciplined project development and strategic project acquisitions, as it advances late-stage development assets toward financing, notice to proceed, and construction across multiple power markets.

“Vice President level development leadership has become increasingly critical as portfolios scale in size, complexity, and capital intensity,” said Joe Amara, President of Joe Amara Executive Search. “This search required a leader with deep multi-ISO experience, strong execution discipline, and the ability to integrate teams, assets, and capital strategies across technologies. We’re proud to have supported our client on such a strategically important hire.”

Joe Amara Executive Search specializes in c-suite and senior leadership placements across power generation, energy storage, and digital infrastructure, working at the intersection of development, capital markets, and large-scale asset execution.

About Joe Amara Executive Search

Joe Amara Executive Search is a boutique executive search firm focused on power generation and digital infrastructure, serving independent power producers, developers, private equity backed platforms, and infrastructure investors across the United States. The firm specializes in c-suite, senior leadership, and highly technical roles critical to scaling complex energy and data center platforms.

Chicago, IL — [February 2, 2026] — Joe Amara Executive Search (JAES), a boutique retained executive search firm specializing in power generation and digital infrastructure leadership, announced the successful placement of a Chief Development Officer (CDO) for a confidential U.S. power generation platform developing a multi-gigawatt portfolio of greenfield and brownfield gas-fired generation assets across multiple competitive markets.

The appointed executive will lead the full lifecycle development of combined-cycle, simple-cycle, and cogeneration projects, including project siting, fatal-flaw analysis, interconnection strategy, permitting, and EPC/OEM engagement, while aligning asset configurations with the technical and reliability requirements of hyperscalers, high-load customers, and merchant market participants.

“This placement represents the new reality in the U.S. power market, the best development platforms are now being built around disciplined execution, grid access, and customer-driven reliability,” said Joe Amara, President of Joe Amara Executive Search. “The race to secure scalable power for digital infrastructure is reshaping development strategy, and we’re proud to support clients who are building winning platforms in this environment.”

JAES continues to expand its work at the intersection of power generation and digital infrastructure, supporting clients with leadership placements across:

• Thermal generation (CCGT, CHP, peakers)
• Renewable development and storage
• Data center power strategy and BYOP execution
• Midstream-enabled fuel strategy
• Interconnection and transmission development leadership

About Joe Amara Executive Search

Joe Amara Executive Search (JAES) is a Chicago-based retained executive search firm focused on leadership placements across power generation, digital infrastructure, and emerging energy markets. JAES partners with IPPs, developers, and infrastructure-backed platforms to recruit senior executives who can execute complex, capital-intensive projects at the pace required by today’s load growth and grid constraints.

Media / Inquiries:
Joe Amara
President, Joe Amara Executive Search
info@joeamara.com | 312-407-7191
joeamara.com

Chicago, IL – January 14, 2026 – Joe Amara Executive Search is pleased to announce the successful placement of a Vice President of Engineering with a rapidly growing digital infrastructure company developing utility-scale power generation co-located with newly built data centers.

The platform is advancing several gigawatts of projects across its development pipeline, with a major asset entering construction this year. The model reflects a significant shift in global infrastructure strategy: power generation and data center development are no longer operating independently—they are being designed, financed, and executed in parallel.

The newly appointed Vice President of Engineering will play a critical role in aligning generation design, interconnection strategy, construction readiness, and capital deployment timelines. As hyperscale demand accelerates and grid constraints tighten, engineering leadership has become central to investment outcomes.

“Data centers are now shaping generation strategy, siting decisions, and capital allocation,” said Joe Amara, President of Joe Amara Executive Search. “We’re proud to partner with clients building integrated platforms that require leaders capable of navigating complex power markets while executing at speed.”

Joe Amara Executive Search partners with private equity firms, infrastructure funds, independent power producers, and developers operating at the intersection of power generation and digital infrastructure. The firm specializes in placing senior leaders who thrive in complex, capital-intensive environments.

As energy security and digital growth continue to converge, leadership remains the defining variable.

About Joe Amara Executive Search
Joe Amara Executive Search is a boutique retained executive search firm focused on leadership placements across power generation, digital infrastructure, and emerging energy sectors. Headquartered in Chicago, the firm partners with investors and operators building the next generation of infrastructure.

Media Contact;

info@joeamara.com

www.joeamara.com

We add value by attracting the valued.

We are pleased to share the successful completion of a search for a Senior Manager, Strategic Finance on behalf of a private-equity backed IPP start-up focused on providing dispatchable generation assets for C&I and utilities.

This placement supports the client’s continued growth and capital-markets strategy as they advance a portfolio of large-scale, utility-grade generation projects across the United States. The newly appointed leader brings deep experience across project finance, corporate finance, and FP&A, with a demonstrated ability to build and manage bankable financial models for complex energy infrastructure assets.

In this role, the executive will work closely with the CEO and financial sponsors to support capital planning, project financing, and investment decision-making. Responsibilities include developing detailed project-finance models, evaluating tax-equity and debt structures under current IRA programs, and supporting corporate forecasting and reporting as the organization scales.

This search reflects a broader trend we continue to see across the energy and infrastructure markets: private-equity-backed platforms increasingly require senior finance talent that can operate at both the project and corporate levels, particularly in capital-intensive, dispatchable generation businesses where bankability and structuring discipline are critical.

We appreciate the trust our client placed in Joe Amara Executive Search and are grateful for the collaboration throughout the process. Congratulations to both the client and the successful candidate on this exciting next chapter.

If you are building or scaling a finance organization within power generation, energy infrastructure, or adjacent digital-infrastructure assets and would like to discuss leadership needs or market insights, we welcome the conversation.

This article was written by Ed Ballard. See original article here.

Washington is funding a boom in clean-energy investment. How will businesses find the people to do the work?

For the job market, the Inflation Reduction Act “was just gasoline on the fire,” said Joe Amara, a recruiter who finds executives for clean-energy companies. “Midlevel directors are getting paid what senior VPs were getting paid just a few years ago,” he said.

Despite recent layoffs at big tech companies, the U.S. labor market is still tight. At 3.7%, unemployment is just above the pre-Covid low. And demand for clean-energy jobs has been outpacing the broader job market since 2019, according to a LinkedIn survey published early this year.

It found that the number of job ads seeking green skills, such as the ability to service a solar farm or conduct an environmental audit, is rising faster than the number of people touting those skills on their profiles.

Shortages of key personnel are pushing up labor costs, renewable-energy executives say. One especially shallow pool of talent is the market for financiers who understand tax incentives.

The Biden administration’s clean-energy ambitions revolve around supercharging this byzantine system. That turns out to be pretty complicated. Tax credits for wind and solar projects have been extended, and others have been introduced, but some important details about how it will all work haven’t been confirmed, as I report for the Journal today.

Clean-energy executives and their advisers generally agree the market will somehow figure out how to make the most of all the new and improved credits. It’s free money, after all. But how long that takes—and how valuable the market ultimately becomes—isn’t clear.

Most likely the renewable-energy financing business will continue evolving the way it has over the last 15 years or so, a process of trial and error to see which financing structures work best. Good news for tax experts.

In the U.S., renewable-energy projects get a large chunk of their financing through what’s called tax equity. This complex financing setup, which sprang up because developers generally don’t have large or stable enough taxable earnings to monetize all the tax breaks they’re eligible for, usually involves a bank owning a stake in a project in exchange for the stream of tax credits.

This is a large market, worth $20 billion or so a year, and it’s dominated by a handful of big banks. That’s because the necessary legal knowledge is expensive to acquire, and acquiring it could be a bad investment—there is a risk that the market will go away if tax credits aren’t renewed every few years.

That’s one reason why the talent pool is shallow. Now, with investors lining up, the ability to structure clean-energy investments is at a premium.

“We have tried to hire a couple of senior structured-finance folks and the salaries that we’re being told they’re being offered are more than my CFO makes,” Scott Wiater, chief executive of solar developer Standard Solar, told me.

He predicted that this situation will turn out to be a short-term blip, a sign of the exuberant mood engendered by the most significant clean-energy legislation in U.S. history. But, for better or worse, the fate of America’s energy transition hangs on financial engineering as much as on engineering of the electrons-and-chemicals kind.

The Executive Skillset for the Next Generation of Infrastructure
What AI infrastructure should really be looking for in their execs

The future of AI infrastructure will not be built by technology alone. It will be built by leaders and savvy subject matter experts who can navigate the complexities of power generation.

For over a decade, shifting policy environments have reshaped power generation, both domestically and internationally. In Ohio, 2014 setback regulations erased billions in planned wind investment. In Mexico, abrupt decentralization followed by re-centralization disrupted market confidence. And in 2025, sudden Federal policy reversals have again upended utility-scale wind and solar overnight.

These dramatic policy shifts have given way to digital infrastructure’s most critical bottleneck: available power. For years, data centers could simply “plug into the grid.” That era is over. Growth increasingly requires co-located generation and battery storage. Developing such assets demands decades of expertise. Which is why digital infrastructure developers must recruit seasoned power generation executives and SMEs to drive expansion.

Data center developers must navigate serious complexities to build power generation assets, all of which are highly technical and market-specific. They must consider questions such as: What is permissible in one market versus another? How and where do you connect to the grid? What are the best technologies to deploy? Furthermore, across all asset classes, EPC execution remains a daunting challenge.

Adding to the challenge, power-gen executives and SMEs were once sought exclusively by IPPs and utilities, a relatively contained field of competition. Today, long-haul transmission developers and Big Tech have entered the hunt, further depleting an already limited supply of talent.

That’s where Joe Amara Executive Search comes in. We specialize in connecting power generation expertise with digital infrastructure ambition, ensuring our clients have the leadership teams and SMEs capable of navigating complexity and driving growth in this new era.

***
Joe Amara Executive Search represents companies in power generation, transmission, and digital infrastructure, with a focus on leadership and niche technical hires.

Should AI Write Your Resume?
How to strike a balance between human and bot.

AI’s role in resume writing is being hotly debated. Like many subjects, extremes are unwise to subscribe to. Harmony between bot and human is essential, so here’s a bit of guidance to help.

Proponents of AI resume creation claim it’s about keeping up with the times. HR departments are using AI to source candidates, leaving applicants feeling like AI resumes are crucial. Whereas opponents may dismiss an AI resume because it’s demonstrating a lack initiative and hides one’s true capabilities.

Using AI to completely create your resume is not advisable.

Why?

Many applicants are uploading a job description alongside an old resume, and directing AI create a perfect match. This sounds like an amazing idea, until you realize applicants are doing it en masse. Couple this with ‘easy apply’ options on LinkedIn, inboxes are flooded with thousands of eerily similar resumes. Logically, the ‘keywords’ you were trying to capitalize on became obsolete with the avalanche of ‘qualified’ resumes.

Another item to consider is how you setting expectations with your potential employer. This cannot be underestimated. Frustrations arise when elegant AI drafted resumes and emails lead to an interview with a candidate whose communication abilities fall far short of their AI-persona.

What do to?

Have your resume proofread by both a human and an AI tool. Humans can spot nuances that technology often misses, while AI can highlight formatting improvements and obvious corrections. For example, this very paragraph was refined with AI, whereas the previous paragraphs were not. Notice a difference?

***

Joe Amara Executive Search represents companies in power generation, transmission, and digital infrastructure, with a focus on leadership and niche technical hires.

To learn more, please visit us at joeamara.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Joe Amara Executive Search Announces Placement of Vice President of Business Development for Leading Independent Power Producer

Chicago, IL – September, 3 2025 – Joe Amara Executive Search is pleased to announce the successful placement of a Vice President of Business Development with a leading independent power producer.

In this role, the executive will lead all business development and project development activities for natural gas–fired generation assets nationwide. With a proven track record spanning several gigawatts of completed renewables, thermal, and storage projects across multiple U.S. markets, he brings the deep expertise and execution capability needed to drive meaningful growth.

He will play a critical role in shaping the company’s regulatory strategy, project development, and M&A efforts, ensuring it is well positioned to expand its thermal generation portfolio while navigating an evolving energy landscape.

“We are proud to have partnered with our client on this important search and are confident this placement will make a significant impact on advancing their growth strategy,” said Joe Amara, President of Joe Amara Executive Search.

At Joe Amara Executive Search, we specialize in identifying top-tier leadership across power generation, transmission, and digital infrastructure. This latest placement reflects our continued success in supporting companies that are building the infrastructure of the future.

About Joe Amara Executive Search
Joe Amara Executive Search is a boutique retained executive search firm focused on leadership placements across power generation, digital infrastructure, and emerging energy sectors. Headquartered in Chicago, the firm partners with private equity investors, independent power producers, and developers to deliver transformative leadership talent.

We add value by attracting the valued.

Media Contact:
Joe Amara Executive Search
ino@joeamara.com
www.joeamara.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Joe Amara Executive Search Places Sr. Director of Development at Leading Power & Data Infrastructure Firm

Chicago, IL – June 13^th 2025 – Joe Amara Executive Search is proud to announce the successful placement of a Senior Director of Development at a forward-thinking power and infrastructure company focused on natural gas-fired generation co-located with data centers.

The newly appointed executive will be responsible for leading the development of firm generation projects across the United States, supporting critical digital infrastructure with highly reliable and scalable power solutions. This placement marks a key milestone in the client’s growth strategy and their mission to meet the rising energy demands of data-intensive operations.

“We’re honored to have partnered with a client at the forefront of modern infrastructure, and we’re thrilled to have identified a leader with the vision and expertise to drive high-impact development efforts,” said Joe Amara, Founder and Managing Partner of Joe Amara Executive Search. “This role represents the intersection of energy security and digital growth—two of the most vital challenges of our time.”

Joe Amara Executive Search specializes in recruiting executive and senior leadership talent across power generation, digital infrastructure, and grid development. With a track record of success in highly technical and emerging markets, the firm continues to support companies shaping the next generation of energy and infrastructure.

About Joe Amara Executive Search:
Joe Amara Executive Search is a retained executive search firm focused on placing senior talent in the power, energy, and infrastructure sectors. Headquartered in Chicago, the firm partners with companies across North America to build high-performing leadership teams in renewables, firm generation, transmission, and digital infrastructure.

Contact:
Joe Amara
Founder & President
info@joeamara.com
www.joeamara.com