Jake McConnell says; “Successfully developing, constructing and operating power assets is fundamental to a country’s economic growth. Governments, families and businesses need reliable power supplies to flourish. Actis manages this aspect extremely well.”
A six-year service in the US Navy and a stint with the Coastal Corporation allowed Jake to see many parts of the world and ignited an interest in high-growth markets. Early in his career, he worked on large nuclear projects across the US but developing a gas-fired power generation project in Baluchistan, Pakistan in 1995 led him to the growth market energy space. “Connecting a new asset to the grid is tremendously satisfying”.
Jake has 35 years’ experience in the power industry and 15 years’ experience working in growth markets. Contrasting his experience in high-growth markets where each power generation plant is critical to the grid, he says “Project management and construction is an entirely different process in these markets to more developed countries like the US. Successfully developing, constructing and operating assets is fundamental to a country’s economic growth. Governments, families and businesses need reliable power supplies to flourish. Actis manages this aspect well, its track record of developing and delivering energy assets for the citizens of these countries drew me to my role.”
Jake McConnell joined Actis in September 2015 from Globeleq, the leading African power generation platform that Actis grew over eight years and sold in September 2015. During his 12 year tenure with Globeleq Jake helped Actis execute its energy fund business plan, managing the construction process – on time and on budget – of several power projects in the Globeleq Africa and Globeleq Mesoamerica Energy platforms.
Prior to Globeleq, Jake managed technical development and construction projects in Pakistan, Aruba and the US with the Coastal Corporation and El Paso Energy. He also worked on US Nuclear projects for Tennessee Valley Authority, Bechtel Corporation and Mississippi Power & Light. As part of the US Navy Nuclear power program he followed an engineering curriculum concentrated on nuclear physics, thermodynamics, chemistry and electrical engineering, in addition to operation and maintenance of pressurised water nuclear reactor facilities.
