Conferences Need a Conscience

“Conferences need a conscience.”

Those were the words my friend Justin Schott said as we were talking about the importance of community involvement in the MARC conference. MARC is the MidAmerica Regulatory Conference, an annual gathering of utility regulators and industry insiders. It’s happening in Madison, Wisconsin in a couple of weeks.

What does conscience look like at conferences? Let me give you an example.

In 2025, Dr. Frederick Forde from Ft. Wayne, Indiana, attended a session at the MARC conference with a title related to building trust across sectors. At the conclusion of the panel, when the floor was opened for Q&A, Dr. Forde stood to ask the first question: How do you reconcile the fact that the CEO of a local utility in Indiana is making over $12 million a year while so many people in the community are suffering without access to energy?

This is conscience being brought into the conference.

The reaction? Silence.

In fact, the room almost moved on without addressing Dr. Forde’s question. When someone spoke up to ask if anyone was going to answer, we got a familiar line from the utility about how much they care about costs (while the regulator on the panel said nothing).

But conscience isn’t about costs (it is, but it isn’t). It’s about choices that define who matters and how their interests are considered. We accept that a single executive's compensation could wipe out the overdue balances of an entire service territory. We accept that people literally die because they don’t have access to energy while others are in a constant fight to maintain the most basic standard of living, all while those same people are asked to pay for that executive pay in every bill they receive. 

What if we didn’t?

When you bring conscience into the discussion, you can’t move past “how do you justify that amount of executive pay when so many people are struggling to survive” with a shrug. Bringing conscience to conferences means asking questions that challenge the system that sees some people as expendable while excusing corporate greed. It means bearing witness to and confronting the propaganda that is so often displayed at the front of the room where the voices of those most harmed are absent. It recognizes that the largest sponsors of industry conferences are very entities lining up for regulatory approvals for their projects.

We can all bring conscience to conferences in seeing and acknowledging where and how basic humanity is missing from the conversation and following Dr. Forde’s lead by making sure others see it as well. Then we work together to change it.