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When Kassy Hart was a teenager, she thought the life of an engineer was a bit like a newspaper cartoon she used to read. “You’re just sitting at a desk not talking to anyone, and this boss will yell at you for no reason,” says Hart, who is now a data center and hydrogen commercialization manager at GE Vernova. “That was before I got to design something.”

Growing up near the shores of Lake Michigan in the 1990s, Lisa Berry didn’t harbor engineering ambitions. But everything changed when she joined her high school’s robotics group. “My brother had been a member, and it looked pretty cool,” remembers Berry, who is now GE Vernova’s decarbonization and data center technology director for the Americas. One of the coolest things was the chance to learn from one of the program’s founders, Natalie Lowell, a local manufacturing engineer who mentored the budding roboticists.

In an increasingly electrifying world, efficiency is crucial. The global energy sector is adopting HVDC (high-voltage direct current) technology for its superior capability and cost-effectiveness over long distances. HVDC systems can transmit more than three times as much power as alternating current (AC), with up to 50% fewer losses.

Let’s say you’re a developing country whose power grid is saddled with inefficient oil-fired power generation and you need to electrify quickly to meet the needs of a fast-growing economy. You might build out your solar, wind, battery storage, natural gas, or all of the above — but who can you call for help and advice? Over the past 100 years, the team at GE Vernova’s Consulting Services has leveraged the company’s technical expertise to offer exactly such large-scale solutions to states, city-states, and even entire nations.

How does a rock climber from Chile wind up working in America’s intellectual capital, Cambridge, Massachusetts? For Matias Opazo, a pivotal meeting last year with GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik sparked the beginning of a new career chapter.

Last week, at Climate Week NYC, GE Vernova was an influential voice in shaping the global conversation on smarter, more sustainable energy — highlighting the need for breakthrough solutions and urging bold leadership to meet accelerating demand. While the UN General Assembly drew headlines across town, GE Vernova contributed to the “Power On” theme at Climate Week by announcing recent advances in nuclear and carbon capture, and promoting a message of optimism, urgency, and collaboration.

Axios House: Moving the Needle

Data centers, those serried racks of servers, storage devices, and network hardware that keep the internet humming, are dominating the conversation about future energy demand.

The scene: northwest Germany. A quiet farm. Enter a university student with a question that would shape her future. “Hey, when are you getting a wind turbine?”

It was a casual moment, but for Julia Vey, then an apprentice at GE Vernova in nearby Salzbergen, it planted a seed. Back in the early 2000s, wind power was still small-scale, and large turbines were rare. But Julia was fascinated — and determined to be part of what she sensed was coming.

In Lahore, Pakistan, there is a seven-year-old girl with an amateur interest in gas turbine maintenance. Over the past few months, Waqas Ahmad, a senior customer portfolio manager at GE Vernova, has given his curious daughter a layman’s introduction to heavy-duty turbine inspections.

A bolt of lightning crackles through the air. An instant later there’s a flash, followed by an ominous sizzle: the lightning struck a powerline. Normally, you’d run inside and call the electric company.