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Shelley Paik, Lisa Fannin Win 2024 D’Avanzo Communications Leadership Award

Megan McKoy-Noe, CCC

Utility Pioneers Shelley Paik and Lisa Fannin were named Pioneers’ 2024 D’Avanzo Communications Leadership Award winners at Pioneer’s Cooperative Member Meeting June 20.

“Both Shelley and Lisa set a high bar for cooperative communication,” said Pioneer CEO Michael Shepard. “They devoted themselves to their local and national communities, looking for ways to strengthen our shared story—often without praise for their impact.”

Shelley, Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative’s public affairs specialist, joined her co-op shortly after her Hawaiian island community bought the infrastructure from an investor-owned utility, turning the utility into a cooperative. Over 20 years she’s taken lessons learned through the experience and become an award-winning leader in the electric co-op industry.

Lisa, director of marketing at Eastern Kentucky’s Mountain Rural Telephone Cooperative, spent the last 25 years connecting her community through stories. She’s helped launch new storytelling tactics and worked to earn national recognition as a Smart Rural Community, despite serving some of the most economically distressed counties in America.

Pioneer’s D’Avanzo Communications Leadership Award honors individuals for outstanding service to Utility Pioneers. Nominations were open through the end of May, with a focus on:

  • Communication skills
  • Industry leadership
  • Mentorship
  • Community service

“This award, named for our dear friend Dave D’Avanzo, recognizes unsung heroes—the women and men who work tirelessly to create a better community for all of us,” Shepard said.

Both honorees were surprised with the award at their co-ops before the announcement was made at Pioneer’s member meeting.

Meet Shelley Paik

Shelley Paik

Shelley joined Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative in 2003 as a public affairs specialist, a few months after the electric co-op was formed.

“She knows everybody and everybody knows Shelley, and this has expanded industry-wide,” said KIUC Communications and Public Relations Specialist Allison Young. “Her commitment to service and her home are remarkable, yet she doesn’t seek recognition for herself.”

As the assistant editor, Paik partnered with Pioneer to launch KIUC Currents magazine in 2004, and helped launch a student art calendar contest.

Paik also manages board elections, community events and the Washington Youth Tour, where Hawaii’s small group of delegates travels with the Kansas Electric Cooperatives’ delegation to explore Washington, D.C.

“The [students] she works with all adore ‘Aunty Shelley,’” Young said. “When I share past delegates’ ‘Where Are They Now‘ stories in our magazine, they all point to their Youth Tour trip and time with Shelley as a pivotal time in their lives, when their eyes were opened as rural islanders to a larger world full of opportunity.”

Shelley Paik, left, and Kansas Electric Cooperatives’ Director of Education and Training Shana Read have led their states’ youth tour delegates through the nation’s capital together since 2004. On the right, NRECA Youth Programs & Training Manager Beth Knudson cheers on the longtime partnership.

A graduate of Leadership Kaua‘i, Paik serves on KIUC’s Charitable Foundation and Sharing of Aloha committees, organizes employee volunteer workdays and, although she is not a parent herself, she is the designated Parent Community Network Center Facilitator for a local elementary school.

Her impact spreads beyond her small island. For the last decade she’s served on the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association Connect Conference Advisory Committee, helping plan the annual communications and marketing event for more than 500 Utility Pioneers.

“Shelley was an absolute joy to work with on the NRECA Connect Conference advisory group; there is no one quite like her!” said retired NRECA Senior Program Manager Jean Capon. “She brought an enormous amount of enthusiasm and joy to the planning meetings and the conference. We launched the first Connect conference app at the 2015 conference and we were nervous about how it would go over. I was so grateful to Shelley as she really got the ball rolling with her posts on the activity feed. That’s all it took before everyone started joining in.”

Paik’s work, both writing and program design, has won several NRECA Spotlight on Excellence awards over the years, including:

“So much of her work is done humbly behind the scenes. She is the heart of our co-op, earning the trust of employees who need a compassionate listening ear,” Young said. “With her longstanding service to KIUC, she is the go-to person for historical understanding of our co-op story and where to find information. She’s legendary.”

Meet Lisa Fannin

Lisa Fannin

As director of marketing at Mountain Rural Telephone Cooperative (MRTC), Lisa Fannin has helped guide the co-op’s storytelling and strengthened rural broadband stories nationally for more than 25 years.

“Lisa has been a steadfast supporter of rural broadband,” NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association Vice President of Strategic Communications Laura Withers said. “She is a leader in broadband marketing who takes the time to share her knowledge with her peers and ‘pay it forward’ by making lasting connections that advance the communities she serves and help us all build a better broadband future for rural America.”

When other telcos in the Southeast broached the idea of working with Pioneer (then named WordSouth) to create a Rural Telco Magazine, Lisa was one of the first Utility Pioneers to sign on. Her faith in the idea paid off; MRTC’s magazine edition, The Mountain Telephone Connection, won a 2014 NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association TeleChoice Award for Best Customer Newsletter.

“Like any good storyteller, Lisa is a good listener,” MRTC Customer Service Supervisor Carla Hileman said. “When you really stop and listen to people the way she does, you can communicate what they want others to hear. Lisa is always concerned with how her stories portray the people they are about.”

Hileman says people in the community and co-workers don’t hesitate to send Fannin ideas for stories. Not only will she pursue it, but she’ll make sure the end result is something to be proud of. When Hileman told her about a student project to refurbish an abandoned school campus, Fannin jumped into action and got a story in the magazine. The article motivated others to help turn the historic site into a much-needed community center.

Fannin also champions people in her community who aren’t always heard, Hileman says. One time, Fannin learned about a woman with a chronic and debilitating illness who knitted items to help children with similarly painful conditions. With a magazine story and other social media posts, Fannin was able to draw awareness to those who often suffer in pain and silence alone.

“Lisa always engages people in conversation,” MRTC retired CAD Operator and mapping engineer William LeMaster said. He continues to work with Fannin taking pictures for the magazine. “While I’m focusing on the light and the technical aspects, she starts drawing them out and finding out more about their lives.”

Even in an emergency, Fannin finds ways to tell her story. When a tornado hit her hometown of West Liberty, Kentucky, in 2012, she went into the field, capturing the moment to share with her community.

While her storytelling in Kentucky shines, Fannin has also built a legacy of service in the broader telco community, including:

“I’ve traveled with Lisa for many years to various public relations and marketing conferences across the country and within our region,” Hileman said. “I saw firsthand how she not only loved gaining ideas and inspiration from others, but how other people gravitated to her and her ideas.”

Lisa Fannin shared ideas several times over the years at the StoryConnect Conference, from the Idea Exchange in 2015, left, to a live podcast recording in 2022.

The Dave D’Avanzo Communications Leadership Award

Dave D’Avanzo

The award is named in honor of longtime communicator Dave D’Avanzo, who was known for always giving, helping and making other people better.

During a cooperative career spanning nearly four decades, D’Avanzo worked at four utilities: Umatilla Electric Cooperative, Hermiston, Oregon; Claverack Rural Electric, Wysox, Pennsylvania; Midstate Electric Cooperative, LaPine, Oregon; and, most recently, Lane Electric Cooperative, Eugene, Oregon.

He earned top communicator honors for his exceptional work and dedication serving his cooperative on Ruralite magazine. D’Avanzo died in 2020 after a long battle with cancer.

About Pioneer Utility Resources

Pioneer is a not-for-profit communications and marketing cooperative based in Hillsboro, Oregon. Formed in 1956, it provides agency-style communications services to consumer-owned utilities, broadband providers and affiliated organizations in 46 states. Marquee products and services include 11 consumer magazine brands reaching more than 1.3 million U.S. utility households. The cooperative also provides broadband marketing, social media engagement, responsive website design and hosting, podcast production and custom communications services. Pioneer is built to share member stories.

Pioneer also owns Efficiency Services Group, which specializes in energy-efficiency program support and installation services primarily in the West, and NewsData, which publishes industry-leading, independent newsletters covering the utility sector in California and the Pacific Northwest. Pioneer is also the largest shareholder in General Pacific, a Fairview, Oregon-based electric supply company. Learn more at pioneer.coop.