Deals Are a Team Sport

Growing up in the Bay Area, Chelsea Turner played a lot of soccer, a game that ultimately sowed the seeds for her career. “I was a play maker, always aware of where my teammates were and the opportunities we could achieve together,” she explains. “Years later when I started in business negotiations, I realized I was drawing on the same skill set, navigating multiple teams, priorities, and perspectives towards a common goal.”

An interest in the environment prompted Chelsea to pursue a biology degree and a study abroad summer in Italy planted a dream to travel. Early in her career, once she’d saved enough money, she took an extended solo trip to South America, Eastern Europe, and Fiji to fulfill that dream.

The experience prompted the first of two epiphanies in her career: “I realized the impact renewable energy can make around the world, which sparked my interest in the clean energy sector, and when I returned to the US, that’s where I directed my focus.”

“Transactions and negotiations are a team sport – they’re very collaborative. If you’re the commercial lead, it requires a high degree of creativity to align incentives and find a path forward that’s mutually beneficial for both sides.”

Chelsea went on to work for a carbon sequestration company, but when the organization pivoted to carbon sequestration as a tool for enhanced oil recovery, she felt it was no longer a fit. She switched gears and landed a job at Gestamp Solar, where she was tapped to be the second lead in the Gestamp’s asset sale process.

Additionally, Chelsea was directly involved in monetizing a portfolio valued at more than $200 million. “Transactions and negotiations are a team sport – they’re very collaborative. If you’re the commercial lead, it requires a high degree of creativity to align incentives and find a path forward that’s mutually beneficial for both sides.”

Gestamp’s pipeline and key personnel were then acquired by Solar Frontier. Chelsea continued with Solar Frontier for two more years where she did business development with a focus on asset sales and other transactions. She also led the acquisition process for an early-stage development project, which solidified her second epiphany: finding the right function. “That’s when I realized transactions are my niche. It’s project-based work that’s cyclical in nature, and ultimately, it’s about teamwork and creative problem solving, which is super interesting to me.”

While she had gained substantial experience on the job, Chelsea wanted to better understand finance to increase her value, so she decided to return to school and pursue an MBA at Cornell University. “At this point, I knew I wanted a career focused on deals and felt an MBA would be the right training to prepare me for sophisticated transactions.” She spent her MBA summer internship in investment banking at Citigroup in Manhattan.

In 2018, after completing her graduate degree, Chelsea joined the procurement team at EDF Renewables (now EDF power solutions). “The interview and hiring process was lengthy, because the company was just entering the energy storage space and many details were still being worked out, including what my position would be and where I’d fit in the larger organization,” she recalls. “I specifically wanted to work on energy storage because it was a new and emerging technology, so the early transactions were very challenging. I was the first battery-specific commercial hire at EDF in the US.”

“That’s when I realized transactions are my niche. It’s project-based work that’s cyclical in nature, and ultimately, it’s about teamwork and creative problem solving, which is super interesting to me.”

Chelsea notes that she prefers to take an iterative approach to most situations. “Rather than try to come up with a perfect solution before even starting, I’d rather just put one foot in front of the other and get going. As long as each step improves on the previous one, we’re making progress.”

This proved particularly relevant when working on some of the industry’s first commercial transactions for energy storage. “Mature technologies often rely on established contractual structures. Batteries are beginning to approach that point now, but just a few years ago they represented a nascent technology, and we had to invent contractual solutions as we went.”

Chelsea’s purview has since expanded to include high-voltage breakers and transformers, which are central components of an energy project’s substation. Transformers are used to “step up” the voltage of electricity produced at power plants so it can be sent across the transmission grid.

Transformers must be custom designed to meet the specific voltage and power needs of an individual project, so they have hefty price tags and long lead times. As such, their procurement is far from straightforward and highly critical to EDF power solutions’ long-term success.

Because the design of each transformer is unique, its procurement can be used to meet the “physical work” standard necessary to achieve “safe harbor” for eligibility for key tax incentives that will soon no longer be available – which makes transformers a critical element of a project’s financial model. Additionally, while some transformers are manufactured in the US, many are imported, and thus subject to tariffs.

“The current regulatory landscape is very volatile, and this creates many challenges for the procurement team,” Chelsea observes. “Our goal is to build secure, resilient supply chains that will support EDF’s project pipeline, but there have been a lot of recent changes we have to navigate.”

While she feels she’s found her function, Chelsea hastens to clarify that she sees her core skill set as something that’s applicable to a variety of situations – and she encourages others to think the same way. “I like transaction work and closing deals, and in my current role I’m focused on procuring major equipment. But I’ve also worked on asset sales, a merger and acquisition, and securing financing, and I enjoyed them all. The trick is to figure out what you’re good at and then think creatively about how you can add value.”