Maria Sepulveda is the Community Development Officer for Wells Fargo in Colorado. For over two years, she has been the liaison for Wells Fargo employee volunteer opportunities with GRID Colorado. In 2016, Maria coordinated five volunteer opportunities that raised $75,000 for Colorado projects through the Wells Fargo Team Member Volunteer Program.
She didn't know much about GRID before she volunteered for the first time in autumn of 2014. “I learned how the program was bringing energy cost savings to low-income families, and meanwhile people get to climb on roofs and have fun,” Maria said. “But what really got me was that it was a workforce generator.”
She was greatly inspired by Beatriz Hernandez, GRID’s Solar Installation Supervisor at the time. Beatriz had participated in a job training program with GRID Alternatives in Fresno, California before being hired on full-time at GRID Colorado in 2013. “Meeting Beatriz was the perfect example of what I was hearing about - I’d never met a female electrician in my life. She had this amazing training opportunity [that enabled her] to make more than a living wage.” They connected over both having a special needs child. Maria saw that GRID's training program gave Beatriz “not just a way to make a difference in her community but also in [Beatriz’s] own family.”
“GRID was one of the first organizations I learned about that Wells Fargo employees were really active in,” said Maria. “Our team members find it so rewarding to be a part of GRID’s work.” More than 130 Wells Fargo employees have installed over 350 kW of solar throughout Colorado, which will generate $2.8 million in lifetime energy cost savings for 100 families. Nationwide, Wells Fargo volunteers have worked more than 4500 hours with GRID, and the company has donated over $4 million to support GRID Alternatives’s work since 2008. And just this week GRID announced a new $2 million, four-year commitment from Wells Fargo to support our ongoing national expansion.
Maria’s favorite thing about GRID is witnessing the excitement of everyone who is a part of the program - from clients, to job trainees, to volunteers. “Our Team Members who volunteer on GRID events are just glowing, and love talking about what they worked on and how it fit into the installation.”
GRID Colorado is lucky to have so many champions of our work, but Maria was the stand-out Corporate Superhero of 2016. Maria sees her role as part of the grassroots effort to make a statewide impact. “This has bubbled up to the top,” she says. “You see state, city leaders, housing developers, recognizing what a big difference GRID’s installations are having not only on people’s homes, but on multifamily developments, and for utilities.”