12 People You Need to Know: Dwayne Fulk

Q&A | April 15

Why You Need to Know Dwayne: A City Utilities employee since 2017 with a 25-year legal background, he now leads the municipal utility provider with an $895 million annual budget.
Position: President and CEO, City Utilities of Springfield
Age: 56
Education: Bachelor’s in international affairs, Missouri State University; and Juris Doctor and Master of Laws in international and comparative law, Duke University School of Law
Career: Associate general manager and general counsel, City Utilities; partner, Lathrop Gage LLP; shareholder, Polsinelli PC; and partner, Neale & Newman LLP

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For Dwayne Fulk, City Utilities of Springfield represents his “second mountain.”

That is to say, it’s his second career after previously working 25 years in the legal sector, most recently as a partner at Lathrop Gage LLP.

Fulk joined CU in 2017 as associate general manager and general counsel. In November 2024, he succeeded Gary Gibson as president and CEO of the municipal utility provider.

“This is like having my community service and my job all wrapped into one,” says Fulk, who envisions staying in the role through retirement. “It’s a fantastic place to work and a great work-life balance.”

As CU’s CEO, Fulk has hit the ground running. Among ongoing projects, Fulk and the CU team are overseeing a fiscal 2025 budget with disbursement authority set at $895.4 million; $280 million in power supply investments via three new gas turbines and additional battery storage to meet planning reserve margin standards set by the Southwest Power Pool; and the $1 billion Lake Springfield master plan, which involves myriad stakeholders.

“Our theme this year is ‘build,’” Fulk says. “We are literally building new power generation in Springfield. We are literally building more gas capacity.”

Among Fulk’s first acts of business as CEO was a 100-day listening tour, during which he had more than 50 meetings with 500 staffers as “part of my commitment to meet and talk with every single employee.” CU employs roughly 1,000 people.

“Through that, I have closed the gap that I sensed in my knowledge in what the operating areas of the utility do, because I was in a support role previously,” Fulk says.

Through conversations with employees, Fulk has identified three themes he says are important to them: stability, community and customer service.

“The employees that I’ve met with that seemed the happiest are our customer service employees,” he says. “What I found out is they love solving problems. They get immediate feedback about how they benefited someone.”

Fulk says other CU projects in the works include an additional allocation of drinking water from Stockton Lake, route and fare changes for its transit system and a rebranding and capacity-building initiative at SpringNet, its broadband division.

Capacity building also relates to employees, he says, an important initiative amid union contract negotiations in 2025 and early next year.

“One way is deeper succession planning,” Fulk says. “The other part is engagement. Being an employer of choice is important to us. We’re going to build engagement within our employee base to do that.”