The TVA Board of Directors will start 2018 with a quorum after all.

In a Dec. 21 voice vote, the U.S. Senate confirmed the four individuals nominated in September by President Trump – James “Skip” Thompson of Decatur, AL; Jeff Smith of Oak Ridge, TN; A.D. Frazier of Atlanta and Kenny Allen of St. Louis. The terms of Thompson and Allen are scheduled to expire in May 2021, while the terms of Frazier and Smith are set to expire in May 2022.

The new TVA directors will join incumbents Ron Walter of Memphis, Virginia Lodge and Eric Satz of Nashville and Chairman Richard Howorth of Oxford, MS. There remains one vacancy on the federal utility’s nine-member board of directors.

Thompson, a University of Alabama graduate, sits on the Decatur, AL, Utilities Board of Directors. He is a partner at Corporate Billing LLC and a former CEO at First American Bank. Smith is deputy for operations at the Oak Ridge, TN, National Laboratory, where he coordinates overall operations and support functions. He’d previously served in the White House Transition Planning Office and as operations deputy at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He holds an undergraduate degree in ceramic engineering from Ohio State University.

Frazier spent 35 years as an executive manager in the for-profit, not-for-profit and public sectors, and serves at present as president emeritus at Georgia Oak Partners. He holds undergraduate and law degrees from the University of North Carolina and has completed the Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program. Allen is executive vice president for operations at Armstrong Coal Co. Inc. in St. Louis, MO. He has more than 40 years of experience in the coal industry and is a former  member of the Kentucky Coal Council and the Kentucky Consortium for Energy and the Environment, Allen attended the University of Evansville and the University of North Carolina.