VICKIE CAVEY

MANAGING DIRECTOR & CEO, JEA, JACKSONVILLE

Cavey’s father died when she was a child, and she and four siblings were raised by her mother. “I have vivid childhood memories of my widowed mother of five crying in our poorly insulated rental home because of her high electric bills in the ’70s,” Cavey has said. This year, Cavey came out of retirement for a second time to run JEA, the local utility at which she got her start in 1984 as an engineer. She retired in 2016, came back in 2020 as special assistant for external affairs, then retired again in 2021 before coming back when Jay Stowe resigned as CEO. For her latest and highest appointment at JEA, she wore the black suit she wore that first day in 1984 — a gift from her mother when she graduated from the University of Florida. “Some folks practice intermittent fasting. I think I practice intermittent retirement,” she said at the time.