Veteran Statehouse reporter Kristin Carlson is leaving WCAX television to join Green Mountain Power.
Carlson, a senior political reporter and co-anchor of Channel 3’s “The 30” afternoon news program, will replace Steve Terry, who is retiring at the end of this year.
Carlson will serve as director of media at GMP, focusing on the creation of new communications strategies, according to a GMP news release.
Carlson has worked at WCAX since graduating from Syracuse University in 1999, the release said.
Green Mountain Power President and CEO Mary Powell said Carlson’s duties will include improving customer communication.
“Steve Terry brought decades of communications experience to the company when he joined Green Mountain Power in 1985,” Powell said. “While it will be impossible to fill Steve’s shoes, Kristin has similar skills and experience, and shares our commitment to clear, open and transparent communications. She will be integral to our effort to expand customer communications opportunities and channels, create deeper and more routine communications by maximizing all forms of social and traditional media, and ensure direct, honest communications with all of our stakeholders.”
Carlson, who starts work Jan. 6, said the decision to leave Channel 3 was not easy.
“I’ve dealt with hundreds of companies as a journalist, and I’ve always found GMP to be accessible, direct and responsive, in good times and bad, which is critically important to the public and media,” Carlson said. “Combine that with the company’s national leadership on solar development, climate change and innovation, and I see a company that is making a difference for Vermont and the nation.”
Terry, 71, is also a former journalist. He started at GMP in 1985, retired from the company in 2006, and served as a consultant to the company for the next six years. He returned to GMP full time in early 2012, with plans to stay two years. Terry is also a member of the board of The Vermont Journalism Trust, which governs VTDigger.org.
“I am extremely proud of the company and its role in Vermont, but it is time for me to spend a little less time working,” Terry said in the release. “I couldn’t think of a better person to hand over many of my responsibilities to than Kristin.”
Terry was formerly the managing editor of the Rutland Herald and legislative assistant to U.S. Sen. George Aiken. Carlson won the 2010 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award Silver Baton for a series of stories titled “Foreigners on the Farm.” She has won four Edward R. Murrow Awards for broadcast journalism since 2008.