NRG People Power: Meet Charlene Blandon

Happy Women’s History Month from NRG! In our latest People Power, we’re spotlighting an impactful female leader who exemplifies quiet strength, inspiring us to use our voices in unique and meaningful ways. Get to know Charlene Blandon, our Director of Customer Insights for the NRG Business Marketing & Customer Experience team.

Customer loyalty is driven by consistent communication and good experiences. But how does an organization roll out those communications effectively and implement that feedback across the business? Managing this question and its answers are the task of Charlene Blandon and her Customer Insights team.

Entrusted with the pivotal role of understanding and enhancing our customers’ experiences with us, Charlene and her team are innovating how to use the customer’s voice – gathered from surveys and direct communication at multiple touchpoints throughout the customer journey – to identify successes, areas for improvement, and opportunities to dazzle.

Beyond traditional metrics, Charlene is focused on the synergies between tangible data points, like click-through rates and event attendance, and the results of customer satisfaction surveys. She then uses these connections to weave a comprehensive narrative of customer engagement. The recent integration of the marketing operations and analytics group into her team has set the precedent for this holistic approach, ensuring content relevance and data integrity.

Charlene finds deep satisfaction in this bigger picture, seeing how her team’s insights lead to substantial improvements both for NRG Business and the customer. “When I see our data move from the numbers to actionable impact, it’s very validating.” This confirmation underscores a prime philosophy for Charlene: that marketing is not just about creative words and graphics; it’s a scientific endeavor that blends data with imagination.

For Charlene, a typical day includes catching up with her team, answering their questions, and making sure she is available to guide their current and incoming projects. She also enjoys keeping her own skills sharp by diving into the raw data to help the team.

This analytical mindset was forged early in Charlene’s career. During her time at Florida A&M University, she interned for an energy company, giving her a taste for the industry. She then transitioned to another internship with a well-known airline, but when they moved their headquarters to Chicago, Charlene decided to stay in Texas and take a position with Direct Energy.

As an online campaign manager for various groups within the organization, she handled SEO, paid searches, and email marketing. Discovering she much preferred the precision of the analytical side, she made the switch over to marketing intelligence, a transition that has shaped her career trajectory for the last decade.

Born into a military family, Charlene’s upbringing was characterized by frequent moves and diverse cultural experiences. From her hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, to Germany, and all over the United States, Charlene’s formative years gave her a solid foundation for both embracing multiple perspectives and forging her own identity.

As a military kid living on bases, and as a fraternal twin, individuality often seemed poignantly difficult to define. But as she traveled and grew, the journey of finding her own voice has informed her current approach to leadership, customer advocacy, and even to parenting. Despite being soft-spoken, Charlene’s strength and conviction in her own intuition shows in the numbers and in the respect and faith her team has in her.

At home, Charlene is the proud mom of a 5-year-old son, and 3-year-old daughter, and delights in focusing on her time with them and her husband. “Being a parent prepares you to be a leader and vice versa. The principles are the same,” she says. She is dedicated, even in these toddler years, to getting her kids ready to go out into the world, and perhaps become leaders themselves. She often blends strategies from her favorite podcasts, “How Leaders Lead” and “Raising Good Humans,” in her approach to both leading her team and supporting her kids.

In her few moments of down time, Charlene enjoys a relaxing mani-pedi and reading self-improvement books. She and her husband also love traveling. Recently, they took their kids to the west coast of Africa, where they were able to connect meaningfully with their heritage. They’re also heading Down Under later this year for more family adventures with global experience.

Apart from the usual things that inspire most people – family, success, respect – the one thing that motivates Charlene most is the simple pleasure of a job well done.

Nothing is more illustrative of this ethos than her recent DIY project. She wanted a storage rack to store the family’s belongings. Instead of simply buying one, she watched YouTube videos, bought the supplies, and built it herself. It is now a daily reminder that a job well done, committed with a blend of creativity and rationality, design and data, perfectly defines her goal for herself and her team at NRG.

As we move forward into an exciting era where AI continues to offer new functionalities to businesses, Charlene’s voice – grounded in insight, leadership, and listening – will guide us forward in our goal of making sure every customer is heard, valued, and supported.