Dana O’Brien is Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for CenterPoint Energy,a Fortune 500 Company that includes electric transmission and distribution, natural gas distribution, and energy services operations. She and her team oversee the company’s legal affairs including regulatory,corporate and securities, commercial, litigation and governance matters, as well as ethics and compliance and records management.

O’Brien came to CenterPoint Energy from CEVA Logistics, a global logistics company, where she served as chief legal officer and chief compliance officer and was a member of the executive board. She previously served as the general counsel for Quanta Services, Inc., a leading construction and serviceprovider to the utility industry, and EGL, Inc.

She received a bachelor’s degree with honors from Trinity University and her law degree, also with honors, from the University of Texas. After law school, she clerked for then Justice Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court and began her legal career as a corporate associate at Weil, Gotshal and Manges, LLP.

In 2013, O’Brien received the Texas General Counsel Forum’s Magna Stella Award for Outstanding General Counsel of a large company. She currently serves on the board of the Association of Women Attorneys Foundation, which raises scholarship money for female law students at the University of Houston Law Center, the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University and South Texas College of Law.

Dana and her husband, spend free time with their five active children. They focus their charitable endeavors on organizations that help children, including Child Advocates, Ronald McDonald House and St. Jude’s Hospital