John Miri Email Address

Chief Administrative Officer of the Lower Colorado River Authority

Energy, Water, Community Services

In the immortal words of Johnny Cash, "I've been everywhere, man." I graduated from Harvard with a degree in physics at the height of the dot-com boom. My first stop was Austin's legendary Trilogy Software, where I sold a $1.5 million solo software deal six months after finishing college. After Trilogy, I helped build the Jeff Bezos-backed Living.com into the #1 furniture and home furnishings site in the world. Through startup leadership roles at Oridian, ROME Corporation, Pluck, and Bluewater, I launched dozens of new software products, nearly all of which are still successful following a progression of acquisitions. I was primary inventor on US patent 7,571,138 for a novel software design to support energy trading. I spent time in government -- serving as CIO for the Texas Department of Information Resources and leading the world's largest self-funded e-Government portal, Texas.gov. I strengthened the Texas State CISO role and co-authored Texas's first statewide cybersecurity strategic plan. While at DIR, I also built the State of Texas's first integrated network and security operations center. From March 2014 to November 2022, I served as Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) for LCRA, a $1.1 billion public utility serving millions of customers in the fastest growing region of America’s fastest growing state. As CAO, I delivered the successful turnaround of a diverse group of 22 company divisions while simultaneously cutting real operating costs in inflation-adjusted dollars. We built an entirely new electric grid cybersecurity team for LCRA that was recognized as a global success story by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). My technology team at LCRA accomplished the elusive goal of digital transformation -- delivering more than 400 projects and rearchitecting the technology enterprise to support new business models. I delivered three successful Artificial Intelligence projects at LCRA, including a system that uses machine learning to predict power plant failures before they happen. In 2017, I was selected as one of the top 25 "Doers, Dreamers, and Drivers" in the United States by Government Technology magazine. Together with my colleagues, we quadrupled the size of our Transmission business -- from $183 million to over $750 million per year -- supported by a complete restructuring of project management and real estate acquisition. In November 2022, I left my comfortable role as a utility executive to found the Electric Grid Cybersecurity Alliance.