Senate-staffer-turned-nuclear-industry-lobbyist Alex Flint is leaving the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) after 10 years as the advocacy group’s top policy man in Washington, the trade association announced Friday.
Flint’s departure as head of the group’s governmental affairs office is part of a larger shakeup at NEI, which is cutting senior management positions as part of a reorganization initiated earlier this year by President and CEO Marvin Fertel, 69, who will retire in October after seven years leading the group. Scott Peterson, longtime head of NEI’s communications division, is also leaving.
As part of the organizational shift detailed in a Thursday memo from Fertel, NEI will combine its governmental affairs, communications, and policy divisions into a single external affairs division that will be led by a new, vice president-level hire to be named later. An executive search is underway now for the new vice president of external affairs, NEI spokesman John Kelley told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing Monday.
Flint and Peterson, are senior vice presidents.
Maria Korsnick, NEI’s current chief operating officer, is among the internal candidates being considered to replace Fertel as president and chief executive, Kelley said.
Flint has been senior vice president of NEI’s government affairs division since he joined the organization in 2006. Peterson has been with NEI since 1994, when the group was created in a three-way merger of other nuclear industry advocacy groups. Flint and Peterson will both leave “in the fall,” according to Fertel’s memo.
