VI Asset Viewpoint: Darwin Newton PE, MBA

Meet one of the VISTA+ VI Assets: Virgin Islanders not only working in STEM fields, but leading amazing work in their industries and representing the territory.   

Darwin Newton is a Virgin Islander, in the truest sense, with roots from St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John who has built a fascinating engineering career focused on innovative energy solutions. Learn more about how Darwin’s family, mentors, culture and love for STEM help guide his path to his leadership and work as Head of Operations for Electrical Services and E-Mobility Solutions teams for Siemens Infrastructure.

Sydney Paul
Can you tell those who are just coming across the blog, a little bit about yourself, growing up in the Virgin Islands and your journey? Brief I guess, yeah, a summary of your journey from the VI to where you are? 

Darwin Newton
I would say I’m the quintessential Virgin Islander. I was born on St. Thomas to a Crucian mother, Mrs. Avenile Jackson-Terrell, and a St. Johnian father, Mr. Darwin Newton, Sr. So, I kind of hit all three right from the gate and my life has really been a story of that. I grew up among all three islands back and forth. I went to St. Patrick’s School on St. Croix, I attended Julius E Sprauve School, on St. John, then St. Joseph’s High School on St. Croix, and then after Hurricane Hugo relocated to St. Thomas and graduated from St. Peter and Paul High School. I was blessed and fortunate enough to be awarded several scholarships upon graduation. One of those was the Alva C. McFarlane Scholarship from Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority in 1991.   I accepted that 4-year scholarship and attended Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, where I studied Electrical and Computer Engineering with a concentration in Energy.  

In addition to the scholarship, the Authority provided a summer internship every summer, the growth and the exposure that myself and the other candidates gained during those internships was invaluable. You have an obligation to return to work in the territory for the authority at the tail end of that so, when I graduated, I came back home and was stationed on St. Thomas. This allowed me to work on projects on St. John, work on projects on St. Croix as well. And during that time, there was really a lot more that you would learn working in the Caribbean, working at a small utility, as compared to some of the larger US/European facilities where you’re required to be more specialized, and I was able to be a lot more of a generalist.  I worked in the Line department re-building the feeders after the hurricanes with Winston Smith, in plant calibrating instruments with Bert Newton, in the Water department treating pipes under Kevin Smalls, and consulted on capital projects with Donald Francois and Greg Rhymer, sometimes all in the same month. It really gave me a very well-rounded technical background which has served me well over a period of time. Once I completed my time at WAPA, I took a job with Siemens with the intentions of returning to Atlanta to get my Masters, and started with Siemens in Alpharetta, Georgia. This is my 22nd year with Siemens now I secured my MBA from Georgia State University but am still stateside, quite surprisingly, but happily though I do miss home and get back as much as possible.  

 My current role is Head of Operations for Electrical Services and E-Mobility Solutions teams for Siemens Infrastructure.  In this capacity, I’m responsible for the team that provides power distribution services and projects into the commercial markets, the Federal markets, the government markets, higher education, health care, and data centers. We provide a wide array of offerings such as E-mobility infrastructure, distributed energy, solar, wind, critical power, as well as the standard power distribution systems. You know, we do microgrids, nanogrids, solar farms, throughout, depending on the needs of our customers and our clientele.  

 I try to think of myself really, in terms of the things that I am passionate about. I am extremely passionate about STEM education. As I mentioned, both my parents and many generations of my family are teachers.  They’re both CVI Alumni, so raised by two teachers, both from the Virgin Islands, education was a major part of my journey, and I’m very passionate about STEM education as a path to a better future for our islands. I think the science fairs, the coding camp, the hackathons, all of these things really helped grow and shape me.  If you understand where STEM is right now in the world, the majority of professions are moving towards a STEM-based profession in the near and longer term future.  

 Sydney Paul
Were those individuals you mentioned part of the reason why you decided, to enter this type of engineering, energy engineering? What was that moment for you that said, this is the path that I want to take? If you can share that. 

 Darwin Newton
Quite honestly, it was probably before I ever graduated school. As a child, like I said, my mother Avenile Jackson-Terrell and Darwin Newton my father, were both very strong proponents of strong academic requirements in the home. And then I was also that child that would read a book before he ran outside and played with a ball. I was always the kid in the science fairs or so. So really and truly, STEM education, I think has always been in me. I definitely think it was reinforced and that flame was definitely nurtured and encouraged, working with some of my mentors [at] the authority. And that’s why I think the scholarship is really a great medium for us to bring Virgin Islanders back home, to contribute, give back, reinvest into the territory. 

 When I actually felt like this was the path I wanted to go on? I don’t know that I ever looked at other paths like law or medicine objectively, I was always a STEM-focused kind of student.  But I really think I discovered the electrical and energy field as being really my kind of favorite path at Georgia Tech. We had an exposure to pretty much all types of engineering and systems at Tech, and a big concern for us in the Caribbean is the critical infrastructure. You know, things like water, wastewater, power, health care. Once you get past those, sky’s the limit for our society. So you have to build a foundation that really stands on a strong, reliable, critical infrastructure before you can advance the culture. I’ve always leaned towards the sciences to do that, especially energy and power engineering. 

 Sydney Paul
So you mentioned the scholarship that you received a couple of times. That’s one of the resources that luckily was there while you were kind of coming into the field. Thinking back to that time when you were getting more interested in and doing your studies, were there resources that you wish were available? Particularly in the VI. Were there resources that you wish you had, thinking back now? 

 Darwin Newton
I would definitely say so, of course, things can always be better. However, I think we were very well provided for by the Authority. Having a full ride, a full 4-year ride to any school of your choice, is an invaluable resource in and of itself. What I think, and a lot of the winners and the awardees of those scholarships during the early 90s, are no longer in the territory. And I think if you track them down, you’ll find the trend is that they came back, very passionate, very enthusiastic, very much on board. Unfortunately, the growth opportunities weren’t there. The brain drain is really the Virgin Islands’ biggest crisis, as silent as it is. And you know, as quiet as it’s kept if all of your best and brightest go away and contribute to other communities instead of our own, then  you are kind of left to work within restraints that you have here.  

 I definitely think there’s more than we can do throughout our private and public sectors in the Virgin Islands in terms of retaining talent, developing talent, growing talent into roles that we know we’re going to need in that 3, 5, 10-year run. So, there’s always things that I think can be added to that, training paths, career paths, development programs, job placement, and professional certifications.  I am hopeful and invigorated that the UVI Research and Technology Park will bring these things to the territory. But I wouldn’t say that in my day we weren’t provide a lot of resources at the time, I think we had the most important ones. We had our talent, we had our enthusiasm, we had funding and really had the challenge before us. That said, you want to be able to train, develop and retain that talent when you have it so I am excited to witness the progress the RT Park will bring. 

 Sydney Paul
Is there anything particularly about being a Virgin Islander, that you’ve taken with you in your career so far that has helped you throughout your career? 

 Darwin Newton
Quite honestly, I think everything but most of all our resilience. I mean, just the fundamentals of our culture, the work hard, play hard mentality, right? We’re going to do all the work that needs to get the job done. But then yeah, we’re going to have a good time on the weekend, we’re going to spend time with our families, we’re going to interact with our friends, we’re going to have that work/life balance that we hear about, becoming so much rarer. I think that’s part of the big cultural piece right there.  

We just, I think, underestimate the power of the Virgin Islands people in terms of what happened in St. John in 1733 [for example]. Just the will not to be conquered, not to be oppressed. That resilience that is built in the Virgin Islands people, the impact of seeing us get hit with hurricane after hurricane after a hurricane, decade after decade. That kind of resilience—that kind of inner strength—is something that is kind of been maintained. There’s been challenges in my career–everybody has challenges within their careers—but during that time, I think that Virgin Islands resilience –blowing the conch shell, swinging cane knife—I don’t think we will ever lose that. And we tend to imbue it within our teams and continue to strive when we get knocked down, we should shake it off, get back up, rebuild and get back to work. 

Sydney Paul
For a young Virgin Islander reading this blog, how would you define tech and engineering to them in a way that they feel like they can embrace working in these areas?  

Darwin Newton
Well, let’s start with engineering; engineering is nothing more than problem solving. If you have good critical thinking skills, if you can analyze a problem or a situation, dissect it, triage it to different areas, and develop a solution–a resolution for each part–put it back together and have an overall solution for the comprehensive problem that you started with, you will do well in engineering, because that’s what engineers do, we solve problems. Regardless of which kind of engineer you may be electrical, civil, mechanical, biomedical–there’s all those new fields coming out—your goal is going to be the person that can take a look at the problem and come up with a working solution and provide that back to the rest of the team as well as a plan on how to achieve it. 

The tech side is very broad. And one thing I would say with tech is, tech is everything. Tech is everything that we’re engaged with now, and it’s going to be even more that we engage in the future. Tech is how you get your phone calls, right? Tech is how you take your photos now on your phone. Tech is how you drive to and fro, your transportation, tech is how your doctor sees your MRIs and your X-rays. Things we were discussing several months ago with one of the mentorship programs that I volunteer through with my fraternity, Omega Psi Phi, is that kids in our generation are often told to learn another language. In the information revolution, kids should learn another language, but it’s a programming language. Tech is really going to be touching everything in the near future. I think people have got to learn to embrace it at some point. 

Sydney Paul
Can you talk a little bit about what type of future you see for the VI using these new technologies, if it’s something that you can see the VI embracing. 

Darwin Newton
I see the Virgin Islanders embracing the green sustainable technologies that are out there. I think we’re ripe for these opportunities: everything from developing solutions for standalone homes to small communities or maybe like a nanogrid to larger communities and maybe like a microgrid—whether it’s a backup critical power generator with some rooftop solar and battery storage. Yes, there is a risk that a hurricane may come along and damage the equipment, [but] that is a risk we’re going to live with every day in the Virgin Islands; it’s just part of the reality. But I don’t think that risk is reason enough not to start to develop competitive cost-effective methods to deliver that.  

Really, I think we need to take a hard look at some of our building codes and understand, for our unique circumstances, do the building codes really line up with what we want our future to be?  Do they line up with our specific needs environmentally? And if not, then we enhance them, or we modify them so that it makes sense for us, because what does apply for us doesn’t apply for everybody else. And then make sure obviously, that in addition with making things greener, more sustainable, more resilient, that we understand what our community is and who our people are. So we also develop funding and financing options, so that these technologies can be affordable and competitive to the people that are all all income levels not just those who are paid the most.  So understanding if we want to develop and cultivate our workforce within our community, we’re going to have to give them some resilience options, some sustainable options so that they can have a comprehensive living environment. 

Sydney Paul
Is there something that you can share that you’re working on it Siemens? You know, for the future? 

Darwin Newton
What can I share? Well, Siemens is currently the only original equipment manufacturer that provides an entire portfolio of E-mobility infrastructure. We have chargers that you can put in your home to charge electric cars, there are chargers that buses can use at bus depots to charge and chargers for office buildings, hotels and airports that travelers can use.  We’ve got everything in between like the chargers that we can put outside at the Research and Technology Park and different parking lots that students and staff and maybe customers can charge when they come there, as well as the chargers that we install at what would be like the equivalent of a gas station, our Versa chargers. We are really on the cutting edge of launching our E-mobility portfolio throughout the country, throughout the hemisphere, throughout the world, and Siemens is the only company that covers the entire gamut. I think it is exciting, because electric cars are a significant part of the energy transition. We have small islands sitting in the Caribbean that I think should really take a look at targeting the E-mobility movement, because being one with nature is very important to us as a people too. At the end of the day, it’s the positive constructive type of technology that we need to build that sustainable future that we want to see. I’m really, really excited about where that goes and how it impacts communities positively. 

Sydney Paul
Do you think that energy companies and utility companies in particular who have used more fossil fuel to generate energy and the things that they do–do you feel like more companies are embracing/getting into sustainable solutions and moving away from kind of environmentally harmful ways of producing energy? Is that something you’re seeing in the industry? 

Darwin Newton
Definitely, definitely. So, non-fossil alternative energy fuel sources are clearly on the rise and fossil generated energy is on the decline. There’s still a huge disparity, I think fossil to green. But also, you have to also understand that as I say that the caveat is what’s available to you? In a large [part] of the United States, for instance, there are huge deposits of natural gas that can be tapped to power plants that use that natural gas to drive their turbines drive their generators and generate their energy. That’s not something that’s available to a large majority of the islands in the Caribbean, we don’t have huge natural gas deposits right underground. We don’t have huge coal deposits right underground. Outside of Trinidad & Tobago and a few other specific areas, we don’t have large oil deposits either. So a lot of what’s available to transition away from fossil is based on what do you have to do to get that fossil energy converted into electricity? And where is it going to be sourced from? What’s the supply chain logistics? What’s the cost of bringing that in? It’s a fairly complex question in that it’s pretty complex calculation on evaluating that.  

And then like I tell people, it’s not a one to one, because we also have to understand, WAPA is one of our greatest resources in the Virgin Islands, it is one of the most important parts, like I said, it goes back to that critical infrastructure. There is no other utility supplying power in the Virgin Islands. And I think we’ve got to understand at the end of the day, the challenges that are placed upon our local resources, and then support them so that they can overcome those unique challenges. Because like I said, we don’t have the resources sitting right underground, that a lot of continental based power companies do.  

I think we got to be very careful, critiquing and devaluing the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority. There are always things that can be done to support and to really help the leaders have the authority to be more successful, but I think they’re doing a great job and the best that they can under the circumstances. 

Sydney Paul
Okay. So, a lighter question because I know I was asking some heavier questions. This is our final question. Tell people what your favorite food from the VI is. What’s your favorite dish? 

Darwin Newton
Well that’s a hard one. There are a lot of good cooks in the family. My grandmother Jane Johannes lives on St. John. The Johannes family is from La Vallee St. Croix originally, but on St. John my grandmother Jane Johannes’ stewed conch is the best thing in the world. Especially when served with some potato salad, or some sweet potato and boiled plantain.