Donna Leclerc – Director of Technical Programs
After starting her career in speech recognition and voice assistants, Donna discovered surprising parallels in energy data. In this spotlight, she shares how that path led her to Sense and to building partnerships that turn electrical signals into real insight.
About Your Role at Sense
What drew you to work at Sense?
Nine years ago Ryan Houlette reached out to me to see if I wanted to join a new startup founded by some of my colleagues at Vlingo. I was excited to get back into the start-up world, wear many hats, and work with great folks I’d worked with before.
How did your past career experience prepare you for a role at Sense?
I came from the speech-to-text voice assistant and mobile app sectors. The data science Sense employs to translate electrical signal data into information homeowners can use to understand their electricity usage has many similarities to speech recognition, so I was able to base my pivot to the energy industry coming from what might seem to outsiders as completely different fields.
How has your role evolved since you started?
When I started there were about 35 full-time employees at Sense. I started as the sole Product and Program Manager, working with both international and domestic partners. As Sense has grown, I’m proud to have been able to build out a team that manages the cutting-edge work driven by our pilots and proof-of-concept programs across many different types of partnerships.
What’s your favorite part of your job?
I love working with external partners – learning what their objectives are and translating them into solutions that can be provided by Sense. I especially enjoy designing creative solutions to help partners reach their goals.
Thoughts on the Energy Industry
What role do you think consumers play in decarbonization?
While corporations can make top-down changes, consumers can drive change from the bottom up as we all learn more about the steps we can take to keep our planet healthy and safe for people across the globe.
How does working in climate tech change your perspective on energy use at home?
It’s always nice to have a lower electric bill, but working at Sense gave me incentive to figure out what solutions I could implement at home to lower my usage. I could then see the impact of these changes in the Sense mobile app experience that I could not really grasp when just looking at my electric bill.
What do you think the grid of the future looks like?
I believe the grid will continue to make strides to reduce carbon output, not just to address climate concerns, but also to address the impact combustion-based power has on local air quality. Clean and green and flexible and resilient are the goals, with many stakeholders working together (but not without bumps along the way – change can be that way!)
Life Outside of Work
What’s something people might be surprised to learn about you?
I love to teach, and I used to teach ballroom dancing at a local dance studio. I’ve also taught American English to non-native speakers, and I hope to be able to do that again some day, supporting cross-cultural and linguistic understanding in my local community or abroad.
What hobby are you currently into — or wish you had more time for?
I wish I had more time to become more proficient in other languages. Currently I am using apps to learn basic Spanish and Icelandic, but I’ve set these apps so the base language is German so I can practice that at the same time. I love it!
Are you a morning person or a night owl?
Definitely a night owl. I’d work California time here in Massachusetts if I could!