SUNY Oswego President Peter O. Nwosu presented Sally Librera, president of National Grid NY, with the university’s prestigious Presidential Medal during the second annual Sheldon Lecture on the university’s main campus on Oct. 24, 2025.

The award recognizes Librera’s contributions not only to National Grid and the national energy sector, but also to the national transportation and business community through her more than two decades of professional experience.

“You indeed embody the qualities exemplified by our university founder, Edward Austin Sheldon,” President Nwosu said. “In recognition of your exceptional leadership, service and commitment to higher education, it is my great honor to now present you with the Presidential Medal for Distinguished Leadership and Service.”

In receiving the award, Librera said: “We so value our partnership with SUNY Oswego. We know that the value and the longevity of what's being created here is tremendous. This is where leaders are training leaders and developing the next generation of people who will be serving the community, who will be thinking in innovative new ways to deliver for generations to come for the region. It's humbling to receive this award. Thank you for being such wonderful partners for the region and for serving the community so strongly.”

Prior to receiving the Presidential Medal, Librera was the featured speaker in the second annual Sheldon Lecture on Leadership and Service, established in 2024 by President Nwosu as a premier event that occurs annually during the fall semester and features a notable guest speaker of exceptional accomplishment to share their experience and wisdom with the Laker community.

Finding strength in authenticity

During the hour-long conversation, Librera traced her personal journey from wanting to be a professional rollerskater or lifeguard as a child to a lawyer during her undergraduate studies at Cornell University to becoming a high school math teacher in San Francisco. 

“Over the course of my entire career, I have taken very big risks by stepping out of my comfort zone,” she said. “I think I've had tremendous advantage because of those leaps, because I've been able to draw connections and parallels across industries and across environments and across workplace types, across geography, and I think it's made me much more sensitive to how other people hear me and how my message is landing.”

For example, teaching math  to children from different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds helped her build communication skills and learn how to connect with people on many levels.

While in California, she earned dual master’s degrees in civil engineering and city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley. From there, she moved back east to be close to home and to work with Metropolitan Transit Authority, the mass transit system inNew York City. Librera explained some of the unique challenges she faced as she climbed the ranks with the organization.

“I was often the only woman in the room, or maybe one of the very few women in the room,” she said. “For a good portion of my career, I just kind of fit in. I didn't want to stand out. I didn't want to be different. I just wanted to show that I could do the job that everybody around me did.”

But then she had the opportunity to step into the role of a mentor who was leaving his position. She tried hard to emulate everything he had done and brought to the role.

“I realized I couldn’t be my predecessor,” she explained. “I was a bad version of him… I had to figure out how to take what I’ve done, my value, and recast this role in a way that made me better at it.”

She did just that.

Librera pulled in her unique sets of experiences and skills, including more data, analytics and modeling to inform operations as well as her ability to communicate effectively with a wide range of people.

“That was something that I knew about and not a lot of other people around me knew,” she said. “So, I started building up the team with people who had that expertise and with teams who had that expertise. And then strategically teaming them together with folks who had really strong operating experience and expertise. We were able to unlock all sorts of information and all sorts of great work. And I became infinitely happier in the job.”

Transforming transit and infrastructure

As the former senior vice president for subways at the MTA, Librera was the first woman to oversee North America’s largest urban rail transit operation, leading a team of 30,000 employees and serving nearly 6 million daily riders. She guided the NYC subways team through a dramatic performance turnaround; Librera and her team significantly improved on time performance, cut train delays in half and safely reduced customer journey times on every line in the system.

Librera also led MTA’s Staten Island Railway, a 24/7 heavy rail operation, and has served in executive posts focusing on safety management, transportation policy, workforce development, operations efficiencies and reliability-based maintenance.

Librera served as senior vice president and transit market sector leader at AECOM, where she focused on the design and delivery of complex, sustainable infrastructure projects and forging public-private partnerships. In this role, she focused on shepherding innovative, cost-effective and resilient transit solutions for providers, riders and systems. She joined AECOM in January 2022 from HNTB, where she led the NY/NJ Rail Infrastructure Practice.

She loved her work with complex transportation systems and had no intention of leaving, but when she was approached about the opportunity to lead National Grid New York, she started to see the parallels in responsibilities and mission. The executive recruiter laid it out for her.

“You've been working in large, safety-sensitive 24/7 operations in the very same communities and states as we are operating very large, safety-sensitive 24/7 operations,” she recalled the recruiter saying to her. “The challenges at a high level are all very similar. We have big infrastructure. We've got tremendous expectations, lots of pressure on costs and affordability and making sure that we're spending every dollar as wisely and as efficiently as possible. And ultimately, we need to keep people safe. And so all of those things were very similar across industries.”

Powering New York’s future

Today, as president of National Grid’s New York business, Librera leads one of the largest energy companies in the United States, managing a team of over 11,000 employees to oversee the delivery of electricity and natural gas to 4.2 million New York residents and businesses. The company’s New York service area spans from Niagara Falls to the forks of Long Island.

In her role, Librera is responsible for the financial, operational and customer-focused performance of the New York business and manages relationships with regulators, government officials and the communities National Grid serves. She is committed to ensuring the delivery of safe, reliable, resilient and affordable energy to all customers, as well as advancing National Grid’s and New York’s clean energy goals.

During the conversation, President Nwosu asked her about the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in National Grid’s business outlook.

“AI is having a massive effect on the energy industry,” Librera said. “There's this tremendous drive for more and more power … the rate at which the need for energy is growing is so significant. The rate is outpacing the way that energy infrastructure has traditionally been built out … So we need to do things differently. And at National Grid, there's a tremendous amount of work to significantly advance and accelerate a lot of that process.”

The formal conversation ended with a discussion of the skills that graduates will need to succeed at companies like National Grid.

“What I’d love to see from graduates is a passion for service — and an understanding that all of these different technical and policy disciplines fit together to make that connection,” Librera said.

The Sheldon Lecture on Leadership and Service is informal “fireside chat” Q&A format provides the SUNY Oswego and broader community access to a distinguished leader as well as an opportunity to be part of the conversation.

A recording of the event is available at alumni.oswego.edu/sheldonlecture.