• Home
• Apply
• Donate
• About Us

Leslie James
Leslie James has been the Executive Director of the Colorado River Energy Distributors Association (CREDA) since June of 1998.  CREDA was formed in 1978 and is a member-based non-profit corporation whose consumer-owned member systems serve over four million electric consumers in the states of Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.  CREDA members are purchasers of power and energy from the Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP).

As CREDA's Executive Director, she represents the organization on several industry organizations, including as a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the American Public Power Association (APPA), member of the Advisory, Legal & Resolutions Committee and past chair of the PMA Task Force; the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association's (NRECA) National Preference Customer Committee; the National Water Resources Association (NWRA) Water/Power task force co-chair; Immediate Past Chair of the National Endangered Species Reform Coalition (NESARC); and a member of the Homeland Security's Dams Sector Coordinating Council.  She has been re-appointed by the Secretary of the Interior as a member of the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Work Group (federal advisory committee), and is an Implementation Committee member of the Upper Basin Endangered Fish Recovery Implementation Program.  She has testified before Congress on ten occasions regarding legislation and issues of importance to CRSP power customers.

She was employed at the Salt River Project in Phoenix, Arizona from 1978-1998, most recently as its executive manager of the wholesale markets and contracts department.

In addition to employment related obligations, Leslie was one of the first appointees to the City of Phoenix Environmental Quality Commission, where she served 9 years.  She completed a 4-year term as a gubernatorial appointee to the Maricopa County Commission on Trial Court Appointments, which makes superior court judicial recommendations to the Governor of Arizona.  She was appointed in 2008, and reappointed in 2011, 2015 and 2017 to the Arizona Supreme Court Commission on Victims in the Courts.

Leslie received a dual major in Political Science and Paralegal, cum laude, from Northern Arizona University, as well as a minor in Sociology.  She and her husband are fourth generation natives of the State of Arizona. Their only child, Jesse Dean (J.D.), passed in 2018 at age 30.