JUNO BEACH, Fla. – On a football field, Omar Howard learned success often comes down to something simple: Do your job.

As a linebacker at the University of Richmond, Howard had to know his assignment, understand how it fit into the defense and trust the 10 teammates around him would do the same.

Years later, that lesson still guides him — only now, the field looks a little different.

Howard is an associate manager of structuring at NextEra Energy Resources, part of a team charged with understanding customers' increasingly complex energy needs and developing solutions to meet them.

That starts with understanding a customer’s goals and constraints — including how much energy they need, where and when they need it — and matching those needs with potential solutions.

The job has never been more challenging.

At a time when electricity demand is growing and customers' needs are becoming more complex, Howard sees plenty of parallels between the teams he was part of on the football field and the one he's part of today.

"There's this classic saying that's ubiquitous across football teams: Do your job," Howard said. "It's so true, and it's so simple."

Learning to play his role

Football has been part of Howard's life for as long as he can remember.

When Howard began playing as a seventh grader, football became more than a sport. It gave him community – but Howard's path to becoming a college football player wasn't always obvious.

He was a raw linebacker prospect coming out of Midlothian Highschool in Midlothian, Virginia, and when he arrived at the University of Richmond, understanding the complexities of a college defense proved challenging.

"I didn't know anything about defensive schemes,” Howard said.

For nearly two years, he worked at it.

Then, during a red-zone scrimmage ahead of his redshirt sophomore season, something clicked.

Howard recognized the play unfolding in front of him, trusted his assignment and made the tackle exactly as he had been coached.

"It was my first time actually getting the play right, doing everything right and then getting rewarded for it," Howard said.

It was a seemingly small moment in practice, but it changed how Howard understood the game.

Instead of simply memorizing what he was supposed to do, he began understanding why he was doing it — and how his assignment affected everyone around him.

Delivering when it matters

Howard went on to become a team leader and captain for the Richmond Spiders, where he learned how to perform when the pressure was on. He remembers a playoff game at North Dakota when an injury-depleted Richmond team rallied from behind after Howard made a critical third-down tackle that helped shift the game’s momentum.

“We had so many injuries, so many young guys starting, but they stepped up and we managed to win,” Howard said.

That experience reinforced a lesson Howard carries into his work at NextEra Energy Resources today: When the stakes are high, delivering means trusting your preparation, doing your part and relying on the team around you.

A new team and a new challenge

Howard joined NextEra Energy as an intern in 2021 while pursuing graduate studies.

Today, Howard's team turns customers’ needs into viable projects, bringing together the right expertise to evaluate opportunities, manage risk and ultimately develop solutions.

Those needs are changing quickly.

Howard said the challenge isn't just that electricity demand is increasing. On top of that, customers are changing, timelines are tightening and the possible solutions often involve numerous interconnected variables — from generation and storage to infrastructure, financing, market conditions and risk.

"The variable set has exploded," Howard said.

That makes teamwork increasingly important.

Just as a linebacker needs to understand what's happening across a defense, Howard believes teams need to understand not only their own responsibilities but how their work connects with everyone else's.

Trusting the people beside you

Howard said his football career taught him one of the most important ways to perform when that pressure rises: Know the people beside you.

"Knowing the people you work with and struggle through these problems with — that is the way to make it," Howard said. "You can't do it by yourself."

It's a lesson that connects the Richmond football fields where Howard grew up to the work he's doing today.

Howard believes those same principles are helping his new and much larger team tackle an important challenge: building the energy infrastructure needed for the future.

"The work that the broader team does, as far as delivering critical infrastructure, it's so important," Howard said. "Things don't run if we don't deliver."

And although his playing days are behind him, Howard still takes pride in contributing to something bigger than himself.

For Howard, the company’s work has become even more personal following NextEra Energy’s proposed combination with Dominion Energy and the expanded commitments the companies have made in his home state.

Among the new commitments is a new NextEra Energy co-headquarters office tower in downtown Richmond which would be home to 600 new NextEra Energy jobs, including the type of work Howard and his team do for the company today.

Still a proud Richmonder, Howard sees the proposed combination as an opportunity to bring NextEra Energy’s experience and capabilities to the community that helped shape him.

"We're putting things on the grid that are going to power people's homes and power hospitals and power innovation," Howard said. "You're part of something that is making a difference."