Soubhagya Parija

Soubhagya Parija is currently the vice President and chief risk officer at FirstEnergy, one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric systems, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and New York.

Soubhagya has decades of risk, compliance, and governance experience and is a former board member of the Risk & Insurance Management Society (RIMS), a global risk management organization. He also served as senior vice president and chief risk officer at the New York Power Authority, the nation’s largest state-owned utility from 2015-2021 where he successfully ran enterprise risk, operational risk, risk analytics and insurance programs.

Previously, Soubhagya served as director, risk strategy for Walmart, where he built and implemented an enterprise-wide regulatory compliance risk management program for the company’s international division. He also was director, enterprise risk, at Akron, Ohio-based Signet Jewelers, the world’s largest specialty jewelry retailer, where he designed and built an enterprise-risk management program from the ground up. At Duke Energy, he served as director, enterprise risk and portfolio analysis, working his way up after being recruited as a management trainee.

Soubhagya graduated from Jawaharlal Nehru University in India with a master’s degree in Economics. He received his Master of Business Administration and Finance from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. More recently, Soubhagya completed Harvard Business Analytics Program at Harvard University.

Soubhagya enjoys sharing his knowledge and experience with students trying to build a career in risk management. He is currently teaching Enterprise Risk Management at Columbia University as a part-time lecturer.