Editor Emeritus

Rich is a former reporter and editor for The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he began covering the electric industry as Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware introduced competition in the late 1990s. His coverage won the National Press Foundation’s 1998 award for energy reporting. He later headed a Houston-based startup that produced hourly power indexes and worked as an energy analyst for Bloomberg Government. In between, he worked for eight years in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Office of Enforcement, where he became a whistleblower — proving he was not cut out for government work. He holds a journalism degree from Penn State University and an MBA from Temple University.

Visiting Professor of the Practice of Law, Director

Mark Christie is the Founding Director of the Center for Energy Law and Policy, a position he assumed in October 2025. He also serves as a Visiting Professor of the Practice and a Lowance Fellow at William & Mary Law School.

Christie is a former Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). He served as a FERC commissioner from January 2021 to August 2025, the final seven months as Chairman.

Prior to serving at FERC, Christie was the Chairman of the Virginia State Corporation Commission (Virginia SCC), on which he served as a commissioner for nearly 17 years. He was elected to the Virginia SCC, which regulates utilities, insurance and banking, three times by the Virginia legislature on bipartisan votes.

During Christie’s service as a state regulator, he was elected president of the Organization of PJM States, Inc. (OPSI), an organization of utility regulators representing the 13 states and the District of Columbia which participate in the PJM transmission and markets organization. He served for more than a decade on the OPSI governing board. Christie also served as president of the Mid-Atlantic Conference of Regulatory Utilities Commissioners (MACRUC), a regional chapter of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC).

Former Chairman Christie taught regulatory law for a decade as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Virginia School of Law and constitutional law and government for 20 years in a doctoral program at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Christie received his law degree from Georgetown University and his undergraduate degree from Wake Forest University, where he graduated

Magna cum Laude and earned Phi Beta Kappa honors. To help pay for college, he worked as an underground coal miner during summers.

He served as an officer in the U. S. Marine Corps. Semper fi.