Mind of an engineer, heart of a leader

Jodi Bullinger, P.E., flipped through a photo album on her phone, one bright baby blanket snapshot after another. Each was adorned with a name – a Sloane here, an Easton there.

It’s not in her job description as Vice President of Engineering and Operations for Cass County Electric Cooperative (CCEC), but Bullinger has been making quilts for every new baby born in her department since the year she took leadership in 2016.

“I was counting, and I think I was at 41 baby blankets over that time,” she said with motherly warmth. “A lot of young linemen starting families.”

Bullinger is a different breed of engineer. She was unique when she joined CCEC’s dispatch team in 1994 and will leave a distinct mark when she retires as vice president this March. She’s stitched together a legacy of power reliability and technology innovation, but also of deep care for those around her.

“I wanted to see growth in their careers. I wanted to see them having a safe, healthy environment to work in,” she said, reflecting on her nearly 32 years with the co-op.

Finding her circuit

Growing up in Grand Marais, Minnesota, Bullinger always had a knack for numbers. Her high school physics teacher recognized her mathematical promise and urged her to pursue a career in engineering. She would be the first in her family to attend college when she enrolled in the University of North Dakota’s engineering program.

“I remember taking calculus my first year as a freshman. There were a lot of people in there, and the class kept dwindling and dwindling,” she recalled. “By the time I got done, I was the only gal left in the class. You get used to being a minority in a male-dominated profession.”

With her electrical engineering degree in hand, Bullinger began the job hunt. She heard CCEC was a great place to start a career, so when she was hired in the dispatch center, she knew it was only the first step of her journey.

Bullinger became one of the first four people involved in the co-op’s new 24-hour power control center, which gave her a crash course in the operation of the entire system. She was quickly able to utilize her engineering background, writing several programs including a switching order program the co-op still uses today.

Soon, she was offered the opportunity to move into the Engineering Department.

“You take those opportunities as they come. Just because you’re working in one area doesn’t mean you can’t keep moving forward with your career development,” she said.

Just a couple of weeks after joining the Engineering department, Bullinger found herself with another opportunity. The manager of Engineering had just left the co-op, so someone needed to put together the two-year construction work plan necessary for Rural Utilities Service funding.

“I had never written one before and I didn’t know the process, but had a great team and a wonderful mentor (previous VP Brad Schmidt), so I dove right in,” she said, adding with nonchalance, “At the time, I was also pregnant with my first child.”

There were a lot of firsts to balance at once.

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With the help of the experienced team around her, Bullinger wrote her first, $10 million work plan. The hours were long, but she was able to complete the plan and present it to the board of directors one week before the arrival of her son.

“That was my first board presentation too, at nine months pregnant,” she laughed.

Tightening the seams

Bullinger’s career didn’t slow down. In 2016, she was named CCEC’s Vice President of Engineering and Operations. She pushed for technology that would enhance reliability across the system, including the implementation of Fault Location, Isolation, and Service Restoration (known as FLISR), an automated technology that minimizes outages by detecting and rerouting power around faults.

Bullinger’s team continues to leverage Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), predictive reliability and other programs to decrease outage times.

Bullinger has been a vital part of leading the co-op to experience record reliability figure in 2024. In fact, since she’s joined the Engineering Department, cable faults have decreased from 200 a year to 38 cable faults in 2025.

“I wanted to have a reliable system for our members, but also for the employees at Cass County Electric,” she said. “It makes your job easier when you don’t have to deal with outages every day.”

As Bullinger prepares to leave the co-op on March 3, she’s reflecting on the relationships she’s built and the strong team that will continue the work she started. She speaks of the mentorship of former engineering leaders, the capabilities of her successor, current Manager of Engineering Troy Knutson, and the employee-centered vision of CEO Paul Matthys.

“Paul is excellent and he really believes in the people, and you’re going to see the co-op continue in that direction,” she said.

With the co-op in good hands, Bullinger looks forward to spending more time with her husband and two adult children, resting at the lake and traveling the world. She’ll also be cross-stitching and quilting, because a good leader’s work is never done.

“I had somebody ask, ‘If we have one more, would you make one more baby blanket?’ Because they have two blankets from me so far,” she said. “Of course I said yes, because I’ll have more time to do it now.”