Kimberly Cook-Nelson

Kimberly Cook-Nelson is executive vice president of nuclear operations and chief nuclear officer of Entergy, where she is responsible for the safe, secure and reliable operations of Entergy's four nuclear power plants and five reactors located in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Entergy Nuclear is headquartered in Jackson, Mississippi.

As a member of the company's office of the chief executive, Cook-Nelson is also engaged in building and strengthening relationships with external stakeholders and being an engaged company representative with various stakeholders.

Cook-Nelson started her career in 1996 as a design engineer at the Waterford 3 nuclear plant, later moving to the nuclear safety analysis group where she focused on work in probabilistic risk assessment and risk-informed applications.

In 2001, she moved into leadership as a mechanical maintenance first-line supervisor, followed by operations, receiving her senior reactor operator license in 2003.

Over the following eight years, Cook-Nelson held various leadership positions of increasing responsibility in system engineering, continuous improvement, maintenance, nuclear safety assurance and operations. In 2011, she became the general manager of plant operations at Waterford 3 until she left in 2014 to pursue a rotational assignment at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations where she qualified and functioned as an organizational effectiveness team leader and a corporate evaluator.

In 2016, Kimberly moved to the Entergy Nuclear headquarters office as vice president, operations support, where she was accountable for the line corporate functional area managers, training, performance improvement, organizational effectiveness, and business planning. In June 2019, she transitioned to the vice president, system planning and operations, where she was responsible for the local balance authority, energy marketing, commercial operations/origination, energy settlements, non-nuclear fuel purchasing and scheduling, long term capacity planning and more. In March 2021, she moved back to Entergy Nuclear as chief operating officer, nuclear operations with responsibility for Arkansas Nuclear One, River Bend and Palisades nuclear generating stations.

Cook-Nelson earned a degree in mechanical engineering and master's degrees in engineering management and business administration. She is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School and is a licensed professional engineer.