North Port, Fla. – When Alice "Jane" Wolford started as an associate draftsman at Florida Power & Light Company’s (FPL) Western Division in August 1980, she drew maps by hand with pencils and rulers. Today, as a senior technical specialist at Toledo Blade Service Center, she manages major commercial projects using cutting-edge digital systems—a transformation that mirrors her remarkable 45-year journey with the company.

"I was overwhelmed by everything I was learning, but I sensed the feeling of family right off,” Wolford says, reflecting on her early days with FPL. "Everybody made me feel so welcome and was willing to teach me."

For more than a decade, Wolford’s role involved manually drafting every line, transformer and street name on record drawings that tracked FPL's entire West Coast system.

That changed on April 1,1993, when FPL transitioned to AutoCAD software.

"We had t-shirts made that said, 'Pencil Free in 93' with a computer breaking a pencil," Wolford says. "We were all learning together, supporting one another. It really increased our production and made our drawings more uniform."

Wolford’s contributions to quality improvement projects helped FPL win the prestigious Deming Prize in 1989—making FPL the first company outside Japan to receive the award. The Deming Prize is a prestigious quality management award established in Japan in 1951, named after W. Edwards Deming, an American statistician and quality management pioneer who helped transform Japanese industry after World War II.

"We tracked our jobs, looked at root causes to problems and came up with solutions," she says. "One project improved our blueprint quality so field crews had better prints to work from. The Deming Prize gave us tools for problem solving that we still use today."

Now, as a project manager for commercial accounts, Wolford coordinates complex projects—from major subdivisions to large business developments—working directly with customers from initial design through energization. Today, she leverages cutting‑edge tools—including smart‑grid analytics and predictive AI models—underscoring just how far she’s come from the era when the big milestone was going ‘pencil free.’

"Communication is probably the biggest part of our job," Wolford says. "I want my customers to know that FPL cares and that we're here for them. At the end of the day, I try to make sure they get the reliable service they deserve and whenever they interact with me or my team, they have a positive experience.”

Seeing tangible results in the community motivates her every day.

"It's the feeling of accomplishment—going down the road and saying, 'Wow, I designed that' or 'I was part of that,'" Wolford says. "Seeing what the company does for the community and knowing I'm part of that company gets me excited."