Array Technologies commercial chief keeps an eye on U.S. capital

Jessica Lawrence-Vaca’s long habituation to unfamiliar, unstable ground underlying her work life has helped her keep her cool over the past year, as the solar industry and her career both have transformed.

The first-year chief commercial officer of solar tracking systems manufacturer Array Technologies long has focused on industry policy and trade opportunities and eruptions stemming from tax incentives and trade litigation.

Yet, even against this backdrop, 2025 has been a doozy, featuring unexpectedly early phaseouts of federal incentives, new incentive rules governing domestic equipment content and yet more trade duties and cases.

Since last September, Lawrence-Vaca also has scrambled up the learning curve and overseen a dozen team members in becoming her company’s top customer strategist – for her first time in a commercial role.

To sum up, over the past 12 months, Lawrence-Vaca has been leading a corporate function she never previously inhabited all within a year that has brought among the most hair-raising policy curveballs affecting solar commerce.

How does she manage? “I feel like I’ve learned to live in fight-0r-flight mode consistently,” Lawrence-Vaca told pv magazine USA in an interview. “I’m comfortable with being uncomfortable. My skin’s pretty thick.”

Confronted with the industry’s recent policy reversals, Lawrence-Vaca said: “I could be mad about it. I could get upset. But it’s not going to do me any good.”

Instead, Lawrence-Vaca said she views each new crisis as just another puzzle to be solved. “You’ve got to figure out a plan,” she said.

Outside of work, she also eases her stress by enjoying family and friends, cooking, exercising, doing yoga, outdoor pursuits and reading, particularly fiction. “It’s a great escape to calm your mind,” she said, and it fuels her empathy.

Lawrence-Vaca’s buoyancy amid industrial turmoil, most acute over the past several months, matches her reading of an industry calming after crisis that she took from the recent RE+ 2025 trade show in Las Vegas.

Many industry players, she suggested, have:

Begun to digest the year’s adverse policy changes and rule clarifications.
Recognized that demand looks likely to remain robust through 2029.
Gained a measure of confidence about adjusted game plans.
Taken heart from the combination of inexorably rising demand for electricity and solar power’s comparatively speedy additions to generating capacity.

“People are feeling a lot more comfortable going forward,” Lawrence-Vaca said.

There’s another form of the word “comfortable.” She might know, as she has much experience with its opposite, especially in the fractious world of policy and politics.

It’s no accident that Lawrence-Vaca continues to live in Bethesda, Md., a Washington, D.C., suburb, where she and her husband are raising four sons at each school level – elementary, middle and high school as well as college.

For her entire career, Washington has been a professional hub. “I think it’s still a center of power for solar,” Lawrence-Vaca said. It’s not possible to divorce good solar policy from good solar business, she said.

But the long distances between D.C. and Array’s key locations in the Albuquerque and Phoenix area – not to mention sales offices in Australia, Brazil and Spain – has meant that Lawrence-Vaca has stayed on the road up to half her time. She even possesses the mixed honor of “1K status” aboard United Airlines, the most elite bookable tier in the airline’s loyalty program.

Lawrence-Vaca built her career in Washington, starting out as a staffer supporting members of both houses of Congress, including Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, where Lawrence-Vaca grew up in Vancouver.

She came to focus on foreign-policy issues, an interest that dovetailed with her academic work to obtain a master’s degree in global security studies from Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University in 2011.

In January 2019, Lawrence-Vaca joined SOLV, a solar company specializing in engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) and operations and maintenance (O&M) services, to work in several roles keying on government affairs for nearly five years.

In December 2023, Lawrence-Vaca hitched up with Array, which employs about 1,000 workers globally, to do similar work. She also has steered the policy committee and trade working group of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).

Lawrence-Vaca said she long had figured that she would wind up in a sales-side role one day. “I knew I wanted to do a commercial pivot,” she said. “I just didn’t know how.”

So, when Array’s chief executive officer, Kevin Hostetler, offered her the opportunity to become chief commercial officer, she saw the invitation as her opening.

Since making the leap last September, Lawrence-Vaca has applied the networking skills she learned in both public and private spheres, driven herself to understand customers’ needs and made sure they grasped everything the company offers them, she said.

Though Array has been a solar-industry operator since 1989, and it’s often identified as one of the world’s top three tracker companies, Lawrence-Vaca said Array in recent times has responded to customer feedback that it must do more to elevate its profile, showcase the solar-industry authority of its executive leadership and heighten the visibility of its brand and products.

“‘We need you guys to be more vocal,’” Lawrence-Vaca said customers have counseled company executives.

In turn, the company has drawn customers closer – by, for instance, inviting cohorts of its customer base to attend periodic, 1 1/2-day Array Days. These customer summits are held at the company offices in Chander, Ariz., where Array’s commercial, engineering and executive functions are largely based, though Array’s actual headquarters and manufacturing hub are located in Alburquerque.

The events, Lawrence-Vaca said, have “just been a way to stay engaged and stay close to our customers on all levels.”

In customer meetings, climate change has impelled Lawrence-Vaca to market the company’s offerings to help customers curb damage and insurance costs from increasingly severe threats of weather. At the recent RE+, an expansive, interactive video screen at the company’s commanding booth vividly animated trackers rotating solar modules into vertical positions to limit losses from hail.

Array has further enticed customers by reaching the milestone of producing 100 percent domestic content this past summer and building another Albuquerque factory to open early next year.

The company also began introducing customers to an expanded portfolio of products in August, when it paid $179 million for APA Solar, a provider of engineered foundation and mounting components based in Ridgeville Corners, Ohio.

As Lawrence-Vaca has further cultivated her business and sales acumen in her commercial role, she acknowledged that the role has driven her to exercise novel professional muscles.

But the challenge obviously lifts her up – and literally places her once again on unfamiliar, uneven ground.

“I’ve had dirty boots,” Lawrence-Vaca said. “I’ve been out on the sites. I’ve worn a hard hat. That’s been really fun for me.”

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