Dr. Rafael Ochoa is currently the Chairman of the Advisory Board of an innovative companies in the electric utility industry: Reactive Technologies (London, UK). In addition, Rafael is currently a (part time) Senior Consultant at Sentient Energy. In late 2020, Rafael retired from Accenture as a Managing Director, and he is now a proud "Accenture Alumnus". While in Accenture, Rafael focused on utilities and grid operations. Rafael was Accenture's Distributed Energy Resources (DER) and Distribution Grid Operations Global Practice Lead. Rafael has more than 29 years of experience in the transmission and distribution segments focusing on the design, planning and operations of integrated operations and planning solutions. Rafael has emerged as one of the leaders in the evolution and implementation of advanced Distribution Management Systems including the implementation of both distributed and centralized self-healing network schemes and voltage optimization capabilities.Rafael has conducted a multitude of seminars, courses, workshops and has reviewed and/or published many papers in different areas of the T&D Industry such as in smart grid, distribution operations, distribution management systems, outage management systems, transmission reliability, reliability centered maintenance and power quality. Rafael has filed several intellectual property disclosures in different areas of T&D operations & planning with the US Patent Office as well as he has been awarded two patents: one in storm prediction & management in distribution operations and the second in power systems reliability. Rafael has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the Metropolitan University in Mexico City as well as a MS and a PhD in Power Systems from the University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology in the United Kingdom.Specialties: Distribution Management Systems, Outage Management Systems. SCADA, Energy Management Systems, Geographic Information Systems, IT integration, Smart/Intelligent Grids