The Southern Company
Founders
Philip Futterer, Eugene A. Cook · Founded 1945 · HQ today: Atlanta, Georgia
Southern was founded by Philip Futterer, Eugene A. Cook in 1945. It is now led by Chris Womack.
Southern Company traces its roots to Commonwealth & Southern, the 1930s utility holding company led by Wendell Willkie. The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 forced such holding companies to break up, and Southern Company was organized in 1945 to hold the southeastern utilities, including Alabama Power and Georgia Power. It became an independent public company in 1949 and later added Mississippi Power, Gulf Power (sold to NextEra in 2019) and, through the 2016 AGL Resources deal, a large gas business.
Mid-20th-century utility figure associated in this profile with the 1945 organization of The Southern Company.
Philip Futterer is listed in this profile among the people associated with organizing The Southern Company in 1945, when Commonwealth & Southern's southeastern utilities were reorganized under the Public Utility Holding Company Act. Detailed public biographical records are limited.
Mid-20th-century utility figure associated in this profile with the 1945 organization of The Southern Company.
Eugene A. Cook is listed in this profile among the people associated with organizing The Southern Company in 1945, when Commonwealth & Southern's southeastern utilities were reorganized under the Public Utility Holding Company Act. Detailed public biographical records are limited.
Chris Womack
Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer
Chris Womack became CEO in May 2023 and chairman in 2024 after leading Georgia Power and Southern Company external affairs. He oversaw the completion of Vogtle Units 3 and 4 and the shift toward serving data center demand, including the OpenAI contract in Georgia.
Thomas A. Fanning
Former Chairman and CEO
Tom Fanning was CEO from December 2010 to May 2023 and stayed on as executive chairman into 2024. He led the 2016 AGL Resources acquisition, the 2019 sale of Gulf Power to NextEra and the continuation of Vogtle Units 3 and 4 after Westinghouse's 2017 bankruptcy.
Because Southern Company was created through the consolidation of regional utilities, its foundational pioneers include Captain William Patrick Lay (founder of Alabama Power in 1906), Thomas W. Martin (early president of Alabama Power), Henry M. Atkinson (pioneer of Georgia Power's predecessor companies), Barney Eaton (founder of Mississippi Power in 1924), and Eugene A. Yates (first chairman of The Southern Company in 1945).
Captain William Patrick Lay was an entrepreneur and river pilot from Gadsden, Alabama. In December 1906, he founded Alabama Power Company after securing a federal permit from Congress to build a hydroelectric dam at Lock 12 on the Coosa River. In 1912, he partnered with visionary attorney Thomas W. Martin and Canadian investor James Mitchell to secure British capital to electrify Alabama.
Thomas W. Martin served as president of Alabama Power from 1920 to 1949 and was a primary architect of modern Southeastern industrialization. Martin led the construction of massive hydroelectric dams along the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers, established the Southern Research Institute in Birmingham, and fought to ensure that local utility operations remained rooted in community service.
Henry M. Atkinson was a Boston-born banker who moved to Atlanta in 1886. In 1902, he unified scattered streetcar and electric lighting franchises to create the Georgia Railway and Electric Company (later Georgia Power Company). Atkinson constructed the Morgan Falls hydroelectric dam on the Chattahoochee River, providing Atlanta with its first large-scale electric power.
Barney Eaton, an attorney from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, founded Mississippi Power Company in 1924. Eaton partnered with Southeastern Power & Light to acquire local municipal electric systems and construct a centralized high-voltage transmission grid across southeastern Mississippi, bringing reliable electricity to coastal towns and timber mills.
In 1924, Thomas W. Martin and his partners formed Southeastern Power & Light as a regional holding company to interconnect Alabama Power, Georgia Power, Mississippi Power, and Gulf Power with high-voltage transmission lines. In 1929, it was merged into the nationwide utility trust Commonwealth & Southern Corporation.
As president of Commonwealth & Southern during the Great Depression, Wendell Willkie became America's foremost corporate advocate for private utility enterprise against federal competition from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). His articulate public debates with FDR led to fair financial settlements for private utility assets and propelled him to the 1940 Republican presidential nomination.
Eugene A. Yates was the chief engineer and vice president of Commonwealth & Southern's southern division. Having masterminded the interconnected transmission grid connecting Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, he possessed the technical credibility and executive trust needed to unify the four operating utilities into a cohesive holding company under the 1945 SEC reorganization plan.
The company's stated mission in 1945 was to provide interconnected electrical engineering, centralized financing, and coordinated power dispatch across Alabama, Georgia, northwest Florida, and southeast Mississippi, while preserving the local operational autonomy and civic identity of each individual operating utility.
The founders recognized that industrial manufacturing could not thrive without cheap, reliable electricity. They partnered with the federal Rural Electrification Administration (REA) to run power lines to remote agricultural hamlets, electrified cotton mills, and created agricultural engineering departments to teach farmers how to use electric refrigeration and irrigation pumps.
Early engineers at Alabama Power and Georgia Power pioneered 110,000-volt high-voltage transmission lines across rugged Southern terrain, designed advanced lightning-protection systems for storm-prone regions, and built some of the world's first automated inter-utility economic power exchange networks.
The founders are memorialized in major power plants, reservoirs, and public institutions across the Southeast, including Plant Yates and Lake Atkinson in Georgia, Plant Martin and Lake Jordan in Alabama, and the Thomas W. Martin Building in Birmingham.
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