After the 1984 commerce degree, Horatio Alger’s 2017 notice says Abel joined PricewaterhouseCoopers in Edmonton and moved to its San Francisco office, where one client was CalEnergy. He then accepted a job with that geothermal company. In his first letter as Berkshire chief executive — the letter that opens the 2025 annual report, released February 28, 2026 — Abel writes that in 1992 he moved to Omaha to join CalEnergy, then unaffiliated with Berkshire, a firm partly owned by Peter Kiewit Sons’ and chaired by Walter Scott, Jr., who was also a Berkshire director. “My specific roles at CalEnergy matter little today,” he wrote. “What matters is that it was an extraordinary period of personal development.”
The Association member page says that from 1992 to 2008 he served as a senior executive; that in 1999 the company became MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company and he was named president; that he became CEO in 2008 and chairman in 2011; and that in 2014 MidAmerican became Berkshire Hathaway Energy. The 2017 notice states that MidAmerican was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway in 2000. The 2026 Berkshire proxy compresses the later titles: chief executive officer of BHE between 2008 and 2018, and BHE chairman until July 2025. The May 2025 Form 8-K says he had been BHE chairman since 2011.
Mentors in the Association biography are named: David Sokol (Horatio Alger Class of 2004) and Walter Scott (Class of 1997). Abel is quoted: they “gave me such exciting opportunities,” and after Berkshire took MidAmerican private he began working with Warren Buffett, who “has such a positive view on life and focuses on sharing and teaching.” Those are Association-published quotes, not reconstructed dialogue.
Outside seats, as later filed: director of The Kraft Heinz Company until May 2024; director of AEGIS Insurance Services Inc. from 2016 to 2023 (May 2025 8-K). The 2017 Association notice also listed Edison Electric Institute (director and vice chairman), Nuclear Electric Insurance Limited, and Kraft Heinz as then-current boards. Those 2017 lines are historical as of that release.