One of America’s Toughest CEO Jobs: Fixing PG&E

As a California wildfire was exploding in July to become the state’s second-largest ever, Patti Poppe made an executive decision.

The chief executive of PG&E Corp. traveled to the town of Chico, in fire-ravaged Butte County, and declared that the utility would spend as much as $20 billion to bury 10,000 miles of power lines like the one that had likely sparked the fire burning out of control just miles away.