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Darrell Roberts

Advisory Board Member
Darrell Roberts

Founder, President and Chief Consultant
DeJuRo Consulting, LLC

Darrell J. Roberts is Founder, President and Chief Consultant at DeJuRo Consulting, LLC, which advises utility companies on operational safety and regulatory compliance issues at nuclear power plants.  He is also currently Chief Operating Officer of Caracal, a minority-owned business that fills the supply and service needs of companies, government agencies and educational institutions in the U.S. and around the world.  Mr. Roberts has also served on the Board of Directors for Caracal since 2020.

Prior to his current roles, Mr. Roberts retired from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December 2022, where he worked for more than 33 years (including the last 15 in executive management) with an emphasis on safety, regulatory compliance and licensing.  In his senior management roles, Mr. Roberts focused on leading people, leading change, and building coalitions with internal and external stakeholders.  In his last role with the agency, as Deputy Executive Director for Operations – Reactor and Response Programs, Mr. Roberts oversaw six key agency offices (including the four regional headquarters in the Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago and Dallas metropolitan areas), with responsibility for more than 1300 NRC employees and a nearly $1B budget.

Mr. Roberts joined the NRC upon graduation from Va. Tech in 1989 and assumed a variety of roles of increasing responsibility, including serving as a resident inspector at two nuclear power plants in the Carolinas.  He moved into his last position, Deputy Executive Director for Reactor Programs, in 2021, where oversaw the agency’s licensing and oversight programs for 93 operating nuclear reactors located throughout the U.S., as well as the staff’s reviews of new and advanced reactor designs that were either under construction or undergoing design certification.

In 2021, he also led the agency’s return to the workplace following the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.  He additionally participated in international activities, including as a U.S. delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Convention on Nuclear Safety and, most recently, as the NRC’s lead representative for the IAEA’s Commission on Safety Standards, which meets semiannually at IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, to oversee the development of international nuclear safety standards, and includes representatives from dozens of countries with nuclear interests throughout the world.

As a highly respected senior manager at NRC, Mr. Roberts mentored dozens of fellow NRC staff and recruited prospective employees at various venues, including the annual National Society of Black Engineers conference and Virginia Tech’s annual Engineering Expo.  He has also participated in various STEM activities throughout his career.

Mr. Roberts earned a BS in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech in 1989 and his MS in technical management from Johns Hopkins University in 2006.  His nuclear career spanned 36 years, beginning in 1986 as a co-op student at Dominion Energy’s North Anna Power Station while still attending Virginia Tech as an undergraduate.

Mr. Roberts is a brother of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. having been inducted into Virginia Tech’s Eta Lambda chapter in March 1987.  In 2015, he founded the music blog, djrobblog.com, where he serves as owner, principal content creator, and chief editor. The blog has published more than 750 articles since its inception eight years ago.