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EDUCATION:  James E Taylor High School – 1988 Texas Tech University, BS in Mechanical Engineering University of Phoenix, Master of Business Administration

After graduating from Texas Tech University with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, I started my career as a Petroleum Engineer at Amoco Production Company in Houston, Texas working the East Texas Field and Cotton Valley trend. After working there for five years, I went to work for Merak Projects which developed value management software for the oil and gas industry.  I really enjoyed working with many companies helping them optimize their use of our economics software to generate more value for their company.  After about six years, I went to work for one of my clients, Oxy, working in the Permian Business Unit in the Planning group. During that time, I completed my MBA through the University of Phoenix. In 2007, I went to work for my current employer, Citation Oil & Gas Corp. as Director of Strategic Planning. We manage all the Planning functions of the company and work closely with the executive team, engineering groups and region offices to establish and track operating and financial budgets, complete look-back analyses to determine how well we actually did on projects as well as many other tasks to support our executive team in their decisions. My father was an SPE member when I received this scholarship, and it helped me develop contacts and learn more about the oil and gas industry. I became even more interested in making it my career choice because so many people reached out to me to offer advice and guidance. My advice to students is to find something you truly enjoy and love to do and make a career out of it. I loved science and math which led me to a degree in engineering. This is a cyclical industry and prices will fluctuate.  There will be great times financially but there will also be more difficult times - but I love the work that I do which makes it easier to handle the ups and downs. Build and maintain a good network in the industry - that has proven invaluable to me over the years.