Energy DOT 2022

Ram currently serves as Energy Center Officer (part time) at UH Energy, a multi-disciplinary energy research program at the University of Houston. He serves as project manager for low-carbon energy projects such as hydrogen, wind, geothermal and methane abatement. Ram is also the Executive Vice President for Business Development & Technology at Cozairo, a company that offers scalable carbon emissions reduction solutions to industry.

Ram recently retired as a senior executive at ExxonMobil with nearly 40 years of experience in the Upstream industry and 33 years with ExxonMobil. His Upstream experience includes subsurface, concept selection, project and oilfield economics, asset valuation and technical support to major capital projects.  He has held multiple key managerial and technical leadership positions influencing major upstream projects in the industry including Kazakhstan, Russia, North Sea, Middle East and Unconventionals.

Ram serves on the Advisory Board for the UH Petroleum Engineering Department, and was recently recognized as an Engineering Distinguished Alumni by the Cullen College of Engineering.

Ram has a Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering from the University of Houston, and a Bachelors in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

A Petroleum Engineer by background, Sidd is the Co-founder and CEO of Nesh. Nesh builds Subject Matter Avatars for Complex Industries. Sidd is a Schlumberger and Shell alum. He is also a self-described data nerd and a design enthusiast. Sidd has a Bachelors Degree from Indian Institute of Technology and a Masters Degree from UT Austin.

Andrey is a global digital innovation leader with 15 years of experience in the energy industry with Schlumberger and 5 years of building digital products in Silicon Valley. As a product manager at DroneDeploy, Andrey's primary goal is to bring the benefits of Reality Capture technologies to the Energy industry.   

Laura Freeman is a Managing Director and founder of Highpoint Global Capital. She has been an integral part of over $8 billion in acquisitions and divestitures including the high-profile acquisition of all of Hunt Oil Company’s Permian Basin Assets in 2021. Laura specializes in technical valuation, financing, and navigating the complexities of dealmaking. She has worked various high tech and ESG projects for past and future clients including $100 million in funding for wind royalties, bitcoin applications for waste gas, ESG planning, and technology use and integration.  

Laura has a Master’s in Petroleum Engineering, an MBA, and a bachelor’s degree in Physics. She has been featured as an expert on M&A, finance, and Reservoir Engineering for various magazines, industry events, and online publications including Oil and Gas Financial Journal, Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), OilPrice.com, PHDWin week, American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), and Journal of Petroleum Technology (JPT).

Arash Nazhad is a Managing Director in Citi’s Global Clean Energy Technology team with over 20 years of experience across multiple regions in finance as both an advisor and principle. He currently focuses on strategic advisory assignments and capital markets financings for companies across decarbonization and digitization  landscape. 

Prior to joining Citi, Mr. Nazhad spent nearly 8 years at Equinor in various operational and leadership roles.  Mr. Nazhad has been involved in the execution of more than $50 billion of M&A advisory and has raised over $40 billion of capital for clients from private and public sources, including the execution of over 20 Initial Public Offerings.

Mr. Nazhad graduated with a B. Comm in Management from Concordia University and an interdisciplinary Master’s degree in Energy and Earth Resources from the University of Texas Austin. He is happily married to Chelsea Nazhad and has two daughters Sabrina and Melyssa Nazhad. 

The modern architect of culture change in energy, Katie Mehnert is the Founder and CEO of ALLY Energy™, the community accelerating connections, jobs, and skills to drive an equitable energy transition. ALLY is an inaugural member of Greentown Labs Houston, the top climate technology incubator in North America.

Mrs. Mehnert has held global leadership roles with BP and Shell in safety and environment during periods of financial crisis, spills, divestment, and globalization. Her corporate path drove her to entrepreneurship to help energy companies prepare for the looming talent shortage and workforce diversity needs to address energy poverty and climate change.

She was appointed an Ambassador to the United States Department of Energy in 2020 and has testified before Congress on the clean energy workforce of the future.

Katie has been published in Scientific American, Forbes, The Hill, CNBC, CNN, and in 2020, she published her first book, Grow with the Flow, Embracing Difference, Overcoming Failure, and Progress with Purpose.  She's the co-author of Everyday Superheroes: Women in Energy, a children's book focused on energy careers to be released in 2022.  Mrs. Mehnert appeared in Hot Money, a 2021 documentary produced by Academy Award-winning actor, Jeff Bridges and Retired NATO General Wesley Clark on the financial complexities of climate change and finance.

Katie is an Energy Institute Fellow and an advisor to Clean Energy for America.  She's a 1997 graduate of Louisiana State University and attended Rice University's Executive Energy education program in 2004.  She is also is a four-time World Major marathoner having completed London, Chicago, New York, and Berlin  Her husband Mark is VP of Legal with Baker Hughes.  They live with their 11-year-old daughter, Ally, in Houston.

Deanna is the creator of EtechMonkey, an energy transition blog. Before starting EtechMonkey, she led the Energy Technology Banking division at Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., covering clients in areas such as energy software, industrial technology, environmental infrastructure, and alternative energy. She has advised dozens of companies on their capital and exit strategies and is a prolific speaker and writer on the topics of energy transition and technology. 

Marina Bulova is the Schlumberger Science-based Target initiative Manager. This is a company-wide project aiming to calculate full greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions footprint of the organization and develop targets for its reduction according to criteria set by Paris Agreement. Based on estimated emissions footprint Schlumberger committed to Net Zero in June 2021.

At the same time, Marina is the Director University Collaborations for Schlumberger. She is developing and nurturing relationships with a large network of Universities worldwide, so the company has access to excellent talent, has innovative technology collaboration with world class minds, transfers knowledge from industry to academia, and helps students to understand the world.

Throughout her 18 years career in Schlumberger, Marina worked in Russia, Canada and USA. Majority of assignments were related to the technology development or management in the Technology part of the organization. Her two PhDs in Chemistry and Materials Sciences are helping her to speak on the same language with academia representatives. 

Marina is happily sharing her house with her husband and three kids.

Simon Dawson was born in 1981 in Leamington Spa, England. His family then moved to Michigan when he was 4 years old. He grew up in both the U.S. and U.K. as his father, Ian, was an influential figure in the global motorsports community. Simon developed a passion for a variety of sports as a youth and became particularly versed in the game of tennis.

He graduated from high school in Houston and ultimately attended the University of North Carolina Charlotte on a tennis scholarship, where he studied athletic training, strength, conditioning and sports psychology.
In 2000, Simon returned to England and became a tennis pro, obtaining a top-25 ranking in the country playing doubles with world top-five ranked player Rosco Tanner.

Simon soon became a full-time tennis and fitness instructor, and after a stint as a salesperson and marketing manager at England’s Next Generation club, joined his father in the world of motorsports. Simon trained drivers and contributed to the development of his father’s teams, working extensively with Lola, while also preparing a variety of well-known Formula 1 and IndyCar competitors for their grueling races.

Simon also spent several years as business manager for Ferrari race team Risi Competizione. Then in 2012, he became part of his father’s Project Libra Race program, helping develop the Radical Sportscar Ford EcoBoost race engine and the team’s first race car.

For six years, Simon and Ian enjoyed great success with Radical Texas in Houston selling track-day vehicles, while testing and developing new cars and technologies. Simon also serves as president of Dawson Racing.
In 2018, Simon created D3eSports, of which he is now CEO and president. Establishing an educational platform for kids to learn STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) through eSports and racing has been his focus, while developing corporate partnerships in the global business.
In 2021, the Dawson Racing team was competing in the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) championship in the D3+Transformers LMP3 for a doubleheader at the historic Watkins Glen International circuit in New York to further align their real racing with the virtual.
The driving force behind Simon’s passion for motorsports is his family, which includes his son, Dylan, and the dream of making racing an obtainable pastime and sport for all families.

Antonio Lopez advises C-Suites and boards across five continents in his role as CEO of DPM Consulting. He specializes in the intersection of human capital and emerging trends with a special focus on operationalizing ESG strategies. His firm has proprietary tools for assessing organizational health and implementing value driven action plans, primarily in the areas of social impact and corporate governance. They help firms maximize sustainable returns and mitigate liability risk as they compete in an increasingly dynamic and uncertain world.

Gaby Rowe, the project lead for Texas's Operation Connectivity, was born into a family of educators and social activists on the Upper West Side of New York City. While her circuitous career has taken her from school principal to technology innovator to education policy and implementation consultant, Gaby’s focus has always been on high impact projects that serve to transform the lives of young people and enable economic empowerment and opportunity.

As a born and bred New Yorker, the early years of Gaby’s educational experience were in New York City, where she served as Head of School at The Mandell School for more than 15 years. During those years, Rowe was engaged in the transformation of local education policy and was an advisor on the development of Universal Pre-K.

Gaby moved to Houston in the summer of 2014 to take the helm of The Village School, a 2,000-student independent school in West Houston where she oversaw an $80 million campus expansion and transformed the school into a tech-enabled STEM institution focused on 21st century skill development and 4th industrial revolution careers. In 2018, Gaby made the jump full-time to technology and innovation, as the CEO of Station Houston, a startup accelerator, before becoming the founding Executive Director of the Ion, a $100 million innovation hub in Houston spearheaded by Rice University.

In that role, Gaby secured the support of Intel, Microsoft, The City of Houston and others for the establishment of the Ion Smart and Resilient Cities Accelerator. She helped bring DivInc and Greentown Labs to Houston and helped secure their permanent homes in the Innovation District. She has served on the Boards of Houston Exponential and TXRX, and has recently joined the Advisory Board for MITIE, the Houston Methodist Hospital Institute for Technology Innovation and Education and as an advisor to the University of St. Thomas’ Office of Innovation. Rowe, as a Principal of Grow Associates, currently leads Operation Connectivity for Governor Abbot and the Texas Education Agency, which is an initiative to close the digital equity gap for students across Texas and is responsible for supplying more than 4.5M devices and $1B in support of closing the Digital Divide for Texas’ most under resourced Students. Gaby has actively worked to promote diversity and inclusion for women and underserved minorities throughout her career and has been recognized by the Houston Business Journal as a "Woman Who Means Business", and by U.S. House of Representatives Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee as a Top Influential Woman of Houston.

Gaby and her husband, Ken, have four children. She is an avid runner and football fan and an avid chef who can be found most weekends testing out new recipes on her friends and family!

Dr. Florian Thaler, CEO and Co-Founder of OilX. Nearly 20 years of experience analysing the oil markets from different perspectives at an oil major (Shell), investment bank (Citigroup) and hedge fund (Och-Ziff). He was also a member of the 100 Future Energy Leaders of the World Energy Council and currently is serving as a board member at Bloc-X, a block trading venture.

Basak is currently a Managing Director and the Technical Team Lead for Quantum Energy Partners. Her primary duties include technical, operational, strategic, and financial analysis of emerging plays, potential and existing projects as well as due diligence and operational/technical support for both existing portfolio companies and potential new investments.

Prior to joining Quantum, Basak was a Director with Citi on their A&D team, where she worked on numerous assignments throughout the U.S. and Canada. Prior to Citi she was with Marathon where she worked as an Integrated Project Team Manager in the Eagle Ford Asset. During her time at Marathon she also worked in the Upstream Technology Department providing technical service to onshore and offshore assets. Her numerous publications range from pore scale to reservoir scale analyses with an emphasis on increasing resource potential. She served as a SPE Distinguished Lecturer for the 2016 – 2017 season focusing on unconventional development.  She currently serves as a Chairman in the SPE Forum Implementation Committee. She also serves on the several SPE Committees including RD&D, M&I and Completion. She is an honorary journal editor for Elsevier and SPE Journals.

Basak holds a Ph.D. and a Master of Science in Petroleum Engineering from Colorado School of Mines. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering and a minor degree in Chemical Reaction Engineering from Middle East Technical University in Turkey

Scott is a Director in AWS’ global Energy & Utilities business, where he leads development activities in energy-specific cloud-based solutions.  He has been an Energy professional for over 30 years, working in Nuclear Energy, and Upstream and Downstream Oil and Gas.  He spent 18 years, including ten as an Partner in Deloitte Consulting’s Energy Practice, was an Independent Operator (multiple assets both onshore and marine), and an Energy Merger and Acquisition Investment Banker. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Nuclear Engineering from Northwestern University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Ryan Dawson is the founder and CEO of Corva, a company fueling real-time data and analytics for the oil and gas industry. Some of the world’s biggest oil companies use Corva to optimize and support their critical operations. Before Corva, Dawson was co-founder of product design incubator thirteen23, which was responsible for the revolutionary mobile strategy of the Obama campaign and had customers such as Netflix, Microsoft, and Twitter.

Danny is a business leader, innovator, and entrepreneur focused on building companies and leading change efforts. He has diverse experience in engineering and management in geothermal energy, oil & gas, operations, well construction, subsurface engineering, capital planning, and optimization. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Criterion Energy Partners (CEP) an independent exploration and production company focused on developing decentralized direct geothermal energy projects to help commercial and industrial consumers reduce their emissions and improve their operating efficiency by providing clean, reliable, baseload energy using heat from the Earth. Danny held positions of increasing responsibility in engineering and management at a Fortune 500 company, Anadarko Petroleum, and a private O&G company, Endeavor Energy Resources. He has lead energy exploration and development projects in the United States and Africa and holds an MBA from Rice University and a Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering from The University of Oklahoma.

Mr. Brooks serves as the Chief Commercial Officer for American Hydrogen.  He has spent his career focused on the development of both traditional and renewable energy infrastructure. 

Mr. Brooks’ renewable experience spans the development of hydrogen generation projects, carbon capture facilities, and waste to energy projects (i.e., MSW to SRF, Biomass to RNG and hydrogen).  These projects span domestic jurisdictions including California and the Northeast, as well as international work in Canada.

Mr. Brooks’ oil and gas experience encompasses midstream system design, construction, and operations.  He has developed natural gas cryogenic facilities, crude and natural gas gathering systems, wellhead treating and processing facilities, CDPs and compressor stations in formations across the United States including the North Dakota Bakken, Oklahoma STACK and Texas Austin Chalk.

In addition to his role at American Hydrogen, Mr.  Brooks also serves as the Vice President of Engineering and Operations for Lone Cypress Energy Services.  Prior to joining the Lone Cypress team, Mr. Brooks worked as the Engineering Project Manager for UMC Energy Solutions, a production equipment manufacturer based out of Midland, TX, and as a Reliability Engineer for Explorer Pipeline. Mr. Brooks received his Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Oklahoma and his Master of Business Administration from the University of Tulsa.

Sonia Scarselli was appointed Vice President Exploration and Appraisal in August 2019 where she leads, develops and operationalizes business strategies and commercial plans to deliver a global portfolio of growth options.  Since joining BHP in 2012, Sonia has served in several commercial and operational leadership roles including Head of Algeria, Exploration and Appraisal Chief of Staff and Manager Exploration Trinidad and Tobago. She has also been heavily involved in Innovation projects and VC activities at BHP. Before joining BHP, Sonia started her career in the oil industry at ExxonMobil UK in a number of exploration and geology roles. She holds a master’s degree in Geological Science from Università degli studi di Perugia, a PhD in Geology from ETH Zurich and an MBA from the London Business School. Sonia serves as advisor in Deep Energy Capital, LLP since 2021, the American Cancer Society, CEOs Against Cancer Chapter since 2020, and the AAPG Advisory Council since 2019.

David’s life and career has focused on the development of people, business, technology and culture. He has been a pioneer and champion of strategic growth in technology, business models, machine design, and industrial digitization.  He is a global public speaker on innovation, change, and leadership, as well as being an advocate in addressing modern slavery.  David serves on the boards of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, the National Ocean Industries Association, and Redeemed, a trauma informed recovery program for sex trafficking survivors.

David has written many published technical papers and magazine articles, with patents in drilling systems and automation.  He has founded industry groups in technology, diversity and inclusion, a startup village, and RedM, a pro-bono crowdsourcing organization.  A winning team member of the first Rockets and Rigs hackathon with a NASA patent-based start-up company, Permittivity, also serving as an advisor to their board.

Tanya’s professional career spans more than 20 years in the areas of finance, strategy and management.  As the Chief Operating Officer for Enverus, Tanya manages operations across the business units, and runs corporate strategy, including M&A activity, due diligence and integration. Prior to her COO role, Tanya served as SVP of Corporate Strategy, and prior to that, as Market Director for Financial Services and Oilfield Services.

Before joining Enverus, Tanya was a Lecturer at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Associate Director of the McCombs Energy Center, where she was responsible for alumni relations, student programming, and business operations.  Prior to working at McCombs, Tanya was a Director at Duff and Phelps, an international financial advisory firm.

Tanya graduated Magna Cum Laude in Economics from Princeton University and she holds an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, where she was a Palmer Scholar.