UAA College of Business and Public Policy

I studied Chemical Engineering at Oklahoma State University. To help pay for college, I did a cooperative education program where an Oklahoma State alum who worked for ARCO came to Oklahoma State looking for a co-op student. The program was based in Dallas office for ARCO in a computer applications team, where engineers write computer programs. I loved the position. I worked for ARCO, before graduating, for about 18 months alternating semesters between working and going to school. During that timeframe, while working in Dallas writing engineering programs, Alaskan oil fields were really starting up. ARCO was designing facilities for the Prudhoe fields and I got intrigued with Alaska. I naively started looking up homesteading information at the time. After graduation, ARCO offered my husband and I jobs in Alaska and we said “ABSOLUTELY!” We got to move up in the mid-80s and we fell in love with the place and stayed for 17 years, left for 8 years, and came back 4 years ago. I have this deep affinity for Alaska, the people, the absolute beauty, the ruggedness, and the incredible world class reservoirs, and the technologies and challenges that come with the extreme environment.

: I started as a process engineer for quite a few years and turned into a reservoir engineer. I always tended to gravitate towards process simulation, plant design and those kinds of things. Then I got into reservoir simulation and reservoir management strategies. I did some petroleum engineering, or pad engineering/base management, as well as new well delivery and reservoir management. Then I got into strategy, which I really, really enjoyed. Thinking of the bigger picture of what do you develop, and when, and what the value drivers are. When I came over to BP, I got into a strategy position that helped open a lot of doors and that’s when I went off and saw the world.

Great question…I begged to come back! I asked 3 times for the job I was able to go into when I came back which was the Vice President of Resources and Subsurface. Sometimes you have to be relentless!

I would say that I have had about 4 or 5 people who have informally influenced me in a mentoring way. For example, one was a manager I had at BP who was the type of boss to manage while walking around. He would visit folks and he would deeply listen to them. He would incorporate so many views from the organization to make a decision. He was a very deep thinker. He built a kind of culture and environment that people loved being in and loved following him. Those are the kind of leaders I have tended to gravitate to.

I do think when you take a look at the challenges of leadership now, it’s the rapid nature that we take in information and the amount of information daily and the way people are engaging others, our society is picking up on making decisions off of slogans and sound bites instead of deep thoughtful complexities of what reality actually is. The deep art of listening is valuable, especially with all these pounding inputs and information sources. Be in the moment, listen deeply.

One other really important lesson that I had in my leadership journey is to ensure you have the right team around you. That is the best way to really accomplish something together.