My career in the oilfield started with a couple of summer internships while studying mechanical engineering at South Dakota School of Mines. I spent two summers with Aera Energy in California's South Belridge field. A week after graduating college I started working as a full time Drilling Engineer.

Over the past 25 years, I've worked with operators of all size including multiple international super majors, large independents, and start-ups, across some of the most challenging oil and gas basins in the country. Along the way, I've held roles spanning drilling engineering, field operations, technical supervision, and executive leadership in drilling and HSE. That range of experience has given me an appreciation for how engineering decisions, field execution, people, and processes all come together to drive performance.

What I've enjoyed most throughout my career is finding ways to make complex operations work better. Whether that's collaborating with contractors to improve rig capabilities, developing more effective operating procedures, building a highly effective HSE program from the ground up that achieved 1.8 million work hours without an OSHA-recordable incident, or using operational data to identify opportunities for improvement, I've always been interested in understanding not just what works, but why it works.

More recently, that interest has led me to explore advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. I see tremendous opportunities to bring these technologies into drilling operations, combining decades of practical field experience with better tools for understanding performance, anticipating problems, and making more informed decisions.