Her Story
About Alyssa
I've been in engineering in the oil and gas industry for almost 14 years, starting in 2015. I currently work as the operations manager for a small mom-and-pop exploratory company, where I truly wear multiple hats depending on the day. I manage everything from our wells and field personnel in tandem with my field superintendent to make sure everything stays on track out in the field. I also help coordinate with our geologist and our drilling and completions engineer to drill and complete new wells, and I deal a lot with our production allocations, helping our accounting team make sure that we're reporting everything properly and paying all of our other owners. The way I kind of describe my job is that I keep the wheels on. Before this role, I was working at Chevron, a really big oil and gas company, and my current CEO Kevin Herman interviewed me and plucked me out of that world into a small company atmosphere. From there, I've learned just so much and really understood how a company runs - something I wouldn't have necessarily gotten a chance to experience at a really large corporation like Chevron. My ultimate goal is to someday start my own small oil and gas exploratory company, which might be more of a 5-plus or 10-year kind of goal.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Alyssa
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think so far, it's just been from working hard and kind of being honest about things that I don't necessarily know, and then working towards understanding a new concept and being able to execute what's asked of me. With all these different hats I wear, I'm constantly in a position where I don't know what I'm doing, so I'm constantly asking people around me or different vendors for advice. I think just asking questions and working hard kind of gets you where you need to end up at the end of the day, and I think that's how you succeed.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Being a woman in a male-dominated industry, we second-guess ourselves a lot. I mean, we're more afraid, I think, of being wrong. My advice would be that even though that's hard to accept sometimes, you just have to speak up, even when you're worried about what other people will think of you. If you have an opinion that disagrees with someone else in the room, or even the person of power, you should still speak up and let your opinions be known, because your opinions are valuable, and you're there for a reason. I try to remind myself all the time that I'm a professional, and I'm here for a reason, and my opinions are valuable. And if I'm wrong later, I would go and say, look, you know, I misspoke on these items, want to correct them when we make our decision.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
It's a shrinking industry with a lot of mergers and acquisitions happening.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Being honest and trustworthy is something I value the most, and honestly, having a good work ethic. It goes back to leading with integrity - we're all human, so we make mistakes, but just be honest about it and keep it going, keep it pushing.
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