Anne Reese
Anne Reese is a seasoned production engineer with extensive experience in the oil and gas industry, currently serving as a Senior Production Engineer at ConocoPhillips in Houston, Texas. With a strong technical foundation in artificial lift, production chemicals, and field operations, she specializes in optimizing well performance and driving operational efficiency. Anne is known for her hands-on approach to execution, taking ownership of production systems post-drilling and continuously identifying opportunities to improve performance, reduce costs, and enhance reliability.
Throughout her career, Anne has held key engineering and operations roles across leading energy companies, including Concho Resources, Ring Energy, and Chevron. She has contributed to both field-level operations and corporate initiatives, including global production projects and post-acquisition integration efforts. Her experience spans major energy basins in Texas, where she built a reputation as an effective communicator and collaborator, working seamlessly with both field personnel and executive leadership. Anne is particularly passionate about mentoring, dedicating time to developing early-career engineers and supporting young women pursuing paths in engineering.
Anne holds a Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M University, along with a Safety Engineering Certificate from the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center. She is also actively involved in community leadership through her long-standing service with The Junior League, where she has held multiple leadership roles, including President. Driven by a commitment to excellence, relationship-building, and continuous growth, Anne aspires to further expand her impact as a people leader within the energy industry.
• Engineer In Training
• Mary Kay O-Connor Safety Engineering Certificate
• Texas A&M University
• St. Agnes Academy
• Volunteering at The Regis School
• The Junior League of Midland, Inc.
• The Junior League of Houston, Inc.
What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to treating everyone the same, regardless of their position. When you work on the operations side, you work with a really large span of people, all the way from the field to engineers to executives, and I believe no one is more important than anyone else. Everyone's worth your time, and everyone's time is worth the same. I often tell my guys in the field that their time is actually more important than mine, because they're the ones at the wellhead making things actually work physically. I think a lot of it comes down to relationships and working on those soft skills. People get caught up in different engineering majors and degrees, but I disagree with that focus. I think an engineering degree is a piece of paper that says you can solve problems. I feel like any type of technical role they threw me in, even if it's not my expertise, I would figure it out. It's all about the relationships and integrating teams and making sure people work as a team. We can all figure it out, we're all learning. What's really important is being a glue employee, someone who gets people in the room, has the conversation, and aligns everyone on a path forward. And you also can't be afraid to make a decision, because I'd rather someone make a decision than wait and wait and lose an opportunity. It's okay if we fail, you've got to move on.
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Women who tend to go the technical route, just because it is technical, we tend to be generally higher anxiety, perfectionistic people. Sometimes you just have to take a breath and be in the moment. You're not going to break the curve every time in these types of roles and this type of degree. You have to kind of be okay with where you're at and try to develop within roles or outside of work. I think a lot of times, the younger engineers are so focused on moving up that they don't realize there is really important technical development they can do within roles. And sometimes you do it through your extracurriculars. I've done a lot of nonprofit work and board work because I know that at some point there's going to be an opportunity for a role that I'm really going to want, and maybe I haven't had the roles at my current company to check every box, but I've done things outside of work to check all the boxes. People forget that you don't only get your experience at work. There's a lot of other hours in the day. A lot of the younger engineers or kids coming out of school think they have to have an answer every time someone asks a question. You have to be okay with listening, but also be okay with silence. Sometimes you don't have the answer, and it's okay to say that you don't have the answer. Sometimes you just need to sit back and learn, instead of always trying to offer something as an answer. It's better to have an answer later than a wrong answer first. You have to be open to change, whether that's with advancements in tech or changes in companies or ideologies. You gotta give things a chance. When you show up and you have a good attitude and you're like I'm going to make the best of this, it will be a good situation.
What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Being intentional with my time is really important to me. You can't do everything and you can't be everywhere, but you want to try to focus on the things that have your highest impact, where you can learn the most. It's not just about being intentional with what you work on at work, but also with your relationships. It's good to know a lot of people in industry, but I personally find it's better to have fewer people with very high-quality relationships and mentorship, because when things get hard, I have several mentors that I can call and be like, Hey, have you ever been through this? What would you recommend? I think it's about leaning on the mentors and being okay with telling people you're struggling. I also focus on having a good attitude. When I moved to Midland straight out of school, everyone told me how horrible it would be, but I showed up there and had a wonderful time and had some of the most impactful experiences of my career. With my children, the thing that's the most important is that they feel like they have my undivided time when they do. When they feel like they have their undivided time, there's a level of trust there, but it also helps them develop skills. Do I always feel like doing that when I get home? No, I don't, but it is important to me to help them build a strong foundation.