Dr. Ambrose has been our President and CEO since August, 2020. He was previously Senior Vice President for EP Energy and Phoenix Natural Resources from April 2016 to July 2020. Dr. Ambrose worked as the Chief Reservoir Engineer for Hilcorp Energy Company from March 2012 to March 2015, and then at NRG Energy, Inc. as Senior Director, Petroleum Engineering, from April 2015 until joining Phoenix Natural Resources.
Dr. Ambrose earned a BS in chemical engineering with a petroleum minor and an MS in petroleum engineering from the University of Southern California and a PhD from the University of Oklahoma where his dissertation was focused on unconventional gas storage phenomena and rate transient analysis of unconventional reservoirs.
Monica Brisnehan joined Elk in November 2017 and has served as Chief Financial Officer since April 2019. Prior to joining Elk, she was Senior Vice President - Corporate Finance at Sunshine Silver Mining and Refining and Senior Director of Investor Relations at Newmont Mining. Prior to her employment at Newmont, Ms. Brisnehan held finance positions at Welton Street Investments, RBC Capital Markets, McDonald Investments, and Lehman Brothers.
Ms. Brisnehan has a bachelor of science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Colorado and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with concentrations in analytic finance and accounting. She is also a CFA Charterholder.
Jeff Roedell is the Vice President of Operations. Mr. Roedell has held management positions in the Greater Aneth field since 2012. Prior to working for Elk Petroleum, Mr. Roedell's experience includes 21 years of increasing responsibility in engineering and management for the Rangely CO2 flood with Chevron.
Mr. Roedell holds a MS in Mechanical Engineering from Washington State University.
Reza Rastegar is the Vice President of Subsurface Development. Prior to working for Elk Petroleum, Mr. Rastegar held various subsurface roles of increasing responsibility with Hilcorp, Oxy and Chevron. His main expertise is to optimize Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) assets.
Mr. Rastegar holds a Ph.D. in Petroleum Engineering from University of Southern California (USC) and an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Ryan Williams is the Vice President of Drilling. Prior to joining Elk, Mr. Williams held various subsurface and operations engineering roles of increasing responsibility, with a primary focus on drilling operations, at EP Energy, formerly El Paso. Mr. Williams has both engineering and well-site supervisory experience drilling conventional vertical well designs as well as unconventional extended reach horizontal well designs in major basins located within the Lower 48. Specifically he has extensive experience in North Louisiana Haynesville, South Louisiana Wilcox, South Texas Eagle Ford, West Texas Permian, and Northeast Utah Uinta Basin.
Mr. Williams holds a BS of Petroleum Engineering from Colorado School of Mines.
Tai Nguyen is the Vice President of Information Technology and has over 20 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. Prior to joining Elk, he was the IT Manager at Hilcorp Energy Company. At Hilcorp, Mr. Nguyen managed a team that supported the companies internal IT needs ranging from Business Intelligence solutions to ERP Integration. He has extensive experience with solutions supporting upstream, midstream and field operations including all back office systems.
Mr. Nguyen holds a bachelor of science from the University of Houston.