Our Team

Lord John Browne joined BP in 1966 as a university apprentice, between 1969 and 1983 had a variety of exploration and production posts in North America and the UK, and in 1984 became Group Treasurer and Chief Executive of BP Finance International. He served as BP Group Chief Executive for 12 years and retired from that role in 2007. He was voted Most Admired CEO by Management Today, a United Kingdom business publication, every year between 1999 and 2002. He has also held board positions with a wealth of corporations and other organizations.

Dr. Kenneth Carlson is the Director of the Center for Energy Water Sustainability (CEWS) and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Colorado State University. He has over 30 years of experience in addressing water related issues; especially optimizing the synergies between water and energy and has championed efforts to increase the sustainability of water use in the oil and gas industry for over 10 years.

CEWS employs scientists, engineers and researchers working on various energy-water sustainability initiatives. Past initiatives have included optimizing water transportation systems, reducing the cost of produced water recycle treatment technologies, researching the viability of various beneficial reuse opportunities and policy limitations, a first of its kind public facing real-time continuous ground water monitoring framework in oil and gas fields, and GIS-based Decision Support Tool development for managing water and wastewater in spatially diverse oil and gas operations. On-going efforts include developing and deploying industry’s first standardized freshwater reporting framework and metrics that would assess and certify oil and gas operators on their water stewardship program and thereby enable and encourage operator efforts towards freshwater stewardship, an important component of a responsibly sourced gas (RSG) certification program. Dr. Carlson has a BS in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, MS in Civil Engineering from Colorado State University and a PhD in Environmental Engineering from the University of Colorado.

Ms. Hudak joined our Board in October 2019. Ms. Hudak served as Anadarko Petroleum Corporation’s Vice President, DJ Basin Development, from May 2017 to September 2019. Before that, Ms. Hudak served in various management positions at Anadarko, including General Manager, DJ Basin Development and Execution from March 2016 to May 2017, and Director, Rockies Business Development from November 2014 to March 2016. Ms. Hudak previously served the non-profit organization, Coloradoans for Responsible Energy Development as its Chairperson from 2018 to 2019 and as a Board Member from 2017 to 2018. Ms. Hudak also served as Treasurer and Executive Board Member for the Colorado Oil and Gas Association from 2017 to 2019. Ms. Hudak received her Master’s Degree in Geology from Duke University and her Bachelor’s Degree in Geology from Miami University.

Steve Melzer is a consulting engineer in Midland, Texas specializing in CO2 injection projects, enhanced oil recovery (EOR), reservoir properties, secure geologic storage, and horizontal well reservoir depressuring projects. He also provides engineering and business planning services for a variety of U.S. and International commercial clients in the oil and gas, industrial gas, coal and power sectors as well as advising policy makers and non-governmental organizations on the subject of CO2 EOR and carbon capture and storage. He has also originated and operated many exploration and production projects in the oil and gas sector. His landmark work on the origin and distribution of residual oil zones (ROZ) has led to their commercial exploitation through the use of both CO2 EOR and horizontal wells and coming utilization in carbon capture and storage. The ROZ work has also led to a team of folks currently documenting a new contribution and science-based explanation of mixed- and oil-wettability in carbonates and certain clastic reservoir rocks.

He has been the director of the 28 years of the annual CO2 Flooding Conference and assists in organizing the EOR Carbon Management Workshop, both held each year in December in Midland, Texas. He has served on the Governor of Texas’ FutureGen Board, as a past Director of The University of Texas of the Permian Basin’s Petroleum Industry Alliance, Plains CO2 Reduction’s and Wyoming’s Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute technical advisory board, and continues to serve on several other out of state and local Advisory Boards and Councils.

Steve resides in Midland, TX. He has a BS in geological engineering from Texas A&M and a MS degree in Engineering (Rock Mechanics) from Purdue University.

Michael Ming is the President and Founder of Ming Energy Partners, LLC. He retired in 2018 as the VP – Executive Liaison for Marketing & Technology for Baker Hughes, a GE Company. Formerly, Mike served as the original General Manager of General Electric’s Global Research O&G Technology Center in Oklahoma City. Mike previously served as the Oklahoma Secretary of Energy under Governor Mary Fallin, the President of the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America (RPSEA), and as an independent natural gas producer as a Managing Member and principal of K. Stewart Energy Group and K. Stewart Petroleum Corp.  He holds a BS degree with distinction in Petroleum Engineering and an MS degree in Engineering Management, both from Stanford University, and is a registered professional engineer in Oklahoma. At Stanford Mr. Ming is an emeritus member and past Chairman of the Petroleum Investments Committee and co-sponsored the MAP/Ming Visiting Professorship on Energy and the Environment. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Oklahoma and currently teaches in the Executive MBA in Energy program.  He also serves on several boards including the Central Oklahoma United Way BoD, chairman of Riversport OKC (formerly the Oklahoma City Boathouse Foundation), Global Innovation Platform, Duncan Oil, and university industry advisory boards at Stanford, the University of Texas BEG, and OU.  He authored the “Oklahoma First Energy Plan”, Oklahoma’s first formal energy plan in 2011.  He is a frequent speaker in the U.S., in addition to dozens of countries around the world as a Society of Petroleum Engineers 2011-12 Distinguished Lecturer, on energy and energy systems.  He also co-chaired the 2019 Oklahoma Academy Energy Townhall, served on the MIT Future of Natural Gas Study, and as a strategic planning advisor to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Mr. Ming is co-chair of Project Canary's Science Advisory Council.

David Victor is a professor of innovation and public policy at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego. He co-directs the campus-wide Deep Decarbonization Initiative, an effort to understand how quickly the world can eliminate emissions of warming gases. He is adjunct professor in Climate, Atmospheric Science & Physical Oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a professor (by courtesy) in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

Prior to joining the faculty at UC San Diego, Victor was a professor at Stanford Law School where he taught energy and environmental law. He has been heavily involved in many different climate- and energy-policy initiatives, including as convening lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations-sanctioned international body with 195 country members that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

His Ph.D. is from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and A.B. from Harvard University.

Governor Bill Ritter was elected Colorado's 41st governor in 2006 and was the District Attorney of Denver from 1993-2005.  During his four-year term as Governor, Ritter established Colorado as a national and international leader in clean energy by building a New Energy Economy. After leaving the Governor’s Office, Ritter founded the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University, which works with state and federal policymakers to create clean energy policy throughout the country.  Governor Ritter has authored a book that was published in 2016 entitled, Powering Forward – What Everyone Should Know About America’s Energy Revolution.

Governor Ritter was formerly the chair of the Board of Directors of the Energy Foundation and currently serves on the board of The Climate Group American and the Board of Trustees of The Nature Conservancy.  Ritter is a member of Blackhorn Venture Capital and serves as an advisor to Green Alpha and Millennium Bridge, among others.  Ritter earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from Colorado State University (1978) and his law degree from the University of Colorado (1981). With his wife Jeannie, he operated a food distribution and nutrition center in Zambia. He then served as Denver’s district attorney from 1993 to January 2005.

Dr. Anna Scott is an atmospheric scientist, an entrepreneur, co-founder of Project Canary and Co-Chair of our Science Advisory Council.

She received her PhD in the Earth and Planetary Science Department at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics from University of Chicago, a Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), and a Master of Arts and Sciences in Earth Science from Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Scott has installed sensor networks and led field campaigns in Birmingham, Alabama, Nairobi (Kenya), and Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Scott founded the Baltimore Open Air project, a community-based air quality monitoring project that designed, built, and deployed air monitors in the Greater Baltimore region.

As a scientist, she’s worked on projects around the world with the Red Cross/Red Crescent’s International Climate Center, NASA, The World Bank, and numerous local governments.

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Kyle Simpson has decades of experience working in the energy industry and government on energy and environmental policy, laws, and regulations, and developing projects. Mitigating climate change, education, community engagement and increasing value are forefront in his work on clean energy system integration and project development. Kyle offers insight from multiple vantage points and understands challenges and opportunities from diverse perspectives in the fields of energy, environment, politics, and project development with corporations; federal, state, and local governments; philanthropic organizations; and research and development companies. He works to connect public policy with business objectives to enhance value as large energy, social and economic systems transition to a decarbonized future.

Kyle has managed his own companies, lead the energy and environment consulting practice in several law and policy firms, and held executive positions in large energy and construction companies. While serving at the U.S. Department of Energy as Senior Advisor to the Secretary and Associate Deputy Secretary for Energy Programs, Kyle developed and managed domestic and international energy policy. He was responsible for the energy R&D programs for natural gas, renewable energy, nuclear energy, and energy efficiency and oversaw the management of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the power marketing administrations. He has helped to create and worked on major U.S. and international environmental and energy initiatives to increase resource and product value, minimize the environmental impact of energy production and use, integrate systems for the use of renewable and natural gas resources and technologies, and make the production, delivery, and use of energy more efficient. Kyle is a graduate of Brown University and studied politics and history at Bath University in England.

Mr. Tyree serves as Chairman of Northwoods Energy, which he founded in January 2018 with members of Apollo Global Management. Northwoods owns and operates oil and gas properties in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming.

Mr. Tyree also serves as a director of Antero Resources and was a director of Bonanza Creek Energy from 2017-2020.

Until recently, Mr. Tyree was Chief Executive Officer of Extraction Oil & Gas, where he led the company's restructuring and strategic efforts, which culminated in several merger transactions and the formation of Civitas Resources.

Prior to Extraction, Mr. Tyree was co-founder, president, chief financial officer and director of Vantage Energy, a private equity-backed exploration and production company which was sold to Rice Energy (now EQT Corporation) for $2.7 billion in late 2016.

From 2003-2006, Mr. Tyree served as Chief Financial Officer of Bill Barrett Corporation, leading its initial public offering in 2004. Prior to Bill Barrett, from 1989-2003, he was an investment banker at Goldman, Sachs & Co., serving as Managing Director in the Energy Group.

Mr. Tyree holds a B.A. from Colgate University, where he currently serves as a member of the Board of Trustees, and he earned an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Tyree has been married for 30 years and has three adult children. He enjoys skiing, golf, and time with family and friends.

Dr. Mark D. Zoback is the Benjamin M. Page Professor of Geophysics, Emeritus at Stanford University, where he was also the Director of the Stanford Natural Gas Initiative and Co-Director of the Stanford Center for Induced and Triggered Seismicity and the Stanford Center for Carbon Storage and a Senior Fellow in the Precourt Institute for Energy. Dr. Zoback conducts research on in situ stress, fault mechanics, and reservoir geomechanics with an emphasis on shale gas, tight gas and tight oil production as well as CO2 sequestration. Dr. Zoback served on the Secretary of Energy Subcommittee on shale gas development and the National Academy of Engineering Committee that investigated the Deepwater Horizon accident. He is the author of two textbooks and the author/co-author of approximately 400 technical papers. His most recent book, Unconventional Reservoir Geomechanics, was written with Arjun Kohli, and published in 2019 by Cambridge University Press. His online course, Reservoir Geomechanics, has been completed by over 12,000 people around the world. Dr. Zoback has received a number of awards and honors including election to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2011, he was awarded an Einstein Chair Professorship of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013 and received the Robert R. Berg Outstanding Research Award of the AAPG in 2015. He was the 2020 chair of the Society of Petroleum Engineers Technical Committee on Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage and 2021 Honorary Lecturer for the Society of Exploration Geophysicists. https://earth.stanford.edu/people/mark-zoback