Employer

Ernst & Young, LLP

Employer  Website

Job Title  

Senior Manager - Energy Risk Advisory

Class Year and Major

BS Business Administration (Finance and Accounting)-2000

Additional education

Briefly describe what you do   

Our Energy Risk Advisory practice provides integrated risk management advisory services to the energy industry. Based in Houston, Texas the practice serves the local, national, and global markets in which our energy clients participate. Our clients include diversified energy companies, energy utilities, merchant energy companies, and financial services organizations with energy operations. Our focus is on the risk management issues faced by energy companies, including the necessary infrastructure, controls, and analytics that enable these companies to understand and mitigate their risks. Based on our experience in risk management infrastructure projects, quantitative risk measurement, regulatory compliance and risk system implementations, we have the capabilities to serve the risk management needs of our clients.

What other jobs have you had?

Arthur Andersen - Financial Commodities Risk Consulting

What are the key skills, abilities, and personal qualities necessary to succeed in this type of work?  

To succeed individuals must learn to become effective project managers.  This includes learning to manage yourself as well as individuals around you.  Typically, these are not skills learned in a classroom, but obtained with years of experience.  As such our team members must have a positive attitude, strong work ethic and team-player approach. They must also have a strong desire to apply business skills to process and system based solutions.

What do you enjoy most about your current position?  

In our group hard work and experience are quickly rewarded with additional responsibility and autonomy.  Rarely do my own manager’s look-over my shoulder or breathe down my next.  I am given projects to manage and expected to get them accomplished.  This leads to an unbelievable sense of self-satisfaction and accomplishment.  Additionally, as our group is currently very small, the opportunities to participate in the management of the practice are many.  Most individuals in our practice have some sort of responsibility for helping the practice achieve its goals. 

Most important/valuable lesson or activity in college that impacted your career ?

The key is maintaining the same thirst for knowledge.  This pertains to your career both directly and indirectly.  By having a strong desire to learn more and more about your industry and area of expertise, you will aid your career.  By having a strong desire to have a liberal arts education and learn outside your career field, you will get more out of life.  The balance between the two is highly important.

What advice for someone entering this field?

The education that you have obtained while a Trinity Student is focuses on the deal making aspects of the business environment.  In actuality, deal making accounts for only 10% or so of the activities performed by any large organization.  The balance includes managing transactions and products, processing information, and communicating the results to the street.  My profession is not for those aspire to deal origination, but for those that are extremely interested in the systems and the processes that make the corporation work.  The focus should be on building a career as a project manager and learning to provide clients with timely solutions to industry and structural challenges.   

Questions?

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