Self-described tech nerd turned entrepreneur, Chris Wright serves as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Liberty Energy. Chris is a dedicated humanitarian with a passion for bringing the benefits of energy to every community in the world. This passion has inspired a career in energy working not only in oil and gas but fusion, solar, and geothermal. Chris embraces all sources of energy if they are abundant, affordable, and reliable.

Chris has become a bold advocate, bringing rational thought to the energy dialogue. He has spoken on energy and the merits of the Shale Revolution to the UK House of Lords, and state and federal lawmakers, with multiple appearances on network TV, documentaries, and podcasts. Recently, Chris’ #ThankYouNorthFace campaign went viral with over 5 million views, forcing a sober discussion on the multiple uses of oil and gas in products.

Chris completed an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering at MIT and graduate work in Electrical Engineering at both UC Berkeley and MIT. Chris founded Pinnacle Technologies and served as CEO from 1992 to 2006. Pinnacle created the hydraulic fracture mapping industry and its innovations helped launch commercial shale gas production in the late 1990s. Chris was Chairman of Stroud Energy, an early shale gas producer, before its sale to Range Resources in 2006. Additionally, Chris founded and serves as Executive Chairman of Liberty Resources and Liberty Midstream Solutions and also sits on the Board of Directors for Urban Solutions Group, and the Federal Reserve Bank, Denver Branch.

Chris grew up and currently lives in Colorado with his wife, Liz. He is a passionate father, skier, cyclist, climber, and outdoor enthusiast. He serves on the board of numerous nonprofits including PERC, ACE Colorado, ACE Montana, PRI, and the YCCF.

Thomas Ciarlone is a partner in the Houston office of Kane Russell Coleman Logan.  He co-chairs KRCL’s Energy, Oil & Gas Practice Group and sits on the firm’s board of directors. Tom has been a trial lawyer for over twenty years, and his practice focuses on the representation of operators and non-operators in complex contract disputes in the oil patch, principally including high-stakes litigation with large institutional landowners suing for violations of mineral leases.

Demetri Economou has over a decade of energy law experience and currently co-chairs KRCL’s Energy, Oil & Gas Practice Group. He provides trusted advice to KRCL’s upstream, midstream, and oilfield services clients, including in royalty litigation, lease and deed interpretation, surface use, midstream and services contracts, and oilfield trade secrets case, with both trial and appellate work.

Tom Seng is the Mervin Bovaird Professor of Energy Business and Director of the School of Energy Economics, Policy, and Commerce at The University of Tulsa. His other teaching experience includes serving as an adjunct instructor for The University of Oklahoma, Penn State University, and Texas Christian University.

Mr. Seng has over 30 years of experience in the natural gas and natural gas liquids industry including physical and financial energy commodity trading, midstream and pipeline operations, transportation and storage marketing, risk control, hedging, and regulatory affairs.

He holds a Bachelor?s degree from the State University of New York and an MBA in Oil and Gas Management from Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland.

He is the author of ?Energy Trading & Hedging: A Nontechnical Guide? (PennWell 2019).

Dwayne Purvis, P.E. has spent nearly 30 years in reservoir engineering and executive leadership as a consultant and operator.  He has led or participated in hundreds of engineering and strategic studies over dozens of basins in the United States and abroad. Mr. Purvis leads Purvis Energy Advisors, and he frequently teaches, speaks, and writes for industry organizations and for Texas Christian University.

He is a registered professional engineer in the state of Texas, member of SPEE, AAPG, SEG, SIPES and an active, 25-year member of SPE. He has also recently completed a master’s degree in sustainable energy at Johns Hopkins University. 

Mike McConnell is the current Director of The Robert M. Zinke Energy Management Program at the Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma. He is the 7th Director of the program which is the nation’s oldest that began in 1958. He was President and a Director of Jones Energy, Inc., a New York Stock Exchange, independent oil and gas exploration company, from 2004 until April 2018. He remained a Director until August 2018. The company was headquartered in Austin, Texas with its Merge activity office in Oklahoma City. Jones Energy focused its horizontal drilling activity primarily in the Texas Panhandle and central Oklahoma. The company was founded in 1989 and drilled over 700 horizontal wells and operated over 1,000 wells. Jones Energy had net production of 22,000 boe/day. 

Prior to joining Jones Energy, Mr. McConnell served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Generation and Production Group while Enron was in bankruptcy, until his departure in April 2003. He previously served as Chairman and CEO of Enron Global Markets, LLC, which included the 8-global trading and origination businesses, with revenues for EGM in the first three quarters of 2001 exceeding $15 billion. Mr. McConnell was also responsible of Enron Japan. He was also on the management committee of Enron Corp. during his various roles as Chairman and CEO of Enron’s Generation and Production Group, Vice Chairman and COO for Enron Net Works, and Enron’s CEO of Global Technology. Prior to that, he served as President of Houston Pipe Line, President of Louisiana Resources Company, and has held other various gas supply and marketing positions. He began his career in the exploration and production sector as a Landman for Champlin Petroleum Company, before joining Enron (Florida Gas Transmission) in 1987. 

Mr. McConnell earned a BBA in Petroleum Land Management with an emphasis on Law from the University of Oklahoma in 1982. He is a Senior Advisor and past Chairman of the Price Business School Board of Advisors for the University of Oklahoma. He was also on the Board of IPAA and has served on the Board of numerous businesses and charities in the past.

 Mr. McConnell also wrote and published a non-fiction book, Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should, which focuses on lessons learned in business and keys to success.

Charles Sartain is the leader of Gray Reed’s Energy Litigation Practice Group. He is an experienced trial lawyer who primarily focuses on resolving complex energy disputes in Texas and Louisiana through litigation, arbitration, and negotiation. His clients include oil and gas producers and investors, midstream transportation operators, and mineral and royalty owners involved all types of contractual, payment and operational disputes. In addition, Charlie is the author and editor of Energy & The Law, a blog focused on exploring critical developments in the energy industry and how they impact clients from a legal and business perspective.

An Oklahoma Bar licensed attorney and a Certified Professional Landman (CPL) as certified by the AAPL, Robert Sher is the Director of Land, Legal and Business Development for Adaptive Edge, LLC. With a focus on digital transformation, process optimization and business and organizational strategy, Adaptive Edge works with industry leaders driving lasting transformation through adapting to new ways of working on the cutting edge of technology.

 Prior to his current role, Robert spent nearly fifteen years with Coterra Energy (fka Cimarex Energy Co.; Coterra being the result of the merger of Cimarex Energy and Cabot Oil & Gas). During his tenure at Cimarex, Robert was given roles of increasing responsibility, moving from a Senior Landman position to reporting directly to the Executive Team, leading the Corporate Land, Land Data, Records, Division Orders, Leases and Contracts teams. A results driven leader, with a focus on process optimization and the discovery and implementation of innovative solutions, Robert is considered one of the industry's leading forward thinkers on digital transformation in the Land discipline space.

 Robert received both his undergraduate and law degree from the University of Oklahoma, is an alumni of Tulsa University's ELITE Leadership Institute, as well as an alumni of Leadership Tulsa's flagship program. Robert sits on the Board of Directors for Family and Children's Services, Tulsa KLIFE, and is an active member and past President of the Tulsa Association of Petroleum Landmen (TAPL). Robert resides in Tulsa, Oklahoma with his wife of nearly 20 years, Heather, their two children, Ellison and Sutton, and the newest member of the family, Murray the bernadoodle.

Professor Righetti is the Occidental Chair of Energy and Environmental Policies and the University of Wyoming. She is tenured, full professor and member of the faculties of the College of Law, the School of Energy Resources, and the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources. She serves as the co-director of the University of Wyoming nuclear energy research center. Professor Righetti’s research focuses on the property, administrative law, and justice issues associated with energy development and decarbonization. In 2021-2022 she served as a Fulbright Research Scholar at the Université de Lille, in Lille, France.  Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Wyoming, she worked in land, legal, and management roles at a privately held upstream E&P company. She is licensed to practice in Texas and California and is a certified professional landman.  

Kevin Peters is the Land Manager for Chevron New Energies (CNE) with responsibility for CCUS, Hydrogen, Emerging Technology and Offsets in North America. In this role, Kevin leads a team in the development and execution of land acquisition strategies.

Prior to this role, Kevin was the Senior Commercial Advisor for Chevron Global Exploration focused on South America & Africa. In Kevin’s career with Chevron, he has held various land roles with increasing responsibility starting as an Ownership Representative in Land Headquarters, then as the Divestment Coordinator in the Mid-Continent, followed by role as a Permian Portfolio Development Advisor.
Kevin received his undergraduate degree from Texas Christian University (TCU) in Business & Energy Science and recently completed his Energy MBA at TCU with a certificate in Environment, Social and Governance (ESG).

Dominic Tognietti is a Land Manager at California Resources Corporation (CRC), an independent energy and carbon management company committed to energy transition. He has more than 12 years of experience in the energy industry. In his current role, Dominic is responsible for the acquisition of property rights for the development of carbon capture and sequestration projects in California through CRC’s wholly owned subsidiary, Carbon TerraVault Holdings, LLC.

In his spare time, Dominic enjoys spending time with his wife and two kids, hunting and attending sporting events. He is a member of the American Association of Professional Landmen, Bakersfield Association of Professional Landmen and Houston Association of Professional Landmen.

Dominic holds a Bachelor of Science, Finance degree from the E.J. Ourso College of Business in Baton Rouge, LA. 

Cody Wagoner is the Director, Land- Subsurface & New Ventures at Tallgrass Energy where he leads the company’s land efforts supporting carbon dioxide sequestration projects. Mr. Wagoner has over 15 years of land experience, with the past 9 years spent at Tallgrass Energy managing the acquisition of property rights and land entitlements for oil, natural gas and water infrastructure, natural gas storage operations, and carbon sequestration projects. Mr. Wagoner’s prior experience includes upstream subsurface and surface landman functions at both Anadarko Petroleum and ConocoPhillips in exploration and development projects across Wyoming and Colorado. He holds a BBA in Energy Management from the University of Oklahoma.

James Coleman received two degrees from Harvard University — a J.D. (cum laude) and B.A. in biology (magna cum laude) with highest honors in the field. Upon graduation from law school he served as clerk for Eighth Circuit Judge Steven Colloton, and then practiced energy, environmental, and appellate law as an associate in the Washington, D.C., firm of Sidley Austin LLP for three years. 

Prior to joining SMU, he was on the faculty at the University of Calgary, where he taught at both the law school and the business school. Before Calgary, he served on the faculty at Harvard Law School as a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law. 

Coleman’s scholarship addresses regulation of North American energy companies, focusing on how countries account for and influence regulation of fuel and electricity in their trading partners and how global energy companies respond to competing pressures from investors and regulators in multiple jurisdictions. He publishes the Energy Law Professor blog and you can follow him on Twitter at @energylawprof. This fall he will teach Oil & Gas Law.

Randy Mitchell graduated in 1973 with a degree in geology from Texas A&M.  He has worked for Gearhart in Bakersfield, California, Conoco in Houston and Norway, ConocoPhillips in Houston, Hess in Houston, and as a consultant for the past 10 years.  Most of his career with Conoco/ConocoPhillips and Hess was supporting international exploration.  However, for the past 10-12 years he has mostly worked with unconventional reservoirs across the US.  Most of his career has been in the field of petrophysics (formation evaluation) and pore pressure prediction/detection.

Benjamin J. Brown received his B.S. in Finance from Oklahoma State University and his Juris Doctorate the University of Tulsa College of Law. He is a founding member of and a managing partner with the law firm of Charney Brown and is also an adjunct professor for the University of Tulsa. His practice consists primarily of representation of independent operators at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, as well as representing clients in other oil and gas land, legal, and transactional matters.

Robert Wilson entered the energy industry buying minerals and leases in the Uinta Basin of Utah. In 2018 Robert took a position as Land Manager for sPower?s wind energy portfolio. After merging into AES Clean Energy in 2020, Robert served as Senior Land Acquisition Manager for AES Clean Energy?s utility-scale solar and energy storage projects. In November 2021 Robert took a position as Development Manager for Qcells North America developing utility-scale solar and energy storage projects. 

Robert has a Master of Science from UC Denver?s Global Energy Management program and currently serves as Utah Director of the AAPL, Chairman of the AAPL?s Field Landman Seminar Committee, and serves on several other AAPL committees. 

When not talking energy, Robert enjoys floating rivers with his wife and daughter or hunting upland game with his German Shorthair Pointer.

Heath Thompson is the Director of Land at Hatch where he oversees the land group including title verification and business development efforts. Prior to Hatch, Mr. Thompson served in various Land and Leadership capacities at Brigham Exploration, Statoil and Equinor. His upstream expertise includes organic asset growth, stakeholder management, field development, creation and integration of systems and processes, as well as project management. Mr. Thompson holds a CPL certification and graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Energy Management with Honors from The University of Oklahoma.