Meet the 2019 Board of Directors

President

Adam Burkin 

Adam is an energy pricing analyst at Dynegy with numerous years as a strategy and analytics professional. He has experience within many verticals including public finance, commodity and energy trading, data products, and aviation. He has a bachelor’s degree with concentrations in Economics, Government, and Business Administration from The University of Texas at Austin

Corporate Relations Director

Zachary Moore 

Zachary joined ICIS in 2016 and currently works as deputy managing editor for the Americas region. He covers North American markets for major commodity polymers such as polyethylene and polypropylene as well as intermediate chemicals used in the production of polyurethane foams.

Prior to joining ICIS, Zachary covered commodity polymer markets in Asia and Turkey for ChemOrbis. He has a total of 12 years’ experience in the petrochemical and plastic markets as a markets reporter, researcher and analyst.

Zachary holds a BBA in economics from Georgia State University and an MA from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

Program Director

Swati Singh 

Swati is a recent graduate from C.T. Bauer College of Business, UH with a MS in Global Energy Management degree. During her program, she also earned three energy certificates - Energy Finance, Energy Investment Analysis and Economics of Energy Value Chain. She has developed an indepth understanding of upstream, midstream and downstream commercial economics, supply & trading and financial & market analysis. Swati has three years of experience in biofuel and utility projects. She served on the board of the Bauer MBA Society's Energy Club and has organized speaker panels. company visits, conference and social mixers.  Further, She has a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering &  Master  of Engineering degree in Planning and Operation of Energy system from NTNU, Norway.

President Emeritus

Ben Gonzalez 

Ben is an energy industry professional with 10 years of experience in market analysis. Most of his career has been centered on petroleum refining and petrochemicals, specifically the global distillate, fuel oil, petroleum coke, olefins, and polyolefins markets. Ben currently works at Phillips 66 as a refining and petrochemicals market analyst, focused on price forecasting, supply/demand balances, global trends, and cash cost modeling. In the past, Ben worked as a petrochemicals analyst for S&P Global Platts, and as a senior analyst for Jacobs Consultancy. At Jacobs Consultancy, Ben covered the global petroleum coke and calcined petcoke markets. He has a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, a Master’s in Education Management, and a Master’s in Business Administration with a focus on International Business.

Committee Members

Editor

Catherine Sampson 

Catherine Sampson holds a BFA in English literature from the University of Houston and an MS in technical communication from the University of Houston-Downtown. She has more than ten years of experience in business communication. In previous roles, she worked as an editor, technical writer and market reporter for the oil and gas industry. She currently works as a technical writer for a defense contractor.

Industry Committee Member

Elena Nikolova 

Elena joined Wood Mackenzie in 2014 and is a research analyst with the Latin America Upstream team. She focuses on valuing oil and gas assets in Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Peru, and Colombia. She tracks Atlantic LNG and Peru LNG production and has led Unconventional Play Service coverage for the region.

Prior to Wood Mackenzie, Elena covered regulatory risk related to unconventional, deepwater, and Arctic assets as an associate with Goldwyn Global Strategies in Washington, DC. Before joining the private sector, Elena served on the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.

Elena holds a BA in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania and a MALD in International Energy and Business from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She speaks Bulgarian and French.

Industry Committee Member

Harshit Mahajan 

Harshit is a Research Analyst for Wood Mackenzie in Houston, TX. His research spans crude oil markets, midstream analysis, refinery operations/performance and refined products, with a specialization in the Americas region. He works on mostly cross-commodity projects, like EV's to analyse the dependencies among oil, gas and power. From his research, he delivers analysis for Wood Mackenzie’s publications on crude and refined product supply – demand balances, stocks forecasting, valuations and asset benchmarking for Americas.

Prior to Wood Mackenzie, Harshit worked with professor Robert Farrauto of Columbia University, developing three-way catalysts for novel applications in automobile and environmental industries.

Harshit holds a Master's degree in Chemical Engineering (minor in Financial Statistics) from Columbia University in the City of New York and a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Panjab University, India.

Board Site