association of Industry analysts

Meet the Board of Directors

President

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.

Vice 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.

Marketing Director

Jun Wang

Jun is the founder of JSBC Marketing, a consultancy providing digital marketing services across multiple business sectors. Her experience includes digital footprint optimization, digital marketing analysis, website design, sales, and vendor negotiation. She has in-depth knowledge of the auto and international banking industries. She earned a bachelor’s degree with focuses in Marketing and Economics from Kyushu Kyoritsu University in Japan and Shanghai Ocean University. Her hometown is Shanghai, China. 

Marketing Director

Burçin Kocabaş 

Burçin is an estimating service manager at MASF Industries focusing on steel material and fabrication analysis. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering with years of production experience at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Group in Turkey. He has made various data analysis and input-output correlation studies within the scope of sheet metal forming processes. His process improvement specialties include 6-Sigma , FMEA , PPAP ,  and APQP.

Corporate Relations Director

David Morales

David is an engineering professional currently working for Schneider Electric. His career has focused on providing modernization solutions for electrical distribution systems in industrial facilities within the Oil & Gas sector. Additionally, he has worked on projects for other manufacturing entities. David has a Bachelor’s degree in Architectural Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin with a minor in Business. David’s experience in analysis includes assessments of capital vs operational expenses for various projects, and developing a subsequent business plan for the execution of the respective project. As the Corporate Relations Director, his goal is to connect sponsors and members with industry professionals and organizations to help them realize their ambitions.

Corporate Relations Director

Zahid Afzal

Zahid has been working for Argus Media since 2015 covering the natural gas industry. He worked at S & P Global Platts prior to that covering NGLs. Before working in the price reporting industry he worked at Texas Engineering Extension Service’s (TEEX)  Product Development Center helping business of all sizes to commercialize products and research on market intelligence to stay competitive.

Membership Director

Heidi Bonilla

After graduation from Georgia Tech, Heidi Bonilla started her career in Oil through the Katalyst Commercial Development Program at Phillips 66. The program featured an extensive 3 month training immersion where Heidi acquired in-depth knowledge of oil markets and refinery operations. Upon completion of the training she worked within the Commercial Marine group as an Operations Analyst, working on domestic and international movements across the crude barrel. Currently, Heidi is an Energy analyst for the Midstream group where she primarily deals with Natural gas and Power procurement for Phillip 66 assets.

Heidi has a passion on many network involvement opportunities. She is the Social Chair for the Commercial Early Career Network for a second term; she is part of the Katalyst Leadership Council; she is part of the Commercial Recruiting team for Georgia Tech; she is a committee member within the Women’s Network and the Hispanic Network, and is actively involved with the New Hire Network.

Compliance 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.

Events Director

Zachery Poche 

Zach is a database engineer and software developer who specializes in integrating database tools into commodity trading teams. He began his career as an ETRM system consultant at JP Morgan and PetroChina International America before moving to natural gas analytics and business intelligence for PetroChina. Outside of work, Zach is experimenting with TensorFlow and Kaggle data science competitions. He graduated from Tulane's Master's of Energy Finance program and holds an Energy Risk Professional certification.

Finance Director

Jennifer Semien 

Jennifer is a CPA with more than 17 years of experience spanning both corporate and public accounting. Her industry experience includes upstream and downstream energy, oilfield services and manufacturing. Jennifer began her career at BDO USA, LLP and has served in various financial leadership roles at public companies including Corporate Controller at U.S. Well Services and Director of Corporate Accounting at CVR Energy. Jennifer is currently an independent accounting consultant assisting her clients with technical accounting, business processes and controls, and SEC reporting. Jennifer graduated from the University of Houston – Clear Lake with a Bachelor of Science in Accounting and passed the four-part Texas CPA exam on her first attempt.

University Relations Director

Duygu (Su) Onat

Duygu (Su) Akcin is a versatile tri-lingual chemical engineer with years of experience in quality assurance and optimization for various industries. Su currently works as a sales engineer for Wyoming GTL, LLC where she evaluates Gas-to-Liquid (GTL) manufacturing processes and assesses operation productivity. Prior to her current role, she spent nearly a year as an operations engineer for the Malatya Sugar Refinery in Malatya, Turkey, where she controlled the refinery process to maintain regulatory compliance. She analyzed and reviewed samples from most areas to ensure the integrity of the sugar product. Su has a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Inonu University in Malatya, Turkey. She is fluent in Turkish, English, and is intermediate in Arabic.

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.

Board Site