ADVISORY BOARD 2023

Uniper Chief Risk Officer since February 2016. Before, Novera has been leading the Market Risk department of Uniper Global Commodities since April 2014 and before that led the Gas, Oil & LNG Risk team. Novera has 20 years of extensive energy market experience in the energy industry and has held various Senior Risk Management positions across multiple markets and companies in the US, UK and Germany.

Qualifications

• MBA Finance, University of Houston and 
• Energy Risk Management, Rice University

Christian DE SANTIS

Chief Financial Officer at Vårgrønn AS

Since 2021, Christian DE SANTIS is Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Vårgrønn AS which is a Norway-based company with the ambition to reach an installed capacity in the North Sea and Baltic Sea region of 1 GW towards 2030.

Previously, he spent most of his 20+ years international career within the oil & gas trading business of Eni Group. From 2015 until June 2021, he was CFO of Eni Trading and shipping Inc., an oil & gas trading company based in Houston (Texas) along with the same role in Eni Transporte y Suministro México, S. de R.L. de C.V.  based in Mexico.

From 2008 until June 2015, he had various roles within Eni Trading and Shipping SpA, the primary energy trading Company of Eni based in Italy with branches in London, Brussels and Singapore; he primarily supported the Company to implement and streamline the Accounting and Back Office processes. During the same period, he was also the Chief Financial Officer of Tecnomare, a Company providing on shore and off-shore engineering services to eni upstream affiliates.

At the earliest stage if his career (2003), he joined the Eni Advisory Team managing the Eni Group transition from Italian Gaap to IFRS so to became an IFRS and US Gaap subject expert.

Stella Farrington has been writing about energy markets for over 20 years, working at Futures World News and Dow Jones Newswires before moving to Energy Risk in 2004. She spent eight years as the editor of Energy Risk and six as a writer, before moving into her current role as Energy Risk’s head of content and a commercial editor with Infopro Digital’s Ignite team.

Dr. Dean Foreman is Chief Economist for the American Petroleum Institute. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Florida and brings more than 20 years of industry experience in corporate strategic planning, forecasting, risk management, and finance. Before joining API, Dr. Foreman was the lead economist for ExxonMobil Corporate Planning between 2002 and 2008. From 2009 to 2013, he was a member of the executive team at Canadian-based exploration and production company Talisman Energy, where he focused on corporate planning, hedging/marketing, and business development. In 2013 to 2015, he directed the risk management function in North America for South African energy and petrochemical conglomerate Sasol, where he helped drive business cases for $25 billion in U.S. mega projects, including the $11 billion ethane cracker and derivatives complex in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Most recently, he was with Saudi Aramco Strategy & Market Analysis in Dhahran, where he managed short-term market monitoring and the long-term oil demand outlook.

Sunil Biswas is chief product officer for ION Commodities, a division of ION which provides comprehensive trading, risk management, and advanced decision-support solutions for commodity management. Sunil has over 25 years’ experience within technology firms and global banks, leading transformational trading systems initiatives to drive business development. He joined ION in 2017 from Bloomberg, where he was head of trading solutions product for six years. Before this, he spent seven years at Morgan Stanley and led the global build of the firm’s fixed income electronic trading platform and introduced automated trading. Sunil started his career at JP Morgan, spending ten years building derivatives trading systems as a front-office technologist. Sunil holds a Master’s in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Imperial College London. 

Ronan Julien is Global Head of Electronic Sales (e-sales) and Digital Chief Operating Officer for BNP Paribas Commodity Derivatives. He has been with the Bank for 15 years in various functions both in Europe and the US. Ronan currently spearheads the Bank’s digitalization efforts in commodity derivatives, notably through the integration of commodity trading into the Bank’s multi-asset Cortex electronic platform. The Cortex platform for commodities is an award-winning bespoke trading solution available to the Bank’s corporate and institutional clients across a wide range of underlyings allowing customized hedging on less liquid assets. Prior to joining the Bank’s digital efforts, Ronan has worked for over 10 years in Commodity sales with a specialization in energy markets and has assumed managerial positions across commodities in North America, the Middle East and French-speaking markets. Ronan holds degrees in international law and economics from Sciences Po in France.

Earl Burns Jr. is a leading Energy Executive with more than 30 years of experience in the energy sector serving in various operating, financial, trading and supply roles. Burns was previously manager, Americas Distillate Trading in the Commercial organization. Prior to that, he resided in London and held the role of manager, Crude Trading Europe, Africa and Russia for Phillips 66 Limited, where he was responsible for all crude trading and supply activities. He began his career with Mobil Oil Corporation in a variety of positions in the U.S., Africa and Latin America inclusive of financial trading, logistics and sales positions. Previously, Burns served as the crude trading manager for BP in Chicago as well as manager, Global Strategy and Commercial Development (Commercial Marine) at ConocoPhillips. Prior to his time at ConocoPhillips, Burns spent five years in the U.S. Naval Reserve, receiving an honorable discharge as Lieutenant.   

Earl is a proud member of the Executive Leadership Council (ELC); the most elite organization advancing the cause of Black Executives globally, an active board member of the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) Energy Oversight Committee, as well as being an incoming (2020) board member and director of the United States Merchant Marine Academy (Kings Point) Alumni Foundation.

Cetin Karakus has two decades of experience in designing and building large scale software systems. Over the last decade, he has worked on design and development of complex derivatives pricing and risk management systems in leading global investment banks and commodity trading houses. Prior to that, he has worked on various large scale systems ranging from VOIP stacks to ERP systems. 

In his current role, he has been running a global portfolio of six solutions engineering teams focused on building cutting-edge
derivatives pricing & risk analytics, exotics trading systems for energy commodities, cloud-based computational grid services, data analytics platform & services for North American energy markets (oil, gas, power, NGLs, emissions), a weather analytics & forecasting platform and Big Data visualization & reporting services.  He works at an intersection of data, analytics and trading with the constantly shifting ground that is global energy markets.

Cetin has a degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering and enjoys thinking and reading on various fields of humanities 

Monika Mangla is passionate about driving business transformation leveraging technology.  She has >25 years’ experience in advising C-suite in digital strategy, governance and finance innovation and has delivered finance transformation at global scale, including leading global finance transformation program at Chevron that aimed to transform finance globally, leveraging SAP S/4HANA and Central Finance. 

Monika received a master’s degree in economics from the University of Maryland - College Park and is a Charter Financial Analyst (CFA). She started her career with KPMG in economics and statistical advisory and moved to Accenture as Senior Manager supporting both outsourcing and strategic business consulting.  Monika joined Chevon in 2008 as senior advisor in Upstream Finance and has since held a variety of roles in corporate functions and in operations, with time in the Gulf of Mexico, US Deepwater and Thailand. Monika joined Deloitte as a Managing Director in 2022 leading efforts building technology led finance transformation practice.  Currently, Monika is teaching as a guest professor at the University of Houston, School of business and focusing on growing BreaktheTide.org, a non-profit that focuses on empowering underprivileged communities through technology.  She lives in Houston with her family and enjoys reading and traveling in her free time. 

Haibin Sun is the Director of Exelon Corporation’s Transmission Strategy Analytics team. He oversees economic studies, technical modeling and reliability planning for Exelon’s transmission investment business and related policy advocacy initiatives.  

Prior to his current role, Haibin was the Director & Chief of Staff of Exelon’s Commercial & Industry Power business and, prior to that, the Director of the Quantitative Modeling & Deal Review for company’s commodities business, corporate capital projects and risk management initiatives.  Before joining Exelon, Haibin was VP & Head of Constellation’s Risk Analytics team. 

Haibin holds a PhD in Industrial & Systems Engineering specialized in Economic Decision Analysis and a MS in Financial Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, a MEng and a BEng in Electrical Engineering from Southeast University in China.

Milan Poidl launched the Enel Innovation Hub in Silicon Valley in 2017. He is primarily responsible for scouting & matching new technologies to company needs.  To date, the Enel Hubs have evaluated more than 10,000 new technologies; launched 400 pilots and deployed over 95 new solutions through its industrial partnership approach with startups.

Milan holds a B.A. in Environmental Management from UC Santa Barbara as well as Masters Degrees in Business Administration from CU Denver & International Management from Thunderbird.  Throughout his career Milan has worked in technology, consumer products & the energy sector with global multinational corporations focused on consumer centric marketing & innovation.

At Applica Consumer Products, he built the equity of the company’s brand portfolio through new product development and strategic branding.  In 2012, after the sale of Applica to Spectrum Brands, Milan joined Liberty Power to drive product innovation.  He is credited with conceptualizing & launching the company’s retail renewable energy offering, delivering the fastest sales growth rate in company history.   Milan joined Enel in 2014, as Head of Innovation in Peru before assuming his current role in Silicon Valley.

Partha S Chatterjee is a digital transformation and technology strategy leader with almost 30 years of experience in the United States. He is the Data and Analytics SME for Shell Energy at Trading and Supply IT. Previously, he was head of market-facing strategy for Product Management at ION (OpenLink) and Managing Director at Capco Energy Solutions. Partha has held technology leadership positions at Schlumberger, Kinder Morgan, Accenture and Sapient among others.

His expertise encompasses energy and trading risk management (ETRM) systems, risk management and trading analytics, regulatory compliance, and governance. He compliments that with deep technical knowledge in enterprise architecture, digital transformation, data and analytics, AI and mathematical modeling, blockchain and emerging technologies. As a global expert on trading and risk management, Partha has worked on think tanks and summits, advising governments, regulatory boards and financial institutions. Partha brings strategic vision and leadership capabilities in driving solutions and roadmaps as a technology executive.

Partha holds a Bachelor of Technology (Honors) with first class in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) (Kharagpur) in India. He came to the United States for graduate studies on a NASA-funded scholarship to work on Computer Vision at the Intelligent Systems Laboratory. He has a master’s degree in computer science from the University of South Carolina and an MBA from Texas A&M University, specializing in finance and MIS.
Partha lives in Houston and enjoys sports and music with his wife, Arpita and children, Ishaan and Trisha.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parthaschatterjee/