A Series of Serendipities

Sarah Magruder (2001 BACH TK) hadn’t planned on majoring in finance before coming to LSU in the fall of 1997. She had contemplated becoming a veterinarian or a lawyer; but after learning more about both professions, she realized that neither ultimately appealed to her.

She also wouldn’t have imagined that, in 2019, she would start her own business, Savvy Oil & Gas Consulting (fka Safire), a company that specializes in severance tax and sovereign royalties for the petroleum industry that is based in Houston.

“My whole career has just been sort of happy accidents, where an opportunity landed in front of me, and I took it,” Magruder said.

The serendipity started in Magruder’s first semester at LSU when she was able to get a student job in the Center for Engineering and Business Administration building as part of her Honors College full academic scholarship.

“I worked in the MBA office for Kathy Bosworth,” Magruder said. “Because I was there all the time for my job, I took some business classes and really enjoyed that. That's how I ended up getting a degree in Finance.”

Fast forward a bit to Magruder’s senior year when companies were doing their annual on-campus interviews that spring. Magruder had enrolled in the LSU MBA program by that point, and Bosworth suggested she get some interview experience because she’d be doing an internship during the program.

“So, I went and interviewed and ended up getting job offers from three different companies: Enron, Arthur Andersen, and a smaller firm called Ryan & Co.,” Magruder said.

While Magruder wasn’t ready to enter the workforce just yet, she realized she could always come back later to finish her MBA. So Magruder took the offer from Ryan & Co., which had just opened a new office in Houston, and where she would be only one of eight people helping get it off the ground.

“That sounded fun to me,” Magruder said, “to be part of growing something instead of being a cog in a wheel.”

It was a good thing she went with Ryan, because a few months later Enron and Arthur Andersen became embroiled in an accounting scandal that resulted in the largest bankruptcy reorganization in U.S. history at the time.

In the aftermath, Ryan acquired a severance tax practice from public accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, thanks to new regulations and legislation to expand the accuracy of financial reporting for public companies. Magruder was invited to join the team, and she jumped at the chance to work in oil and gas.

For the next several years, Magruder learned the ropes of the oil and gas industry, and the complexities of severance tax accounting in particular when she transitioned to industry and spent 10 years managing teams at Swift Energy and Southwestern Energy. Equipped with valuable work experience, Magruder would get her MBA in accounting from the University of Houston in 2013.

“Of course, I would have loved to have gotten my MBA from LSU,” Magruder said, “but back then we weren't yet in this virtual world where I could have gotten it online.”

The following year, serendipity struck again, when Magruder was offered the opportunity to join KE Andrews, a state and local tax consulting firm.

“I built the severance tax team at KE Andrews from zero to a multi-million dollar practice in five years,” Magruder said. “But I was kind of just coasting along, and I thought, either this is going to be my career for 15 to 20 years, or I could do something else.”

“The only thing I hadn't done yet was start my own company,” she said.

While serendipity has played a part in Magruder being able to start her own business, she doesn’t leave her success entirely up to the forces of fate. For instance, almost all of her employees are either former clients or had worked for her at one point.

“I collect unicorns, as I call them,” Magruder said. “When I work with somebody who is great, I bring them with me or tell them if they ever retire or leave their role, they’ve got a job with me—so, I ended up with this kick-ass, super-experienced team with a lot of different talents.”

As icing on the entrepreneurial cake, Magruder was honored as one of Oil & Gas Investor’s 25 Influential Women in Energy in February by petroleum industry news publisher Hart Energy. Last year, she received the Trailblazer Award from the Greater Houston Women’s Chamber of Commerce. Magruder has also been both a guest and host on several podcasts and is a frequent speaker at industry events.

And though Savvy Oil & Gas Consulting is only four years old, she’s already had offers to buy it.

“It was never my intent to create something and sell it off, that's not my motivation,” Magruder said. “I want the company to stay small and tight, and really develop our efficiency and technology to be able to better serve our clients and add value to the industry.”

By Brian Hudgins