Power Broker

photo courtesy of ConocoPhillips

FALL 2018 | DIVIDENDS

LEADERSHIP

Power Broker

By Carolanne Roberts

Sometimes what you do with your life has bubbled inside you from an early age.

In the case of Dr. Helen Currie, Chief Economist for ConocoPhillips, what started as an interest turned into a profession and a calling. Among the significant hallmarks of the MSU alumna’s career is the recent honor of being named one of the “25 Influential Women in Energy” by Hart Energy’s Oil and Gas Investor, a global source for news and data relating to the industry.

When she was a young girl, Currie’s family owned and ran a business in Utica, MS, though she had no particular role models for economics or finance.

“I knew I’d be a business person of some sort,” she recalls, speaking from her Houston office. “But by the time I was a teenager, I became enamored of the two minutes of Wall Street reporting on the nightly news – what the stock market did that day, etc. I was fascinated. As for economics, I found it interesting.”

During her undergraduate years at Millsaps College in Jackson, her interest in economics took a stronger hold. Formative were an internship in the Office of the State Economist and similar roles elsewhere in state government.

“It all gave me a taste of what economists do,” Currie says.

A larger bite came with her master’s degree studies in economics at the University of Washington in Seattle. It was a distance in both geography and thought and brought an opportunity to explore environmental issues.

“Within the broad field of economics, I found the [environmental] sub-field quite interesting, and the University was very strong in it,” she recalls. “Having environmental economics as one of my specialties played directly into my working at the Washington State Department of Ecology at the same time.”

She notes that the state agency frequently met with energy industry representatives – refineries, motor fuel distributors, utilities, power generators and so on – to “ensure that the regulatory language we were drafting was feasible to the extent that there was latitude in how the regs are structured. It definitely gave me some great foundational knowledge for environmental law as it pertained to the energy sector.”

The student worked, listened, participated and learned.

She still wanted a PhD, and she desperately missed the South’s warm climate and proximity to family. Mississippi State offered these things.

“[It had] a program I really liked, with several professors, including Ed Duett and Larry White, who were interested in working with me in the areas where I ended up writing my dissertation,” she shares.

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Currie admits that while she knew she wanted to pursue a doctorate, she puzzled over whether to choose finance or economics. Ultimately, she decided on finance, writing her dissertation on valuing mortgage-backed securities.

The result, she reports, was that “the training in the field of finance was the nuts and bolts of what got me started in the energy business.”

During her time in Starkville, Currie found Dr. George Verrall of the College of Business to be “both a mentor and inspiration to hit high standards. He was one of those people you hope every student has a chance to meet – so giving of his time and energy.”

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MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY | COLLEGE OF BUSINESS

Soon Currie would be an academic herself, a faculty member sharing her own caring and influence. While moving ahead with her dissertation, she taught first at LaGrange College in Georgia for three academic years and then Elon University in North Carolina for two.

“Both schools had the liberal arts environment that worked for me at Millsaps, and I absolutely loved the time I was on faculty,” she recalls. “It was an opportunity to invest in students who might be the leaders of tomorrow.”

However, real life applications of her knowledge beckoned as she completed the PhD from MSU in 2000.

“The fact that I had veered from economics and environmental economics into finance at Mississippi State was an important part of how and why I was able to go from being an academic to being in Houston on a very large commercial natural gas and NGL [natural gas liquids] trading floor,” she comments.

Currie departed a world of academic research for one in which she dealt with real dollars, real money. She joined Conoco in 2001, which became ConocoPhillips after a 2002 merger.

“Conoco/ConocoPhillips is a great company to be a part of,” she states. “I count myself very fortunate to have found my way to the company that I did.”

In the beginning, she worked in the risk management area.

“I knew how to look at a trade or transaction correctly in our system of record,” she says. “I understood risk metrics and the whole field of risk management.”

Her challenges, she continues, are “anticipating where energy markets and energy prices are moving and providing my management with sound guidance. That then informs what type of investments we make, the magnitude of our capital spending and so forth.”

Always in her mind is the impact of those decisions.

“If there’s one important thing I do, it’s informing my management about the signposts that indicate where the markets are heading,” she remarks. “Our industry has been through a downturn, and we’ve endured a number of cutbacks. With that as a recent backdrop, I’m very aware of the implications of trying to make sure we get it right.”

DIVIDENDS | FALL 2018

FALL 2018 | DIVIDENDS

LEADERSHIP

Currie continues, “U.S. oil production is at a record level today because of what we now call ‘unconventional’ production-type oil plays we’re developing. The positive economic corollary is the number of domestic jobs it creates and the income generated from those jobs.”

With the demands of her job, the Chief Economist turns to the outdoors for scene changes and movement – running, walking, biking. She and her husband Dayne Zimmerman, a Millsaps classmate she re-met while each earned advanced degrees at Mississippi State, both play piano. Their limited trips back to their home state tend to center around holidays, as much as they would long for more.

On the work front, it is no surprise that Currie is one of the “Top 25 Influential Women in Energy.” Her industry-leading advocacy work with ConocoPhillips to lift restrictions on crude exports is alone worth honoring; so are her day-to-day responsibilities in corporate planning.

Currie has a favorite quote from former Millsaps professor and MSU College of Business alumna Dr. Shirley Olson, who says, “Always learn from whatever situation you’re in, and always look to what’s ahead of you.”

That lesson, so well learned, is also decidedly well played – for the benefit of us all.

photo courtesy of ConocoPhillips

COLLEGE OF BUSINESS | MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY

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Alumna and ConocoPhillips Chief Economist Helen Currie is one of Oil and Gas Investor’s 25 Influential Women in Energy.