2027 SPE President
C. Susan Howes is the president of Subsurface Consultants & Associates LLC, where she leads the firm’s consulting, recruitment, and training services with a commitment to technical excellence. She brings extensive leadership experience from her tenure at Anadarko and Chevron, where she held roles of increasing responsibility in reservoir engineering, business development, human resources, organizational capability, and reservoir management.
A dedicated member of SPE since receiving an SPE scholarship in high school, Howes has made significant contributions to the organization. She has served in key leadership positions, including chair of the SPE Gulf Coast Section (2004–2005), Gulf Coast North America Regional Director on the SPE International Board of Directors (2006–2009), Distinguished Lecturer (2019–2020), founding chair of the Management Technical Section (2022–2023), and chair of the 2024 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition Program Committee. Her outstanding service has been recognized with numerous honors, including the 1997 SPE Young Member Outstanding Service Award, 2003 SPE International Distinguished Service Award, 2016 SPE DeGolyer Distinguished Service Medal, and the 2018 SPE Honorary Member Award.
Beyond her industry contributions, Howes is actively involved in academia, serving on advisory boards for petroleum engineering programs at Montana Tech, Colorado School of Mines, and the University of Texas (UT), where she is also a member of the Geology Foundation Advisory Council.
She holds a BS in petroleum engineering (cum laude) from UT and was named a 2024 Distinguished Alumna of the Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at UT.
2026 SPE Directors
Drilling Technical Director
Sarah Kern is the principal industry affairs specialist at Helmerich & Payne (H&P), where she leverages her technical expertise and marketing acumen to drive impactful storytelling and foster innovation. Over her 15-year career with H&P, she has held diverse roles spanning engineering, operations, communications, market intelligence and analytics, and marketing, working in both Houston and Tulsa.
Deeply committed to advancing the energy industry, Kern serves as program chair for 2025 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition and has been an active member of the SPE/IADC International Drilling Conference and Exhibition Program Committee for many years, including as Diversity & Inclusion Program Chair. Additionally, she has contributed to the advisory committees of the two most recent SPE Drilling Technical Directors. She has coauthored 17 technical papers, 16 of which were published by SPE.
She holds a BSc in electrical engineering and marketing from Oklahoma State University.
Health, Safety, Environment, and Sustainability Technical Director
Linda A. Battalora is a teaching professor in the petroleum engineering department at the Colorado School of Mines (Mines). She is a Ben L. Fryrear Chair for Innovation and Excellence, Payne Institute for Public Policy Faculty Fellow, and Shultz Humanitarian Engineering Fellow. Prior to joining the faculty at Mines, she served in various roles in the oil and gas industry including petroleum engineer, attorney, and international negotiator for oil and gas project development.
Battalora is chair of the SPE Methane Emissions Management Technical Section and a member of the Health, Safety, Environment (HSE), and Sustainability Advisory Committee. She is a past chair of the Sustainable Development Technical Section and the SPE Diversity & Inclusion Standing Committee. She is an SPE Distinguished Member and an SPE Distinguished Lecturer (2019–2020). In 2024, she received the SPE International Award for Sustainability and Stewardship in the Oil and Gas Industry. She is the Mines Director of TOP Energy Training’s flagship program, TOPCORP. Her research areas include sustainability, HSE, and methane emissions management.
She holds BS and MS degrees in petroleum engineering and a PhD in environmental science and engineering from Mines, and a law degree from Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.
Projects, Facilities and Construction | Production and Operations Technical Director
Greg Stephenson is the chief production engineer at Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), with functional responsibility for the production engineering discipline. In this role, he leads a team of artificial lift subject matter experts and sponsors the Oxy Engineering Development Program for recent engineering graduates.
With 29 years of experience, Stephenson is an industry-recognized specialist in artificial lift who has taught numerous courses around the world and a published author of a variety of technical publications on the subject.
He began his SPE journey as a freshman at Texas Tech University in 1990. Since then, he has served SPE in several roles, ranging from author to peer reviewer to conference chair. He recently completed two terms as technical reviewer for artificial lift on the JPT Editorial Review Board and previously served as associate editor for the Production and Operations journal.
Stephenson also serves on the Board of Directors of the Artificial Lift Research and Development Council and is the immediate past chair of API Task Group 19G, managing 25 product standards, recommended practices, and technical reports related to artificial lift technology. He also serves on advisory boards for the Texas Tech Department of Petroleum Engineering, Texas Tech Gas Lift Consortium, Tulsa University Horizontal Wells Artificial Lift Projects, and the Louisiana State University Valve Performance Clearinghouse.
He holds a BS in petroleum engineering from Texas Tech University.
North America Regional Director
Neil Boyer is the director of business development at NexTier (Patterson UTI), where he is responsible for the strategic planning and execution of the northeast sales program. With over 15 years of experience under the Patterson UTI umbrella, he has held various key roles, including director of sales, sales engineer, district engineer, and field engineer.
Boyer has been an active member of SPE since his freshman year at Marietta College and with the Pittsburgh Section for more than 11 years where he has served in numerous leadership positions, including chairperson, vice chair, student liaison, and program chair. He has also contributed to the planning committee for the SPE Eastern Regional Meeting for more than 5 years, serving as chairperson in 2018 and co‑chairperson in 2021.
He holds a BS in petroleum engineering from Marietta College.
Middle East and North Africa
Maged Mabrook Y. is the vice president of enhanced oil recovery and CO2 sequestration at ADNOC HQ.
He has been involved with SPE for over 20 years, recently serving as chairperson for the SPE Abu Dhabi Section and member of SPE Middle East and North Africa Board of Directors for 2023–2025. He serves on several SPE regional and international technical and executive committees and received the 2020 SPE Middle East and North Africa Regional Service Award.
He holds an MSc in petroleum engineering from Khalifa University. He is a Chartered Petroleum Engineer with the Energy Institute, a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP), and has passed CFA Level 1 from the CFA Institute.
How SPE Board Members Are Selected
SPE is governed by a board of directors comprising 20 member representatives from around the world, including three officers and 17 representatives of geographic regions and technical disciplines. Officers and directors are elected to a 3-year term, with approximately one-third of the board rolling off each year. Officers and directors include representatives of both geographic and technical constituencies, and three presidents (current, past, and elect).
Nominating a Candidate
The nomination period opened in October 2024 and ended in January 2025. Any SPE member may nominate a candidate for a position on the board. The process involves submitting an online nomination form and supporting documents such as a curriculum vitae, resume, and letters of support.
The Election Process
Candidate nominations submitted online are reviewed by the SPE Nominating Committee. Chaired by the immediate past president, the committee met in February to make recommendations for the available positions. These recommendations were submitted to the SPE International Board of Directors for approval at a meeting of the board held in mid-February.
Following Board Approval of Nominees
The Board of Directors reports the nominations in the Journal of Petroleum Technology ( JPT). SPE members will have the opportunity to review the board-approved nominees’ biographical information in the April issue of JPT and on www.spe.org.
Nominees approved by the board stand as elected unless SPE members nominate additional candidates by petition. The petition process must be completed no later than 45 days following the publication date (1 April) of the slate of Board of Directors’ approved nominees in JPT.
Board of Directors’ nominees for positions for whom no petition with the requisite number of signatures is received within 45 days following the publication date of the slate of nominees in JPT shall be deemed elected to such positions. Additional nominations require a petition from 1.0% of the voting members of SPE on petitions for president-elect, and 2.0%, or a minimum of 150 members, from the represented group for regional director and technical director positions. A ballot election will be held if any qualified petitions are received.
The Board Takes Office
If the board slate is elected, the person nominated as president would take office as president-elect at the close of the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition. This year, the conference will be held 20–22 October in Houston.