Leslie Beyer, CEO, Energy Workforce & Technology Council.
Formed via a recent merger of the Petroleum Equipment & Services Association (PESA) and the Association of Energy Service Companies (AESC), the Energy Workforce & Technology Council aims to transform energy by providing its members with the tools, information and representation needed to enable a low-carbon energy future.
The organization connects its members around the globe to educate, support and advocate for energy companies and their workers.
The organization's primary goal, according to CEO Leslie Beyer, is "to support the development and deployment of innovations that will shape our industry and improve our changing world."
"The unified council combines the strengths of each association into the largest organization representing the energy technology and services sector - more than 600 companies employing 600,000 men and women in the U.S.," Beyer said. "From the start, we made the council into a consistent and unifying presence in the energy technology and services sector. We pushed to be at the forefront of providing the information, resources and tools the sector needed to manage a constantly shifting landscape."
Beyer's professional career includes 15 years in Washington, D.C. She first entered the oil and gas industry when a former White House colleague reached out to her with a job opportunity in Houston at a Washington-based manufacturing trade association.
Representing the manufacturing side of the business, she learned about the energy industry and the intersection between the corporate world and government affairs.
When Beyer first joined PESA, which would later merge with AESC to become the organization she now leads, she immediately saw something very special about it.
"What interested me most was the opportunity to work with so many innovative, entrepreneurial, and driven men and women," she said. "These companies are developing and deploying real-world technological solutions that are making energy production cleaner, safer and more efficient than ever before. Over the years, we've enabled astounding economic growth that's improved the standard of living around the globe and helped lift billions out of poverty."
The organization is taking on a major global challenge: eliminating greenhouse gas emissions to keep the global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius. According to Beyer, "that means providing abundant, affordable energy to meet rising global demand with innovations that eliminate or capture emissions." She is confident that many solutions to this challenge will come from the council's members.
Beyer views navigating the COVID-19 pandemic and pushing toward brighter days ahead as one of her organization's major accomplishments - the council has created innovative virtual formats that have enhanced learning, expanded the council's reach and permitted networking opportunities that some thought impossible in a remote setting.
The council's accomplishments don't stop with the pandemic, though; it recently launched its ESG Center of Excellence, the sector's first repository of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) information and best practices, and formed a task force on racial equity, which created actionable recommendations to improve the industry's racial diversity. The council is also renewing its groundbreaking 2018 gender diversity study with new data this year, which will set an additional industry benchmark for gender, race and ethnicity.
"With climate concerns and ESG investors reshaping the energy marketplace, the council took the lead on energy transition by elevating the sector's role as a key driver of the technologies and innovations that will deliver a lower-carbon energy future," Beyer said.
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For more information, visit www.energyworkforce.org or call (713)932-0168.
