Rick has worked as an employee and consultant to a number of energy companies, charities and industry associations in both Canada and the United States. He has held positions of increasing leadership and executive levels during his career. His experience covers all aspects of Human Resources, where he spent the first part of his career, to Executive level experience as a Vice-president, CEO and Board member during the last half of his career. Rick has worked for small, medium and multi-national energy firms involved in arctic offshore drilling and conventional oil and gas exploration and production.
Upon the sale of one of his companies in 2000, Rick co-founded and managed the start-up of an executive and management consulting firm. This company provided training, coaching and mentoring services and developed and implemented growth and value-creating strategies to start-up and small to medium size companies in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors. One of their first clients was a poorly performing Trust. As a senior consultant to the executive team and Board of Directors, Rick made significant contributions to the success of this company which was the top performing Energy Trust in Canada from 2000 to 2004.
In January 2004 Rick co-founded, a private start-up junior oil and gas company. This company eventually achieved steady production of +1000 barrels of oil per day. Initially, as the Executive Vice-President of Finance, he raised over $50 million in local and international equity. Rick became CEO in early 2007 and guided the company in a very difficult market by cleaning up the balance sheet and raising new equity. The company eventually merged in 2008 with another energy company.
Rick has been in the business world for over 40 years, including over 35 years in the energy business. He has an impressive and extensive background in the business community, being part of the creation, start-up and growth of a number of very successful energy and consulting companies. He is as strategic thinker and has excellent leadership, coaching, mentoring, training, presentation, and planning skills. He is also an effective communicator and thrives on change. He has outstanding business acumen and is a true entrepreneur who has the knowledge, experience, and understanding as to what it takes to start up a company and run it successfully and profitably. He has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Alberta (1974).
Rick was Alberta’s “Mentor of the Year” for 2004 and received the Alberta Mentor Foundation for Youth’s “Long and Outstanding Service” award in 2007. He has been active in other not-for-profit organizations, including the YWCA and Wood’s Homes. He is a former member of the Board of Directors of West Island College and former Chairman and Treasurer of the Calgary Exchange Group. He was a member of the Executive steering committee of Convergence 2004, Western Canada’s premier technology conference. Rick was a consultant (and an Officer as Secretary to the Board) to the Executive Director, and Board of Directors of MentorKids USA, located in Scottsdale AZ, for 10 years. In 2009 and 2010 Rick was a guest lecturer at the University of Alberta for students in the MBA and Undergraduate programs. He currently teaches courses in Business and Human Resources in Continuing Education at the University of Calgary and is a consultant to a small energy company located in Oklahoma.
