Vanessa Ryan
Editor's note: This profile is part of Hart Energy's 50th anniversary Hall of Fame series honoring industry pioneers of the past 50 years and the Agents of Change (ACEs) who are leading the energy sector into the future.
Vanessa Ryan, Chevron’s manager of methane reduction, believes in collaborating on the hard stuff to make a difference in the world.
She has served as chair of the Environmental Partnership since its inception in 2017, and her focus is on helping companies of all sizes find ways to reduce methane emissions.
“None of us have all the answers, but together we have the best answers,” Ryan said. “Our industry, unlike many others, has a track record of collaborating on the hard stuff. Safety has been an area where we’ve collaborated for decades now.”
As a result, the industry’s safety record improved significantly. She hopes the industry’s focus on methane reduction will deliver similar results.
“What is really exciting and interesting about the oil and gas industry is that we can and do very regularly collaborate to solve society’s hard problems. And I think it’s very clear that we’re well on that pathway in methane, as well,” she said.
The Environmental Partnership, which has grown from about two dozen members in 2017 to more than 100 under her leadership, is one way the energy industry can collaborate on the common goal of reducing methane emissions from operations.
“We facilitate learning from each other in a way that truly is learning from each other. Chevron has taken best practices from very, very small companies, and I think that they have had the opportunity to learn from us as well,” Ryan said.
Matthew Todd, former director of the Environmental Partnership and co-founder of Aerscape, said it takes special skills to lead a group with more than 100 company members.
“She is incredibly knowledgeable about the industry and where there are opportunities to drive further progress. It’s not just having a technical understanding of industry and its operations, but being able to navigate all of the different stakeholder groups as well,” he said. “She’s been able to build really meaningful relationships” with industry, state and federal government representatives as well as the environmental community.
Ryan, who considers herself a problem-solver at heart, grew up in a family of engineers. Talking through problems was promoted as the best way to figure out how to solve them, she said.
She earned a bachelor of arts degree in political economy from University of California at Berkeley, and her master’s degree in public policy from University of Southern California. She joined Chevron in 2007 as a public policy adviser and has since had a number of different opportunities within the company. Along the way, she has risen through the ranks, serving as Policy, Government and Public Affairs Coordinator in Vietnam, senior adviser for Asia Pacific Exploration & Production, senior adviser for shale issues, senior adviser for energy transitions, carbon reduction manager, and climate and carbon policy manager before being named methane reduction manager in 2022.
She has two sons who love technology.
“One of the cool parts about my current job is that I have immense street cred with my kids because they know that I get to fly drones and satellites for work and that we contract LIDAR companies,” she said. “They love to sit around the dinner table and listen to some of the cool technology stuff that we get to deploy at work.”
—Jennifer Pallanich, Senior Editor, Technology