Lauren (Parker) McGovern - Completion Engineer at ExxonMobil

EDUCATION:  The Woodlands High School - 2007 University of Texas at Austin, BS in Petroleum Engineering

While in college I most enjoyed the senior design project, in which my team and I had the opportunity to apply learnings from our previous course work, but also our "real world" learnings from various internships. Upon joining ExxonMobil, I started my career as a drilling engineer rotating to the TLP-A in Block 15 in Angola. During that assignment I had the opportunity to be exposed to offshore drilling and completion operations as well as long lead planning. I then moved to Calgary, Alberta (AB), Canada as an expat and supported multi-zone frac operations at Horn River in British Columbia as a completion engineer. I then transitioned into a drilling engineer role supporting drilling operations in Cold Lake, AB. I then relocated to Anchorage, Alaska as a completion engineer supporting operations at Point Thomson.  Aside from the financial contribution from receiving the SPE-GCS scholarship, the initial internship opportunity post high school graduation provided to be invaluable. This allowed me the opportunity to be exposed early on to internships with majors.  My advice to current students is to establish a professional network as quickly as possible through SPE events and internship opportunities. Seek internship opportunities in a variety of functions (i.e. reservoir, production, drilling) so that you are able to determine in which function you would like to pursue a full time career. Contact me at lauren.p.mcgovern@exxonmobil.com.