Staff Spotlight: Ken McBride

Here at PetroLedger Financial Services we pride ourselves on our amazing team members and their exceptional skills and experiences that they bring to the table. Each person has a background and skill set that makes them vital to our mission. Here we want to highlight one of these team members, Ken McBride, a manager in our Regulatory department. Keep reading to see what makes Ken a crucial member of our staff and what he enjoys about working with us.

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Ken’s Background

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Ken has worked in the oil & gas industry for over 25 years in many positions ranging from revenue work for large companies to his position in the regulatory department here at PetroLedger where he has been for the last two years. But it may shock you to find out that he “got into revenue purely by accident” after a sudden career shift while he was attending college.

Ken started his schooling as an applicant for the CIA and he had gotten quite far into the process. “My plan was to go work for the CIA because they were hiring people with Masters’ in Econ and I thought to myself ‘I can do that, I’ve seen Bourne Identity.” Ken’s father, a Major in the military, advised against this. Ken had gotten all the way to his third interview with the CIA but was informed that his father “knows too many people”. So close to graduation, he had to make a new plan and with that, his journey in oil & gas was set.

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Ken’s Role and Day-To-Day

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Ken works in our Tulsa office managing state regulatory services for many clients. The biggest state that much of his work comes from currently is New Mexico, but he can work with clients from any state. Part of what he enjoys most about his job is that his day-to-day is always something different and exciting. “It is something different every day. It is exciting, painful, enjoyable- sometimes I want to pull my hair out.” He is continually amazed every day after all of these years, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

The work he does varies from client interaction to building out spreadsheets, working with numbers, and even dabbling in other tasks such as division orders from time-to-time. His position allows for him to react to what a client needs at that moment and also work the preventative side as well, catching any potential issues he can see on the horizon. He enjoys that his position allows him to get out and talk to clients and “put a face to the name”.

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Why Ken Chose PetroLedger

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Ken brings a lot to our team, but he appreciates what we have to offer him as well. He was drawn to PetroLedger by our culture and values. When illness struck his family, he couldn’t have been more grateful for the flexibility our family-oriented company that allowed him the time to not only help his family but still tend to business as well.

Flexibility in the workplace doesn’t stop there though. Ken appreciates having the “freedom if I see a problem to chase it down” and find the solution. This allows for our team to bring benefits to the company as a whole when an issue arises or there is a better way to do a task. This really impacted Ken in a positive way, “The fact that they are taking the time to look at it and say, ‘go for it’, that speaks volumes to me.”

Looking at his team and the teams around him, he finds himself reflecting on how other companies in the past have had a divide between teams and departments. PetroLedger is a different story through. There is “no wall” between the teams and offices, allowing for cohesive work throughout the whole company. Ken enjoys the way the teams in the Tulsa office come together and create fun in the workplace with events like holiday parties and potlucks.

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What Makes PetroLedger Different

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With his decades of experience in the oil & gas field, Ken has seen many companies and how they run, but when it comes to PetroLedger, we stand apart from the rest. When asked what it’s like working for us, Ken couldn’t say enough about how our culture stands apart from the rest. With the oil & gas industry being a tight-knit community and an “everyone-knows-everyone” field, Ken found it easy to integrate into our regulatory team and enjoyed coming into an office where he knew of many of his teammates and their extensive experience and skill in the industry.

PetroLedger’s culture has always been one of fostering new ideas and Ken agrees with this. He states that PetroLedger allows him to bring new ideas to the team and leadership is open to those ideas. With that, Ken can then grow within the company by having those new ideas nurtured.

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We at PetroLedger value our team and love showing off their skills and talents. Learn more about our amazing team here.

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Want to work with our oil & gas accounting and land professionals? Contact us to get started!