Laura joined Gulf Oil L.P. in January 2007 as Director of Strategy, Business Development and Biofuels. Her background is in international commodity merchandising and risk management. She worked for Louis Dreyfus for 11 years as a trader of cotton, corn, soybeans, oil, natural gas and electricity in domestic and international markets. She was named Vice President of trading and risk management for Louis Dreyfus Energy in Atlanta and was responsible for refined petroleum product procurement and hedging.
In the 1990s, Laura became a Managing Director at Duke Louis Dreyfus and later its successor company Duke Energy, where she managed natural gas trading and power hedging. In 1998 she left Duke Energy to start her own energy risk management and consulting firm providing advisory services to large producers and consumers of energy. She advised clients in the siting, development and hedging of power plants, LNG import facilities and natural gas pipelines.
Laura has been instrumental in developing Gulf's alternative fuels strategy and leading the business development function evaluating numerous opportunities over the past few years. As Senior Vice President of Finance and Strategy, Laura's primary responsibilities are to provide senior leadership to Gulf's financial operations functions and focus to Gulf's strategy development. The Operational Accounting, Credit, Internal Audit, Commodity Risk Control, Credit Card Processing, Customer Service, Financial Accounting, Retail Electricity and Natural Gas groups report to her.
Laura graduated from Dartmouth College in 1987 with a BA in Mathematics.