Corporate Executive Breakfast - Establishing and Optimizing Board of Directors and C-Level Relationships

Barbara Baumann currently serves as the Chair of the Board of directors of publicly traded Devon Energy Corporation.  She also is a director of publicly traded National Fuel Gas, is an independent trustee of the Putnam Mutual Funds, and serves as a senior advisor of the private equity firm First Reserve.  She formerly served as a director of four other public corporations: Buckeye Partners, LP; SM Energy; CVR Energy; and UNS Energy.

Barbara worked at Amoco and BP-Amoco from 1981-1999 in various financial and operating management roles, including as Vice President of one of the company’s six North American E&P business units.  She subsequently held various private equity and consulting roles associated with the upstream sector. 

Barbara holds an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, where she was formerly a trustee and chair of its board.  A Denver native, Barbara, alongside her husband Fred, is an avid skier, hiker, golfer, and grandparent.

Steven M. Cates is the Senior Vice President – Finance and Chief Financial Officer of WestWater Resources.   Mr. Cates joined the Company as Chief Accounting Officer and Controller in May of 2021.  Mr. Cates has over 20 years of financial and accounting experience in various industries including mining, oil and gas, real estate, and public accounting.  Prior to joining Westwater, Mr. Cates served as the Vice President – Controller for Apartment Income REIT Corp. Prior to his time at Apartment Income REIT Corp., Mr. Cates served as corporate controller for Caliber Midstream Partners, LP, an energy and oil infrastructure company, from September 2016 to May 2019, and previously, Mr. Cates held various accounting and financial reporting roles at American Midstream Partners, LP, Newmont Mining Corporation and Thompson Creek Metals Company Inc.  Mr. Cates began his career at KPMG in 2002, where he most recently served as senior manager for audit and advisory services. Mr. Cates earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from the University of Redlands and is a certified public accountant in the state of Colorado.

John Clapp is CFO of Scout Clean Energy, a renewable energy owner-operator. John previously served as CEO/CFO of Empower Energies, a distributed generation developer/owner/operator of C&I renewable projects and prior to that as CFO of a U.S. utility-scale solar developer/owner/operator joint-venture between two German renewable industry companies. John was a Managing Director at Citigroup in the Global Power Team before moving over to the developer side. At Citi John was the Bank’s power sector specialist and worked across project finance, tax equity, corporate & investment banking and commodities. Prior to banking, John and was a senior consultant at PA Consulting where he managed teams conducting market price forecasts and asset valuations for project financings and M&A.

Kevin Shuba currently serves as a senior advisor for private equity infrastructure and the logistics industry. He is Executive Chairman of two private equity owned companies and a member of the board of directors for another private equity and one public logistics company. He served as the CEO for OmniTRAX, Inc., one of North America’s largest private railroad holding companies for eight years. Prior to joining OmniTRAX and The Broe Group, Kevin had a sixteen-year career with Brambles Limited, the six-billion-dollar logistics services company, where he oversaw Chep’s US and Americas operations. Kevin held several senior sales and management positions with Baxter Healthcare Corporation over a ten-year period. He served in the United States Army for six years and is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Peter Nelson is the Managing Director of Century Group's Denver, Colorado office. In this role, he provides mentorship to team members, strengthens client relationships and identifies new business opportunities.  Prior to that, Peter acted as Director, Executive Search at the firm's El Segundo office — managing and completing searches in the entertainment, engineering, technology, real estate, legal and service industries. He's successfully placed professionals at the CEO, CFO, Vice President, Controller and Management levels within Finance, Accounting, Tax and Audit.
Peter was a Division I baseball player at Texas Tech University, and was previously a top producer in retail sales with a Fortune 500 company. He still focuses on business development and research, recruiting and marketing for retained and contingency searches and expanding his overall network within the Denver, Colorado marketplace.