Gabriel de Alba

Chairman

Gabriel de Alba is a Managing Director and Partner of The Catalyst Capital Group. Mr. de Alba’s responsibilities at Catalyst have included acting as a director or senior officer of various Catalyst portfolio companies, including World Color Press, Cable Satisfaction International, and Geneba Properties.

Mr. de Alba is currently the chairman of the board of directors of Therapure Biopharma, Gateway Casinos & Entertainment, and co-chairman of the board of directors of Cirque du Soleil. Mr. de Alba is also a director and co-chairman of CGX Energy.

Prior to joining Catalyst at its inception in 2002, Mr. de Alba worked at AT&T Latin America. Mr. de Alba was a founding member of the Bank of America International Merchant Banking Group and, prior to that, worked in Bankers Trust’s New York Merchant Banking Group.

Mr. de Alba is fluent in five languages and holds a double B.S. in Finance and Economics from the NYU Stern School of Business, an M.B.A. from Columbia University and has completed graduate courses in Mathematics, Information Technology, and Computer Sciences at Harvard University.

W. Ellis Armstrong

Director

W. Ellis Armstrong is a chartered engineer with over 35 years of international oil and gas industry experience with BP in Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Trinidad, Alaska and the North Sea.

He held senior strategy, commercial, technical, and operational roles with BP and was also the Chief Financial Officer for the group’s global exploration and production business. Dr. Armstrong was an independent director of Lamprell until he retired in May 2018 and of Interoil until it was acquired by Exxon in 2017.

Dr. Armstrong is currently an independent director at Lloyds Register Group, a leading international risk assurance firm.

Dr. Armstrong has a BSc and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Imperial College and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Stanford Business School.

Luis F. Alarcon

Director

Luis F. Alarcón is a Colombian executive with a long record in the Colombian business environment. Mr. Alarcon started his career as a consultant, participating in several studies in the fields of energy, agriculture, water resources, and environmental planning.

During the 1980s, he was the Head of the Public Investment Unit at the National Planning Department, General Director-Budget at the Ministry of Finance, Energy Economist at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), and Deputy Minister and later Minister of Finance and Public Credit under the government of President Virgilio Barco in Colombia.

He then assumed the roles of Executive Director, representing Colombia and Peru at the IADB, and Chief Executive Officer of Flota Mercante GranColombiana (Colombian Merchant Fleet), a position he held for six years. Between 1997 and 2000 he served as Director and General Manager for PetroColombia S.A. and in 2001 he joined Asofondos de Colombia (Colombian Association of Pension Funds) as Executive President of the association until 2007. For the next eight years, Mr. Alarcón served as Chief Executive Officer of Interconexión Eléctrica, a Colombian listed infrastructure company operating throughout Latin America and focused on electric power transmission, road concessions, telecommunications transmission, and management of real-time systems.

Mr. Alarcón previously served as chairman of the board of directors of Grupo SURA. He currently serves as chairman of the board of directors of Almacenes Éxito, one of the largest corporations in Colombia, and is a member of the board of directors of Edemco, an electric power infrastructure construction company and Fundacion Plan, a non-profit Colombian civil society organization. He is also a member of the board of trustees and the Executive Committee of Universidad de Los Andes.

Mr. Alarcon is a Civil Engineer with a degree from Universidad de Los Andes (1975) and obtained a Master’s in Civil Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1979). In 1995 he attended the Advanced Management Program at Oxford University.

Orlando Cabrales Segovia

Director

Orlando Cabrales Segovia is currently the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation, appointed effective March 15, 2021.

Mr. Cabrales has over 30 years of experience in the public and private energy sector in Colombia, including serving as President of NATURGAS, the Colombian natural gas trade association, until March 2021, as Vice-Minister of Energy of the Ministry of Mines and Energy in Colombia between 2013 and 2014, and as the President of the ANH from 2011 to 2013.

Mr. Cabrales held senior roles at BP in Latin America. He currently sits on the boards of Isagen, and Conconcreto and previously served on the boards of numerous companies in Colombia including Tuscany Drilling, Cenit, and ISA.

Mr. Cabrales earned an undergraduate degree in Law from Pontificia Javeriana University and a Master’s degree in Philosophy from Boston College.

Russell Ford

Director

Russell Ford is a senior executive with more than 35 years of experience in the global oil and gas industry. Mr. Ford started his career at Shell’s E&P business in 1981 as a production engineer working in upstream. Afterwards, he served in a series of technical, operational, and leadership roles across a number of onshore and deep-water assets, in upstream research, and as head of M&A for North America.

Mr. Ford has served as Head of EP Strategy and Portfolio (2003-2004) and has held several positions in Royal Dutch Shell such as Private Assistant to its Chief Executive (2004-2005), Vice President over upstream onshore and offshore development in the Western Hemisphere (2005-2009), Executive Vice President Onshore (2009-2012), and Executive Vice President of Contracting and Procurement (2013-2015) leading Royal Dutch Shell Group’s global supply chain activities.

He served as chairman of the board of AeraEnergy from 2012 until 2015 and previously served as a member of the University of Michigan’s Energy Institute External Advisory Board.
Since retiring from Shell in June 2015, he has advised companies and financial institutions on project-specific matters.

Mr. Ford has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan and an MBA from California State University

Veronique Giry

Director

Veronique Giry has over 30 years of experience in the global oil and gas industry. Ms. Giry currently serves as Director and Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of ISH Energy Limited in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Ms. Giry’s career has included senior management roles at the Alberta Energy Regulator and Total Exploration & Production where she has held roles in Latin America, Canada, Asia, Europe, and the United Kingdom. Ms. Giry also sits as a volunteer on the board of Alliance Francaise of Calgary.

Ms. Giry earned a Master’s of Science in Engineering, a degree from the Ecole Centrale de Paris, France, with a major in Mechanics.