Life is a balancing act; some people practice their poise, and others are born knowing how to spin as many plates as possible.

Megan Ebadat, CPA and A&D associate at Wells Fargo Securities, has always known how to keep everything in motion. Some people handle pressure; Ebadat harnesses it.

A Kansas City, Kan., native, Ebadat moved to Houston in 1999. Entering the University of Houston in 2005, Ebadat was certain of two things.

First, she did not want to be a business major or become an accountant. Second, she didn’t want to work in oil and gas for fear she’d get stuck in Houston.

But her love of math, her head for business and a little bit of fate drew her in that direction. Ebadat earned a dual degree in finance and accounting while working, volunteering and maintaining an impressive GPA all throughout college.

In 2007, she signed on as a rotational accountant at Anadarko Petroleum Corp., “which fit everything I was looking for in a career and was a blessing in disguise.” She diversified her skillset at Anadarko, taking on the roles of midstream accountant; an asset financial planning analyst; overseeing the pension and retirement plans; and working as an accounting advisor in Accounting Policy.

Ebadat is celebrating her two-year anniversary at Wells Fargo, and has more to celebrate on the horizon. She recently got engaged, and is planning a wedding in the midst of what’s promising to be an active A&D market in 2017.

In a recent interview with Investor, Ebadat shared the benefits of the industry’s interdisciplinary nature and her perspective on the downcycle.

Investor What was your major takeaway from Anadarko’s rotational accounting program?

Ebadat I got to see all of the different facets of the oil and gas industry very quickly and early in my career. I think that kind of set the stage. As much as I loved math, I loved science, but I just didn’t want to major in it. In oil and gas, you can capitalize on other disciplines and still do what you love.

Investor Was it hard learning to translate your financial knowledge into the oil and gas environment to connect with your engineering and geologist counterparts?

Ebadat Outside of investment banking, that was one of my biggest learning curves. It was crazy to me—you walk into a completely different world. I was prepared for it because I had seen bits and pieces of it. But it was a lot of fun, because I got to literally sit with an engineer and go through their budget and their drilling schedule and figure out what was working and what wasn’t. I got to talk to geologists and really understand the different methods that were used to prove up properties and where those costs rolled up.

Investor What did the first downcycle you experienced teach you about the industry?

Ebadat It definitely taught me the industry was resilient, but it also taught me that nothing’s ever certain.

Investor What did you miss most about the industry when you were working in an exclusively financial role overseeing pension plans at Anadarko?

Ebadat I really missed the people. I learned from a lot of great people who helped me through some tough lessons and taught me how to avoid the worst ones.

I also missed understanding something that was a part of a bigger engine. It wasn’t all organic, and it wasn’t all in my head. I had to be taught and learn something else.

When I was in the finance role, it’s not that I wasn’t learning, but it was all in my purview, it was all things I had heard in the classroom before or read in a book. I love hearing different perspectives and learning new ways to look at things.

Investor How does A&D suit your interests?

Ebadat It brings the multidisciplinary piece together. It’s incredibly fast-paced, and it works in a lot of ways like a start-up. I started with this group in 2015, which was not a great year to be in A&D; it was the lowest of the low for a while.

So in 2015, aside from trying to win business, we focused inwardly on what our strategy was, how we were going to catch the uptick when it came.

How should we build our processes and internal structures that make us most efficient so that we can be most reactive and responsive when the market recovers? As we grow and the market improves, we get to implement, execute and adjust as needed.

I find that fascinating, and it brings in a lot of components to why I went back to get my MBA. I wanted to learn about how to run a company, how to work through strategy, how to be a leader. That lights my fire.

I get to work on different assets pretty much every day, so I get to see something different almost every day, learning those components of the business from the ground up. It’s as much learning about A&D as it is E&P.

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