The quick reaction time Claire Harvey developed as a college-level volleyball player at Texas A&M came in handy for the finance graduate in the past decade's job market. Her stints at both Enron and Lehman Brothers ended abruptly, when the former imploded and the latter went bankrupt during the financial crisis of 2008.

The good news is that her boss at Enron was George McCormick, whom she works for today at private-equity firm TPH Partners, in Houston, where he is the managing partner. In getting to her position at TPH Partners, Harvey reflects that "good things can come from tough situations if you are patient, keep working hard and stay focused."

In between Enron and joining TPH Partners, Harvey worked for Cinergy Corp., a merchant energy and natural gas trading firm. She then joined Baltimore-based Constellation Energy, focusing on producer finance, and later, on oil and gas asset acquisition and development.

Harvey returned to school in 2005, graduating as a Jones Scholar from Rice University with her MBA in 2007. In 2006, she had interned with Lehman Brothers and after graduation joined their natural resources investment-banking group in Houston. A year later, Lehman crumbled. The bank went bankrupt on a Sunday and by the following week Harvey was an employee of Barclays Capital.

About a year ago, McCormick approached her about working at TPH Partners, and she is now a vice president in the private-equity group. TPH Partners invests in upstream, midstream and service companies.

Harvey is "third generation" in the energy business. One grandfather was vice president of land at Southland Royalty Co., and the other worked for Mobil for 30-plus years; her father, Mike Harvey, has started and sold three private-equity-backed E&P companies and is on his fourth; her mom, Brenda, was the treasurer of her father's first two companies…and the list goes on.

Oil and Gas Investor talked with Harvey about private-equity investing and energy trends.

Investor: Given your family's roots in the oil and gas business, did you ever consider doing anything else?

Harvey: Not really. For a while I wanted to be a professional volleyball player, but once I got to college and started two-a-days I realized no one gets paid to play professional volleyball in the U.S., and I didn't want to live overseas.All my family talked about at the dinner table was oil and gas. I didn't know there was anything else.

Investor: What role do you play at TPH Partners?

Harvey: I evaluate potential investments and am a part of the execution team. I participate in many major capital decisions that our portfolio companies make, and I do analysis to help us get to the right answers.

Investor: The private-equity market is busy right now.

Harvey: We screen about 20 to 25 deals a month. We have five portfolio companies. Since I joined, we've executed four follow-on investments, and we're in the middle of another. Our fund is over 50% invested.Most deals have been oil-focused, and were done over the past 18 months. We're benefiting from the oil-price impact today. We're not gas-averse. Over the past 12 months there has been a huge spread between buyers and sellers, and it's been difficult to transact as a result. Generally, our fund does not take big bets on large commodity-price increases. We focus on investments that make sense at today's prices, and price increases are gravy.

Investor: What companies are in your portfolio?

Harvey: We have one midstream company, Meritage Midstream Services, which has constructed an 81-mile gas-gathering system in the Eagle Ford shale; and two upstream companies, Storm Peak Energy, which exploits conventional properties in the Permian Basin, and BlueRock Energy Capital, which provides upstream financings for small producers. The service companies are Ingrain, a digital rock physics company that computes the physical properties and fluid-flow characteristics of reservoir rocks, and UniversalPegasus, an engineering and project management company focused on energy infrastructure.

Investor: What's the environment for fundraising like right now?

Harvey: Overall, the fundraising market has been difficult since mid-2008. Institutions are rethinking their allocations to private equity in general, but the recent feedback we've gotten is there is good institutional appetite for energy private equity.

Investor: What do you enjoy most about your job?

Harvey: I enjoy meeting new management teams, hearing their stories and envisioning how to build businesses as a partner. I am also very fortunate to work with a fantastic team at TPH Partners. We are a collaborative group, and we benefit from the experiences of our senior leadership, George McCormick and Joe Foster, our chairman.

Investor: Recent events have brought into sharper relief the need for reliable, safe energy supplies.

Harvey: The world around us is changing rapidly. Between the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and political unrest in the Middle East, the commodity landscape will change. Governments are pondering the safety and reliability of nuclear energy as oil prices continue to increase due to Middle East conflict. Many signs appear to lead to natural gas in our new world.

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