Cindy Yeilding
Editor's note: This profile is part of Hart Energy's 50th anniversary Hall of Fame series honoring industry pioneers of the past 50 years and the Agents of Change (ACEs) who are leading the energy sector into the future.
Cindy Yeilding tells a story about attending her first board meeting as a director at Denbury, when a new colleague said to her, “I’m so glad you’re here. We’ve really needed someone with geological expertise on the board.”
It was a triumph of sorts. Yeilding is not only a successful geologist and executive with a career that anyone in the oil and gas field might envy, but she’s also among the few women to reach so high on the industry’s corporate ladder.
And, she said during Hart Energy’s Carbon & ESG Strategies Conference in September, it was nice to be acknowledged for her career success without the token nature of her gender. To be sure, Yeilding has more to offer than a checked box on a diversity survey.
Kevin Meyers, Denbury’s board chairman, highlighted the array of skills that Yeilding brings to the table.
“Cindy is a widely recognized and broadly respected leader in both the CCUS and energy industries, and her deep experience and unique skills will be highly valuable as we continue to position Denbury as an essential industry partner in the transition to a lower-carbon future,” Meyers said when he announced her appointment in 2021.
She joined BP in 1985 as a geologist. In 35 years, she progressed on the science track at the European supermajor to lead exploration teams in Venezuela and throughout the western hemisphere, the Gulf of Mexico and around the world. Since retiring from BP, Yeilding has opened her own business and joined the board of directors at The Center for Houston’s Future. In 2021, she joined the board at Denbury. She earned a bachelor’s of science degree in geology/earth science from Southern Methodist University and a master’s of science in the same field from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The American Association of Petroleum Geologists has named her a “Legend in Exploration,” and Hart Energy named her among the 25 Influential Woman in Energy in 2020.
Yeilding credits her mother with igniting the spark for geology during childhood rock and fossil hunting trips. She discovered she was good at math, but her “true love was art, history and architecture.”
“After a few college-level math courses, I discovered that I was not interested in making a career out of it and refocused on geology, the perfect melding of art and science,” she told Forbes in 2013.
After earning a master’s degree, she joined BP, where much of her early work was offshore on rigs.
“I eventually realized that my being a geologist, not my being a woman, was what primarily bothered the all-male rig crew,” she told Forbes. “The crew of engineers assumed that I did not understand drilling and would interrupt the well constantly to stop to look at samples. In short, they believed that I would just get in the way.
“I built relationships with the team and shared my understanding of each well’s objectives and geology,” she said. “They soon began understanding the value and insights I brought to the well. When the men on the rig started throwing around terms like ‘stacked channel complex’ and ‘Miocene nannofossils,’ I knew I had become a part of the team. That I was the only woman for hundreds of miles didn’t matter.”
—Deon Daugherty, Editor-in-Chief