Christa Zaharias

Chemical Engineer, B.S., P.E.
President/Project Coordinator (co-founder)

Christa graduated with a degree in Chemical Engineering from Texas A&M University.  Upon graduation, Christa accepted a position as a Control Systems Technical Associate with Wood Group Mustang in Houston, TX.  During her time at WGM, Christa developed her technical ability working on multiple large capital projects across all sectors of the oil and gas industry, including the $1B+ BP Valhall Re-Development Project (Norwegian North Sea offshore platform).  She excelled as a Control Systems engineer and within two years, advanced from associate to lead instrument engineer.  In 2008, Christa earned her Professional Engineers license in Texas.  From 2009 through 2015, Christa worked for Jacobs in Denver, CO, moving from instrument engineering into project engineering and management. While working as a project engineer/manager, she was responsible for maintaining project scope, schedules and technical quality, as well as staffing, risk assessment and management, and client relationships.   Christa has spent considerable time in the field, both domestically and internationally, including Trinidad, Canada and Turkey, supporting projects through various phases. She has been a peer mentor at both WGM and Jacobs and was awarded several internal honors at both companies.  Christa is an active member of several industry organizations including NACE, GPA, and DPC.  She also sits on the Board of Directors for the Women's Oil and Gas Association (WOGA).

Michael Joosten

Metallurgical Engineer, B.S., M.S.
Vice-President Engineering/Chief Metallurgist (co-founder)

Mike joined ConocoPhillips in 1979 after graduating with an advance degree in Metallurgical Engineering from Ohio State University.  Throughout Mike’s career, he has provided considerable contributions to materials selection and corrosion prevention and control in the upstream petroleum industry.  Mike pioneered the use of long distance wet gas pipelines and was the first to incorporate continuous subsea corrosion monitoring and fluid flow modeling into the design of corrosion inhibition programs.  He has been involved in over 40 major development projects since the start of his career, increasing knowledge in many different areas including bolting selection, selective weld corrosion in low alloyed steel, reliability of subsea pipelines, corrosion inhibitor selection and the effects of organic acids both on inhibition of steel and corrosion of CRA’s.  Mike’s abilities have been formally recognized with the ConocoPhillips Excellence in Engineering Award, as well as the ConocoPhillips Outstanding Mentor Award for 2008 and the NACE Technical Achievement Award in 2009.  He is a NACE Fellow and has over 60 publications.