Biography
Director of Global Access, BHP Petroleum
Born in a small factory town in central Massachusetts, I knew I wanted to be a geologist since the age of 4. My family are Italian immigrants who came to the U.S. for the rocks – they were quarrymen from central Italy and loved breaking up granite as much as I. After undergraduate and a one-year Watson Fellowship, I came to Cornell to work with Dr. Sue Kay on the crustal evolution of the Central Andes. Upon graduation, I headed to complete a post-doc at the University of Florida under Dr. Mike Perfit on mid-ocean ridge magmatism. By 2010, the economy had crashed so I was drawn to Houston, joining many EAS Cornell alums, to try my skills in the oil patch. After a few years at ExxonMobil, I joined BHP, the largest natural resource extraction company in the world, to work complex tectonic problems in Mexico, Philippines, Trinidad, and Canada. Currently, I am the Director of Global Access for the Exploration company. My job is to deliver new exploration opportunities to BHP through active bid exploration rounds, partnerships, government negotiations, and even corporate mergers. I am married to a lovely Cornell-trained veterinarian from Puerto Rico and have two children, Amelia and Joaquin.
Through my involvement with the Cornell EAS Alumni Council, I hope to make a lasting contribution to the direction of the department, in both curricula and research, to ensure Cornell remains a cutting-edge institution in training the next generation of globally-minded environmentally-focused geoscientists.