Joe W. Byers

Risk Management and Finance Professional with over 30 years of technical and management experience in energy and finance industries with extensive experience in risk management, finance and financial controls, and business strategy. I am currently Senior Director of Market Risk for Direct Energy. I hold a Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University, a MBA and BS in Mathematics from Fort Hays State University. My career spans up stream, mid stream, and down stream areas of the energy industry that include energy marketing; through global Energy Companies, Investment Banks, and start ups; to Exploration and Production and Oilfield services. I was an Adjunct Professor for Our Lady of the Lake University in their Business and Leadership program and was an Applied Professor of Finance at the University of Tulsa.

My business management and leadership capabilities include managing a diverse team of quantitative and risk analysts. I authored and implemented processes for Risk Governance Policies, Processes, and Controls that include Risk committee governance documents, Volumetric Limit Controls, Value at Risk Process, Risk Standards, Draw-down (MtM path Risk) Policy, Derivative Policy, Authorities to Execute – Delegations Policy, Mark to Market Standards, and Out of Office Standards. I co-authored Power Congestion Trading Risk Policy that was submitted to ISOs in North America to meet regulation requirements. I have overseen projects focused on automating processes in managing trading books and risk management metrics to increase efficiency and productivity. I have contributed to model risk initiatives that defined and developed model validation and model management policies, and as well as leading the team that conducted model validations. My experience with enterprise risk management includes subject matter expert for ERM systems, leading change management and setting source code standard for Quantitative Analytics Framework. The Quantitative analytics framework included Value at Risk (VaR), Expected Shortfall, Marginal VaR, Component VaR, option sensitivity analysis, and other risk metrics. This quantitative analytics framework was in R and Matlab. I have promoted Business Intelligence platforms for reporting Risk exposures and limits, Beta risk adjusted exposures, and Return on VaR metric for teams and traders with delivery of information across multiple technologies, dynamic pivot table reports, and web portal/share point sites. I lead the BI team that designed and implemented a Portfolio Analytics Mapping System (PAMS) of geospatial energy portfolio exposures in North America.

I have experience in valuation, risk management, and trading analytics as well as developing specialized products and new lines of business for global energy marketing and trading business. I developed models for asset and structured products for Commodity storage, transportation, tolling and refining assets. I have also worked with weather derivatives, derived Digital Asian Options, and build optimization algorithms for commodity storage and BioDiesel. I developed and executed trading strategies of financial transmission rights in power markets. I have expertise in Risk and Quantitative analysis for forecasting, Risk Metrics like Value at Risk and CCAR, Forward and volatility curve modeling, and Demand Load modeling. I have experience in risk analytics, econometric analysis, and quantitative analysis. I have extensive knowledge of Financial/Risk analysis and reporting. I utilize parametric linear and non-linear statistical techniques, Time Series estimations: ARCH, GARCH, ARIMA, and EGARCH; and non-parametric statistical estimation methods.

My academic and research experience is broad. I taught the Finance Seminar for Our Lady of the Lake University in their Business and Leadership program. At the University of Tulsa I taught Advanced Derivatives Pricing and Management and Trading and Risk Management in the Masters of Quantitative Finance program, as well as MBA core Finance Curriculum. I taught Finance, Economics, and Marketing class at Fort Hays State University, and Introduction to Micro Computers at Barton Community College. My research includes commodity storage modeling (Energy Economics, 28, 275-287), model risk and risk governance within an organization, locational marginal pricing in Power Markets, commodity peaking options, monetizing and managing natural gas storage (Natural Gas and Electricity, July 2005), natural gas basis relationships, and advanced modeling of spread option in commodities including natural gas transportation and power tolling options.