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EXPLORER
Doing the job, being ‘effective’
Sonnenberg’s Leadership Skills Stretch Far
By BARRY FRIEDMAN, EXPLORER Correspondent
AAPG
When leaders of AAPG decided
to honor someone each year
with an award for outstanding
leadership, you’d like to think someone
in the room was saying, “Yeah,
Sonnenberg. Definitely.”
The choice is a natural.
Or, as Lee T. Billingsley, an AAPG past
president, says of Sonnenberg:
“He epitomizes effective leadership in
a professional organization.”
Stephen A. Sonnenberg is this
year’s winner of the Michel T. Halbouty
Leadership Award, which next to the
Sidney Powers Memorial Award is
AAPG’s most distinguished prize.
First presented in 2007, it is given in
recognition of outstanding, exceptional
leadership in the petroleum geosciences.
Even a casual look at Sonnenberg’s
past gives ample evidence for the
inevitability of the choice.
An Honorary member of AAPG,
Sonnenberg has displayed his leadership
as:
u An AAPG president.
u Before that, a term as AAPG vice
president.
u A 15-year member of the House of
Delegates (and its chairman from 2009-
10, making three stints on the AAPG
Executive Committee).
u President of both the Division of
Professional Affairs and the Rocky
Mountain Section.
u General chair of the 2001 AAPG
SONNENBERG
annual meeting in Denver.
u Playing crucial roles in several AAPG
national conferences and meetings.
u A member of a plethora of AAPG
committees – his AAPG activities page
has more than 70 entries – including
important roles on the Corporate
Advisory, Budget and Advisory
committees.
u Co-chair for this year’s inaugural
Unconventional Resources Technology
Conference (See April EXPLORER).
u Heads the Colorado School of
Mines’ Bakken Research Consortium.
u The recipient of five AAPG
Certificates of Merit and three more
awards from the HoD.
u A professor and Charles Boettcher
Distinguished Chair at the Colorado
School of Mines.
One of his goals at the Bakken
Consortium: To get operators
to think, literally, out of the
geologic box.
Inspiring Thoughts
Those who can, lead; those who can
lead well, teach.
And those who combine all of that have
known what it means to have the gift of
inspiration.
That would be Sonnenberg.
“One of the best quotes on leadership
I have read is by John Quincy Adams,” he
said in talking about leadership and the
Halbouty award. “‘If your actions inspire
others to dream more, learn more, do more
and become more, you are a leader.’”
And where to put that to better use than
the classroom.
“Currently I am running three
consortiums at the Colorado School of
Mines,” he said, “Bakken, Niobrara and
Vaca Muerta petroleum system studies –
Recent winners of the AAPG Michel T. Halbouty Leadership Award have been:
2012 – Robbie R. Gries
2009 – M. Ray Thomasson
2011 – Daniel L. Smith
2008 – James A. Gibbs
2010 – Patrick J.F. Gratton
2007 – John Amoruso
and I mentor over 20 students each year.”
He talks about his satisfaction with
seeing the results of student-based
research (“with guidance, of course”) and
watching students blossom and grow
through time.
“It is fun to see them accomplish things
in the companies they go and work it, too,”
he said. “It is great to encourage students to
become the future leaders.”
He thinks the state of geology education
in this country is “OK to good,” primarily, he
said, because of the public outreach that
various societies – including AAPG – have
done.
“I know that it can always be improved,
however,” he added. “When budget cuts
occur, it seems that cutting geology-related
programs are at the top of the list.”
The good news?
“Geologists are fairly vocal,” he said,
“and help keep most things on track.”
Seeing the Bigger Picture
His encouragement, though, is not just
for those entering the profession; it’s also for
those already in it. And one of his energies
at the moment is the aforementioned
Bakken Consortium.
“The consortium project on the Bakken
studies all aspects of the petroleum system
from the source beds to the reservoirs,” he
said.
See Sonnenberg, page 30
28 MAY 2013 WWW.AAPG.ORG