By Nancy Thompson

Throughout her professional career, Lower 48 Financial Accounting and Reporting Consultant Amy Penland has helped build the financial backbone of several companies from the ground up. She’s played critical roles in mergers, acquisitions, integrations and public debt and equity offerings. You name it and she’s probably seen it.

For her, the best part of it all is the relationships she’s made along the way.

“To me, it’s all about building trust,” Amy said. “Even if you’re on different sides of the table, if you can develop positive relationships with the people you work with, everything becomes possible.”

This philosophy has benefited Amy’s professional and philanthropic life.

In February, ConocoPhillips presented Amy with a 2023 Individual Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding volunteer contributions and commitment to the advancement of her Midland, Texas, community.

Tireless service to community

Amy has had a big impact on the Midland community. As a board member and past president of the Permian Basin Chapter of the Women’s Energy Network, she works to attract women to the energy industry through networking, mentoring and education.

She has been involved with Hospice of Midland for more than 20 years and currently serves as treasurer of the Hospice of Midland Endowment. Her favorite Hospice of Midland program, Rays of Hope – Children’s Grief Center, serves children and adolescents who have experienced a loss due to death, divorce, separation, incarceration, deployment, foster care or other painful transition.

“Hospice of Midland is the first and only nonprofit hospice care service in the Permian Basin and has been serving Midland and the surrounding communities for over 40 years,” Amy said. “Through its core services and through Rays of Hope, I’ve seen the tremendous support the organization provides to grieving families. When I first began serving HOM, it didn’t take me long to believe in the mission and the services provided to patients and their families. It became even more personal to me when both of my parents benefited from the care provided by HOM during their end-of-life journeys. The care my parents received and the support my sister and I received were beyond comforting. The entire HOM staff from the nurses to social workers to grief counsellors are the definition of angels on earth. Hospice of Midland and Rays of Hope truly are hidden gems in our community.” 

For the past 12 years, Amy has volunteered with Midland Memorial Hospital and currently serves on the Board of Trustees for the Finance, Investment and Planning Committees. Major accomplishments during her time on the board include the new Scharbauer Tower, developing Midland’s first Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and community response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Amy is working with community stakeholders to develop a new comprehensive Behavioral Health Center for the Permian Basin.

From Panhandle to the Permian

Amy grew up in a small town in the Texas panhandle. She eventually made her way to Abilene Christian University, where she majored in accounting, finance and mathematics. Her first post-graduate job was as an internal auditor for Parker and Parsley, an independent oil and gas company. Following that, she worked for KPMG, where her audit clients were primarily publicly traded oil-and-gas-related companies.

Amy was the Audit Manager on the Concho Resources accounts, which is where her long history with the company began. After auditing the first two iterations of the company that were sold to other oil and gas companies, Amy joined the small team in 2004 that ultimately took the third iteration of Concho Resources public in 2007. 

“Amy was one of the first employees of the original Concho,” said Tim Leach, former Concho CEO and current advisor to the CEO at ConocoPhillips. “Her diligent work and community service, with Hospice and others, helped shape our corporate culture and make our company and community a better place.”

Concho to ConocoPhillips – People make the difference

When ConocoPhillips acquired Concho in 2021, Amy was again part of the Project Management Office and Integration Management Team tasked with the intricate details of combining the two companies.

“Looking back, I remember both Tim and Ryan saying that we had very similar cultures,” Amy said. “When it came down to the quality of people we have, they were both right. It’s really all about the people you work with.”

Amy’s innate ability to build trust “across the aisle” made her a valuable part of yet another integration when ConocoPhillips acquired Shell’s Permian assets at the end of 2021.

“Each integration is different, but the Shell integration was a bonding moment for all of us who’d just been through the Concho acquisition. We got to act together as one, which made all the work really rewarding.”

Today, Amy continues to navigate complex projects with ease in her current role as a financial accounting and reporting consultant, working closely with a broad team to update ConocoPhillips’ enterprise resource planning systems.

A family and community of giving

In her free time, Amy enjoys volunteering and traveling with her husband, Hayes, and daughter, Hannah. Together, they volunteer with Opportunity Tribe, an organization that provides a mentoring community for at-risk students to discover their value and unlock their potential. 

Even in her volunteer work, Amy credits others.

“I work alongside people with service-minded hearts and talents. It’s easy to serve with people like that,” Amy said. “Midland is just that type of community.”

Colleague Jamie Iwamoto said it takes a special and dedicated individual to sacrifice so much personal time to help others.

“What Amy does for the Midland community encompasses many aspects of our SPIRIT Values," Jamie said. "ConocoPhillips and the city of Midland are lucky to have her.”