Esteban is an engineer dedicated to advancing the way we deal with complex systems. He has a multidisciplinary background and diverse experience in a variety of industries, roles, and countries. 

He has academic degrees in civil mining engineering and finance and systems engineering and was a visiting researcher in Japan studying multidisciplinary optimization systems.

While at MIT, he was the founder of the student organization now called the Sustainable Energy Alliance. He focused his research on multidisciplinary system optimization, system safety, flexibility in engineering design, systems architecture, and innovation, and wrote his masters thesis on the implications of uncertainty on the dynamic behavior of complex systems. 

Esteban has started and directed two magazines focused on education in Chile. As an engineer, he has held diverse roles in environment and sustainability, process safety, field engineering, advanced analytics and data science, and systems engineering. All of these roles in multiple industries were related to natural resources and energy. During his career, he has been part of multiple industrial trends like Lean manufacturing, where he was a Black Belt, and classic and recent project management approaches like Agile, and he has led multiple data science and digital initiatives at a global scale, which has given him a first-hand view of the state of the art and the challenges of dealing with complexity. 

While at Chevron, he started the Systems Engineering Community of Practice, has filed multiple inventions and patents, and as the Advanced Analytics Team Lead at the time, was part of the team receiving the 2015 prize for excellence in analytics and operations research from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®). 

His current role in Chevron Technology Ventures has given him a front-row perspective into innovation in digital technologies and the opportunity to work with multiple governmental agencies, universities, national labs, research institutions, and large- and small-scale technology companies across the globe. 

Esteban lives in Houston, Texas, where he spends as much time as possible with his family, composed of a curious and active daughter and a surgeon partner who inspires him with her wisdom about the world of the complex human body. He is a fourth dan black belt in martial arts, practicing for more than thirty years, and he supports the Houston Symphony as a member of the Young Associates Council. Esteban likes to read and to visit art galleries and museums wherever he goes.

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Brandon is an engineer who uses the principles and processes of composition to transform the energy industry. His multidisciplinary experience working with international business units spans design, operations, safety, software, and human systems. As a big thinker, he is focused on re-imagining the energy industry and designing systems that can deal with complexity in an integrated way and at a global scale. 

He completed his undergraduate petroleum engineering degree in 2011 and joined Chevron that year as a wells engineer working in California. He held multiple positions in California, including managing field operations and several years of designing wells as part of a field-wide asset development program. In addition, he oversaw several technical standards and led the business unit’s efforts to assure process safety of both well designs and operations.

For his next assignment, Brandon worked as a performance engineer supporting Chevron’s Appalachia unconventional natural gas assets. In this role he pioneered data analytics, business intelligence, and modeling skills to transform engineering workflows and influence the global direction of Chevron’s digital transformation. He continued his journey into technology and innovation by taking a digital program manager role for the enterprise health, environment, and safety organization. This assignment led him back to California, where he was responsible for transforming the digital delivery model and implementing a scaled agile framework to deliver business value. 

Brandon’s commitment to digital technology and innovation led him to be selected by Chevron’s inaugural scholar program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At MIT, Brandon received his masters degree in engineering and management. He was a fellow of the system design and management program, where he learned how to use systems thinking to create effective and creative multidisciplinary solutions for large-scale, complex challenges in product design, development, and innovation. For his thesis, Brandon conducted a system theoretic process analysis of Chevron’s global assurance program to address emerging needs in the energy industry. He was also a fellow of the MIT energy initiative during his time in Cambridge.

Since returning from his academic sabbatical in 2020, Brandon has been applying principles of integration and systems engineering to re-imagine the way work is done at Chevron. Specifically, in his current role, he is responsible for the research, design, and implementation of technologies that helps Chevron prioritize, manage, and integrate decisions at scale.

Brandon enjoys giving guest lectures and participating in cross-industry panels. He most recently hosted a session at Texas Data Day on how to scale knowledge graphs when there is no consensus. He currently lives in Houston, Texas, with his wife and children.

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