Rusty Hutson, Jr.

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Born and raised in West Virginia, Rusty Hutson, Jr. is the fourth generation in the Hutson family to immerse himself in the oil and gas industry, with family roots dating back to the early 1900s. Rusty spent many summers of his youth working with his father and grandfather in the oil fields of West Virginia. The first in his family to pursue higher education, Rusty graduated from Fairmont State College (WV) with a degree in accounting. After college, Rusty spent 13 years steadily progressing into multiple leadership roles within the banking industry at well-known institutions such as Bank One and Compass Bank, prior to concluding his time within banking as CFO of Compass Financial Services.

Building upon his experiences in the oil & gas industry and the financial services sector, Rusty established Diversified Gas & Oil in 2001 as a cash flow model supported by mature, predictable long-life assets. After years of refining his strategy, Rusty and his team quietly took the company public in 2017 on the AIM growth market of the London Stock Exchange. Since going public, DGO has acquired nearly $1.8 billion in Appalachian upstream and midstream assets with net daily production of approximately 112,000 barrels of oil equivalency. In just three short years, the rapid growth of DGO’s asset portfolio led to a move up to the premium listing on the London Exchange. Rusty continues to lead his team and expand the company’s footprint throughout the Appalachian Basin while remaining focused on operational excellence, financial discipline and shareholder value creation.

Brad Gray

Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer

Prior to joining the Company in October 2016, Mr. Gray held the position of Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Royal Cup, Inc., a United States based commercial coffee roaster and wholesale distributor of tea and other beverage related products. Prior to Royal Cup, Inc., from 2006 to 2014, Brad worked in the petroleum distribution industry for The McPherson Companies, Inc. and held the position of Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before McPherson Companies, he worked for over a decade in various financial and operational roles with the previously listed NYSE retail group, Saks Incorporated. Brad received a Bachelors of Science degree in Accounting from the University of Alabama and earned his CPA license (Alabama).

Eric Williams

Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
(Finance director)

Mr. Williams joined Diversified in July 2017 from Callon Petroleum. During Eric’s more than seven-year tenure with Callon, the company grew significantly from a market capitalization of US $40 million to over US $3.5 billion, successfully transforming itself from a deep-water asset focused company to an onshore, pure-play horizontal drilling operator in the Permian Basin. Eric was instrumental in developing and enhancing the company’s external reporting streams and established a formal investor relations function serving more than 30 sell-side analysts and a growing base of institutional investors. He began his career at the public auditing firm of Price Waterhouse Coopers in Birmingham, Alabama. Over the course of his career, Eric has served in various roles including internal audit with a focus on Sarbanes Oxley implementation and compliance, controllership and financial reporting for several US publicly-traded companies. Eric has a B.S. degree in Accounting from Samford University, a M.S. degree in Accounting from the University of Alabama and he is a licensed CPA (Alabama).

Ben Sullivan

Executive Vice President, General Counsel
& Corporate Secretary

Mr. Sullivan joined Diversified in 2019 with oversight of the company’s legal, land/real estate, community engagement, and policy/governmental affairs functions and works with the CEO and board on risk, compliance, and governance matters.  Prior to joining Diversified, Ben worked with Greylock Energy (an ArcLight Capital Partners portfolio company with extensive national holdings) and its predecessor (Energy Corporation of America) as Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary with supervision of many business units.  Prior to Ben’s tenure at Greylock Energy, he worked as counsel for EQT Corporation and in private practice.  He is a member of the leadership and Board of Directors of several commerce, legal, and industry groups, and has considerable experience in corporate governance and reporting / ESG, complex commercial transactions, land/real estate, acquisitions & divestitures, financing, government investigations, and corporate workouts and restructurings.  Mr. Sullivan graduated from the University of Kentucky with a B.A degree in History and received a J.D. degree from the West Virginia University College of Law.  He holds licenses to practice law in several States, including Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

James P. Rode

Executive Vice President & Chief Commercial Officer

Mr. Rode joined the Company in October 2018, bringing more than 30 years of experience in the founding, growth and maturation of various oil and gas companies. Immediately prior to joining the Company, James served as CEO and Chairman of the Board for Core Appalachia, which he helped to co-found in 2016 and was later acquired by Diversified. Prior executive experience included roles as Vice President and General Counsel of Hercules Petroleum; General Counsel of EnTrade Corporation; Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Director of Interenergy Corporation (also co-founder); and Business Development Consultant of MDU Resources. In addition to his executive tenure, James has served on the Board of Directors of the Kentucky Oil and Gas Association, the West Virginia Independent Oil and Gas Association, and is a member of the Kentucky Bar Association. He earned his Juris Doctor Degree from Gonzaga University School of Law and a Bachelor Business Administration degree from the University of Kentucky.

Mark S. Kirkendall

Executive Vice President & Chief Human Resources Officer

Mr. Kirkendall joined Diversified in May of 2019 to lead our overall people strategies. Mark has extensive experience in Human Resources with diverse organizations such as: Royal Cup Coffee & Tea, Ocean Reef Club and Hyatt Hotels. Mark graduated from York College of Pennsylvania and has earned a Certified Senior Professional designation through the Society for Human Resources Management. As Chief Human Resources Officer for DGO, Mark remains focused on driving human capital strategy in support of our overall business plan and strategic direction.

David Myers

Chief Information Officer

Mr. Myers joined Diversified in August 2018 with over 25+ years of combined experience in operational consulting, retail and financial services. Prior to Diversified, David was the President of Henderson & Myers, LLC, a management and process consulting service firm with clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to million-dollar privately-held firms. He has held multiple upper-management roles within several previously listed companies such as SouthTrust Bank and Saks Incorporated. David graduated from the University of Alabama with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics. He has a proven record of developing and implementing business and operational processes that are supported by the proper technology to improve the overall efficiency and scalability of each company, all while delivering bottom-line results.

Douglas Kris

Vice President of Investor Relations

Mr. Kris joined the Company in July 2022. Doug is a trusted strategic advisor with over 25+ years of capital markets, investor relations, ESG, corporate communications, financial analysis, and industry experience, with a deep knowledge base of operations in the oil & gas sector.  Previously, Doug served as the Head of Investor Relations for Compass Minerals and Vice President of Investor Relations at Montage Resources (f/k/a Eclipse Resources) for over 5 years. Before moving to the corporate side, Doug served as a Managing Director of boutique energy firm KLR Group as well as a Managing Director at BMO Capital Markets where he spent 16+ years.  Mr. Kris has been awarded the prestigious Investor Relations Charter (IRC) designation and graduated from Saint Bonaventure University with B.B.A degree in Finance.

Teresa Odom

Vice President of ESG & Sustainability

Mrs. Odom serves as Diversified Energy’s Vice President of ESG & Sustainability, a role she has held since June 2021. In this role, she is responsible for supporting the development of strategic and value-creating ESG initiatives, communicating those initiatives to the Company’s stakeholders primarily through sustainability reporting, and engaging various ESG rating agencies on whom Diversified’s investors and lenders rely for their capital allocation decisions. Teresa joined Diversified in March 2019 as Vice President of Investor Relations. She began her career at Energen Corporation, where her more than 27-year tenure included a wide array of financial modeling and analyses, including long-term corporate forecasting, gas and oil acquisitions & divestitures, and strategic planning. Collectively, this broad financial and corporate development experience provided a solid foundation for understanding and advocating the natural gas and oil industry and created a natural transition into an Investor Relations role at Energen for stakeholder engagement. Teresa graduated with honors from Auburn University with a Bachelor of Science in Finance and a Master of Business Administration.

Michelle Matthews

Associate General Counsel and Assistant Corporate Secretary

Mrs. Matthews joined Diversified in 2020 and serves as Associate General Counsel and Assistant Corporate Secretary.  Previously, Mrs. Matthews worked at the law firm Baker Botts L.L.P., where she gained extensive experience working with oil and gas companies on mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, capital markets transactions and other corporate matters.  Prior to that, she worked at an international law firm in New York City.  Mrs. Matthews graduated from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business with a B.B.A. focusing on Finance and Corporate Strategy and received a Juris Doctorate from the University of Virginia School of Law. 

Maverick Bentley

Senior Vice President of Southern Operations

Mr. Bentley joined Diversified in July of 2018 through its acquisition of EQT. He has 35 years in gas and oil operations, in both upstream and midstream. He is highly experienced in midstream operations, compression and well productivity. He is also an executive board member of the Kentucky Oil and Gas Association.

Bob Cayton

Senior Vice President of Northern Operations

Bobby Cayton has more than 35 years of experience in gas and oil exploration and production operations. He started his career with Alamco in 1984 as a well tender and worked his way up to Superintendent in 1998. Mr Cayton has broad experience of the gas and oil industry from running swab-rigs, well tending, disposal well operations, sales, consulting, drilling and overseeing production in several states on the East coast. Prior to the Acquisition, he was Vice President of Appalachian Operations for Titan where he oversaw production operations and processing of 8,400 wells across the Appalachian Region. In addition, he is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and several east-coast gas and oil associations.

Paul Espenan

Senior Vice President of Environmental, Health & Safety

With more than 30 years knowledge as an EHS professional and over two decades of exposure in the oil and gas industry, Mr. Espenan brings a wealth of experience to his role with Diversified as Vice President of Environmental, Health and Safety. After starting his career as a legal assistant in Environment and Occupational Law, Paul has since held various EHS positions at Halliburton, Burlington Resources, and LINN Energy and most recently served as President of the EHS Management Consulting firm, Inspiritus Group. Paul’s main passion of getting people home safely has led him to focus on transformational leadership and positively influencing corporate culture across all organizational levels. Paul, a Certified Safety Professional (CSP), received a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Health at Louisiana State University and a Master of Science degree in Environmental Science at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Ron Ridgway

Senior Vice President of Energy Marketing

Mr. Ridgway joined Diversified in March 2021 from Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BHE) and brings with him over 30 years of industry experience in marketing, transportation, NGL activities, operations, rates, and gas accounting. As Senior Vice President of Energy Marketing, Ron presides over the marketing of natural gas and liquids, and commercial midstream across all regions. At BHE, Ron served as the Director of Interstate and NGL Marketing. Prior to BHE, Ron was the Director of East Coast Marketing for Centennial Energy and formerly led DETI’s NGL Marketing function. Originally from West Virginia, Ron holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Fairmont State University. 

John Crain

Vice President of Treasury

Mr. Crain joined the Company in May 2020 from Rosehill Resources, an independent energy company with operations in the Permian Basin, where he was Director of Investor Relations.  Prior to his tenure at Rosehill, John held a variety of finance roles over a ten-year period at Southwestern Energy.  As Vice President of Treasury with DGO, John has direct oversight of the Corporate Finance, Cash Management, and Hedging functions.  John graduated from the University of Arkansas with a Bachelor of Science in Finance and is a Charted Financial Analyst.