TEAM
People are Priority
We can’t forget that what makes for “crooked” dealings is a simple loss of priorities. When others make a dollar or a deal more important than the human beings involved, it’s no wonder you have these industries full of fly-by-nights. We focus on faces, not dollar signs.
Matthew Montgomery
Managing Director
Oil and Gas industry veteran, husband and father, and avid outdoorsman. Matthew’s a Texan by birth, Louisianian by taste, and a Colorado resident. From a humble family office operator in Dallas that grew into being a large oil company front-man; he’s now an energy investor and entrepreneur, he’s a man who always lives with curiosity, love for his family, and a penchant for fine cooking.
Marshall Porterfield
Business Development Lead
If you had to sum up Marshall in a few words, you could probably fit most of what’s important to him into two buckets, people and land. The son of an architect and a residential real estate agent, he grew up looking at and talking about houses and properties on walks with his parents. His love of the land moved him towards landscape architecture and was pursuing a master’s degree when some good advice prompted a move to the business side of land development.
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While working for his uncle in real estate he was hired to hunt down five acre properties that fit drill site parameters. This was his first step to the oil and gas industry and to becoming a landman, a treasure hunter, as he calls himself.
He loves turning over unlikely stones, hunting through public records, studying geology and topography, and making maps where “X” marks the spot. In Marshall’s methodology, it is actually more of a complex system of color coding that “marks the spot”. Marshall noticed early in his career that Landmen were lazy and usually just went after the easiest deals. He decided that he was just not going to be like that. He was going to work harder, look deeper, and go further to find and close deals. His willingness to go further has taken him to interesting places and meant encounters with all kinds of people. He’s a good storyteller, so you should catch a chat with him someday and hear some of the stories about the people he’s met over the years.
For Marshall, oil and gas deals are not just about turning oil and gas in the ground into dollars in a bank account, they are also about the people. What he understands deeply, which comes from his upbringing, is that land and people are intertwined. Every oil and gas reserve sits under land that people have owned, worked, and lived on, sometimes for generations. Every deal we make is a step into someone’s story. Marshall said it beautifully, “I’ve never made a deal with someone without hearing their story.” Recognizing the real person on the other end of a deal, treating them with integrity, and always speaking truthfully is the relational foundation for everything Marshall does. Throw on top of that a mind like a steel trap and cattle dog’s persistence and tenacity and you have a unique and extremely capable landman.
Outside of work, land and people remain his focus and joy as well. He loves hiking in the mountains with friends and running extreme races through extreme environments such as the Grand Canyon. Vacations with his wife and three girls always mean long happy road trips with maps and license plate state hunting games. Aside from working with us at Maevlo, he is very close to his two brothers, one of whom he also works with, doing similar royalty deal work.
We are blessed to have him on the team and hope you’ll get the chance to get to know him better sometime soon.
Jacob Wilson
Acquisitions Lead
Jacob Wilson brings an outdoorsman’s appreciation for the vastness and beauty of the country to the team. He’s a Texan, born and raised, with a true Texan’s restless spirit. It was his love for the outdoors, and trout fishing in particular, that brought Jacob to Colorado and ultimately to Maevlo.
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Jacob has lived and worked all over Texas. He grew up in Plano, Texas, just outside of Dallas, and went to Baylor for undergrad. After a few years working at a bank in Austin, he knew he wanted more so he went out and got his JD from SMU. More importantly, it was at law school that he met his wife Lauren. With his law degree under his belt, he set out to hang his own shingle as an attorney.
The work he started out doing as an attorney wasn’t enough to satisfy him; defending DUI and assault cases just didn't feel like his calling. It took work as a landman to bring together Jacob’s skillset with his passion for the outdoors. He started driving a few hours a week to West Texas courthouses, running down titles of mineral owners. It’s the challenge of being a landman that appeals to him: he says that combining all the highly fractional ownerships together to equal a whole number (the number one) for a tract of land is like solving a sudoku puzzle. Jacob enjoys being able to use his skills for problem-solving to help people and families make the best use of their land.
Jacob moved to Denver and started working at a larger oil exploration and production firm. He enjoyed the work he was doing there but after a few years, it was time to move on. Once again, he felt that there was more out there for him to find. The company he was working for was focused on shareholders and profits; Jacob wanted more. At Maevlo, he has finally found what he’s looking for, a company that feels like family. He enjoys working at a smaller company that sees its employees and clients as more than just sources of revenue but as partners in the practice of stewardship. Jacob’s spirit is a perfect fit for us at Maevlo, always searching for the better, never satisfied with just good.
Karen Woermann
Administration
Karen Woermann is our Director of Business Solutions: the team’s logistical traffic controller. Her responsibilities range between booking travel, managing calendars, keeping track of payment remittances/checks, organizing our online filing system, supporting our accounting team, and let’s just say, she is Matthew’s easy button. She works behind the scenes to make sure that everyone on the team is able to do what they do best.
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Karen was born in Florida but left for Nashville as soon as she could to be closer to the birthplace of country music. Never one to back away from a challenge, she has helped several businesses in the Nashville area grow from the ground up. Working with Maevlo, she enjoys bringing organization to a company that prefers to run before it can walk. With her entrepreneurial spirit, she is a great problem-solver and strategist and prides herself on being an out-of-the-box thinker.
Karen is no stranger to challenge: she’s a cancer survivor but doesn’t believe in letting adversity keep you down. Surviving cancer created a zest for life; she cherishes every day since she knows that time is a gift. She is married to her husband Greg and they have two mini schnauzers, her babies. Family is incredibly important to her and she enjoys spending as much time with them as she can. Because she and Greg both work remotely, they can often be found making the trek in their RV to be with their family and friends.
Her love for people drives her, both in how she treats others and the work she does. Growing up, she was a caretaker and peacekeeper of all. Taking care of people brings her joy. In her role, Karen lightens the load for others. She takes pleasure in supporting the Maevlo team so that they can give their highest contribution. This is the key that makes her so good at what she does: a love for serving people and helping them accomplish their goals.
Working at Maevlo allows Karen to be part of a values-driven team. Understanding the business side of the story is only one part of the equation. There are so many things that are more important than that: it's the people, it's the land, and it’s their stories. The opportunity to be even a small part of those stories is a gift that she does not take for granted. Karen looks to the words of the inimitable Dolly Parton for wisdom: “Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”
