Matt Totten

Background

About Matt Totten

I have a diverse career background and professional skillset, including 10 years experience in the oil & gas industry, 7 years in online marketing, 2 years in aviation and 1 year in environmental assessment. After earning a B.S. Geology degree from the University of Oklahoma (OU) in 2007, but before beginning my post-graduate geology studies in 2009, I joined the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme (2007-2009) to develop my cultural exchange, foreign language and teaching skills, working as an English teacher at Katsuyama High School in Osaka, Japan. After earning my M.S. Geology degree from OU in 2011, I joined BP’s Houston, Texas office from 2011-2015, serving as an exploration geologist for BP’s Eastern Gulf of Mexico (GoM) X Team, an operations geologist and well planner for the GoM Thunder Horse New Wells Delivery Team, and as an operations geologist for BP’s Lower 48 Onshore East Texas Team. In these roles, I identified and evaluated GoM deepwater Miocene prospects, led the well planning for a challenging Thunder Horse North well that required an extreme dogleg design, acted as the SPA for the Thunder Horse Integrated Overburden Description (IOD) Project, completed multiple offshore wellsite geology hitches while drilling new Atlantis production wells, and planned/geo-steered several horizontal wells in East Texas. Prior to my full-time position at BP, I also completed multiple O&G geology internships – including two with the Oklahoma Petroleum Information Center (OPIC) in Norman, Oklahoma (2004 & 2005), two with Dominion E&P in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (2006 & 2007), and one with BP’s Western GoM X Team in Houston, Texas (2010). From 2016-2023, I pivoted to a career in online business, working as a fully-remote copywriter, content marketer, and Chief Marketing Officer (starting in 2021) for the Swiss-based software company, ThriveThemes.com. As CMO, I managed a fully remote team of 8 marketers until the company was acquired in 2023. In 2023, I was elected to the Board of Directors for Namibia’s Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association (AOPA Namibia) and have actively served as CEO ever since, winning several key regulatory challenges for Namibia's aviation industry, while also collaborating with Namibia's Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to help Namibia earn a passing ICAO Safety Audit Score in 2024. In 2024, I joined the Windhoek-based Environmental Compliance Consultancy (ECC) as a Geologist, Project Manager and Marketing Consultant to help manage the company's large-scale environmental impact assessment projects throughout Namibia.