In celebration of International Day of Women and Girls in Science and International Women’s Day, AAPG and MicroSeismic are showcasing interviews from successful women leaders in geoscience.
Karen Foster is a vice president of geoscience for Shell, working from The Netherlands. She began her career at Shell in 1998, where she worked as a production geoscientist for three years, before accepting a post as a production geoscientist and seismologist at NAM BV Assen. She returned to Shell in 2006 as a senior production geologist and has worked her way through the ranks over the past nearly 19 years.
Foster received her bachelor’s in science from University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Here is what she had to say about her time working in geoscience.
What is the best advice you have received from a mentor?
“Your career is yours to manage. Don’t expect others to do this for you!”
What is your favorite thing about your job?
“I love seeing so many aspects of geoscience being applied across the industry, from frontier exploration, right through to decommissioning and underground storage. Spanning this scale of activities and size means that we need to bring together many specific geoscience skills to gain as many insights into the subsurface as possible. Every project or study is different, and we’re constantly learning and gaining new information through our activities.”
What has you most excited about working in the field of geoscience right now?
“The massive shift in how we are working. Improved data access and availability mean that we are doing fewer of the mundane tasks (data searches, loading core photos, painstaking well-by-well analyses) and using more technology to do an initial analysis before deploying our geoscience knowledge to QC and propose scenarios within the geological context. We’re not there yet in terms of implementing this across the board, but the potential is huge.”
What has been the most memorable project you have worked on and why?
“I’ve worked on so many amazing projects—from doing rapid evaluations in support of acquisitions, to supporting well operations and new field developments. I have loved them all. I would classify myself as a ‘generalist’ in the geoscience realm, and I love having the opportunity to work with many specialists who can then bring their much more detailed insights to the table. Geoscience is so broad, and we need a wide range of these skills to fully evaluate the subsurface. That’s what keeps this interesting for me!”
What advice would you give to a young girl aspiring to become a geoscientist?
“Follow your aspiration and find where your passion is. There is no prescribed path, only the one that you choose for yourself.”