In Maggi Young’s role, it’s all about teamwork — bringing together company experts to partner for more sustainable outcomes. Whether she’s advising on policy or supporting EXE’s RSG certification process, she’s at her best when she’s collaborating.
What are your key responsibilities related to sustainability?
I’ve been in Regulatory or External Affairs my entire career, and my sustainability-related work has been an extension of those two areas. In my current role, I’m helping to collaborate on our companywide sustainability strategy and guide our external sustainability disclosures and engagement.
What guides our company’s sustainability strategy?
Our sustainability fundamentals are our key tenets. These five overarching commitments drive our decision-making, shape how we operate and reflect our core values in action. We also have performance targets and our sustainability reporting that hold us accountable to these commitments.
A successful strategy finds the balance between company culture, risk reduction, shareholder value and external stakeholder needs. I’ve seen a big shift from sustainability being a side project to one that is ingrained in how we operate.
How does your policy work overlap with your sustainability strategies?
Oil and natural gas is a really interesting and complex case when it comes to the overlap between policy and sustainability strategy. Sustainability strategy helps hedge against future regulations. Our voluntary efforts, such as RSG certification, OGMP 2.0 and reporting against the TCFD framework have helped prepare us for a stricter regulatory environment while also providing a consistent structure for sustainability reporting.
I’ve experienced that strong and transparent ESG performance translates to credibility and leadership when we are engaging in policy work and legislative advocacy. As an example, a well-known environmental organization recently reached out to our team to discuss methane policy. They recognized Expand Energy as a leader on emissions reduction and a company willing to have conversations about how we can collectively support a lower carbon future.
You’re actively engaged with many of our peers and trade associations. What are the benefits of participating in these relationships?
Knowledge sharing and developing industry best practices comes to mind first. I was involved in the development of AXPC’s ESG reporting template a few years ago, which I believe has served as a transparent disclosure tool for our industry.
From a policy perspective, we benefit from leveraging our collective advocacy efforts. Many of us have small (but mighty) policy teams, but together we can amplify our voices to create effective business environments for harnessing domestic energy production.
Which core value resonates with you most and why?
Collaboration is my natural work style and preferred approach to all work-related challenges and decisions. I believe that complex problems require collective solutions — they can’t be solved in silos.
For example, a lot of our regulatory, policy and legislative issues require diverse perspectives to understand them, let alone offer practical solutions. To meaningfully advocate, I naturally have to collaborate with many subject matter experts, relying on their knowledge and expertise to guide my recommendations. The same can be said for my sustainability work.
Bonus Question: You played soccer in college and your three kids all love to be on the soccer field. Any plans for an Expand Energy soccer team?
I’d absolutely be in for an Oklahoma City team. Shout out to Juan Campos for trying to get the Expand Energy team back together — we have a title to reclaim!
