ASME PD L.E.A.D. Program
September 2023 - April 2024
I found out about this life changing program through a Youtube video that has <6,000 views. My first impression of it was, holy shit my favorite mechanics of materials teacher on Youtube (Jeff Hanson) is running a scam business?!? But I looked a little further into this “ASME PD LEAD Program” that Jeff was talking about and it was actually pretty legit. I thought about it the next couple of days and decided to apply.
I got back an email a couple months later and I was accepted!
The program I just got accepted into is a low pressure 8-month program with 2 face-to-face meetings and it's sponsored by the Petroleum Divison of ASME. The aim is to expose college engineering students to the Oil & Gas industry. The first face-to-face of the program was in Houston, Texas in October and the second was in Denver, Colorado in April. In between these two in-person events, the students in the program take part in various virtual calls/sessions where we would work as a team on our final project presentation to take place in April. I'll go into more depth about the final presentation a little later.
October Trip (Houston, Texas)
I was super stoked after receiving the itinerary for the October trip since it was comprised of 4 entirely packed out days. This was the first time traveling by myself on a plane so I was also really excited about that.
Day 1 (Arrival and Team Building)
I arrived in Houston in the early afternoon and went straight to the hotel from there. I did a little research on the hotel before getting their and even with the research it was still incredibly shocking how nice it was. I had my own room too!
After getting settled in the hotel, we wasted no time and headed straight over to the putt-putt golf center. This is where I met all of the other students for the first time. We played putt-putt, had tons of food, and watched some sports. It was really a great ice breaker for a bunch of introverted engineers to get to know each other.
Day 2 (Program and Tour)
I think ASME bought some type of corporate business trip package from the hotel since we had a private buffet of food at all times when we were there. It felt great waking up to delicious well made food. After eating breakfast, we headed over to Emerson (a large energy company with a visitable campus near Houston) for a speaker session and exposure to the world of O&G.
We returned back to the hotel and did this cool team based challenge. The challenge was to transport water across a miniature city. The miniature city had a couple regulations such as build limits and geography constraints that made the transportation of the water difficult. We had to “purchase” PVC piping for the water transport. The aim of this challenge was to transport as much water as possible, with as little PVC as possible. Having a professional photographer follow us around the entire day was great. So much PR content lol. We ended that day at a really nice restaurant.
Day 3 (Workshops and Networking)
We started the day off with a panel discussion from young industry professionals who spoke about their experiences working in the Oil & Gas industry. I got a little name tag at the table it was so cool. We had a resume workshop where Jeff Hanson gave our resume’s review. He told me “You have the best resume I’ve ever seen” I was literally so happy.
We finished the day off at a delicious Mexican restaurant where I got the chance to meet Tom Costabile. Tom is the CEO of ASME, so it was a real treat to have him join us for dinner. He’s such an accomplished and kind person, we sat next to each other and spoke about entrepreneurship and running startups. He’s a fellow New Yorker, so we got along pretty well.
Day 4 (Departure)
Wow, what a great trip. The last travel day was still sponsored by ASME so I balled out some airport food. 🌯 🍔 🍱 🍪
In between the two face-to-face meetings my team and I worked on a final presentation in which we would present a decarbonization feasibility study for upstream drilling operation and well completions. For those not familiar with the Oil & Gas industry, it’s essentially all of the work that happens before you see the pump jack go into the ground.
April Trip (Denver, Colorado)
April had arrived faster than you would have expected. It was time to travel to the Mile High City! And yes, you do get a headache the first day because of the higher altitude and lower air pressure. Denver is 5,280 ft above sea level and has around 82% of the air density of sea level.
Day 1 (Arrival and Team Bowling)
9 out of 10 for Denver’s new airport. Really nice and modern. Only reason it doesn’t get a 10/10 was because the Chipotle was closed :(. The city of Denver is super modern and clean. But it felt similar to Houston in that it was kind of empty. I’m a New Yorker so there is a bit of a bias when judging the “busyness” of a city, but it felt like how the Matrix movies portray The Mega City. Denver is so weirdly empty, it felt a bit ominous actually.
Our first activity after checking into the hotel was bowling! I was just warming up the first game (obviously), but the second game I popped off (obviously). Strike, Strike, Split, another Strike, “where did Alek learn to bowl like that?” somebody asked. Unfortunately, we had to go mid way through the bowling game. Below is the scorecard, and the primary reason I wrote this article in the first place.
Day 2 (Tour and Professional Development)
We woke up at the crack of dawn for this plant tour. The 4 AM alarm was a little easier since I've been messing around with time traveling on the side. The tour was awesome, we got a full run down of how a mid-stream gas processing plant operates, toured the site which was massive and we took some bad ass pictures with the backdrop of the plant. We had the same photographer from October follow us around and the pictures came out sick! Shoutout Michael, our photographer.
We ended the day with an amazing dinner at The Range. Again everything was payed for by ASME!
Day 3 (Meetings and Presentations)
It’s presentations day! All of the students were trying their hardest not to look nervous. Myself included. A small bit of advice, being nervous is all psychological rather than physiological. Meaning, it’s all in your head, so just say to yourself “I’m just super excited for today, that’s why I’m feeling nervous.” Channel the fight or flight energy to boost your performance.
We also had a panel of C levels in O&G give us career advice and a leadership speaker named Ron Duran gave us a great presentation on forging our leadership potentials.
We ended the day with the three student teams giving their respective presentations on decarbonizing the O&G industry. My team was filled with a bunch of studs. Shout out to Azeez, Albert, Joseph, and Logan for being the best team I could have asked for.
The last dinner of the entire program... What an absolute treat this program was, and how incredibly talented each student, mentor, and sponsor in this organization is.
After the dinner we were free to do whatever we wanted. A group of us went to a country bar. Wow... I gotta admit I fell in love with country bars while in Denver.
Day 4 (Check-Out and Departure)
After saying my goodbyes to all of the friends and mentors I made from this trip, it was time to head back to New York.
Thank You ASME!!!
Now I want to reiterate the fact that ASME paid for ALL of my expensive. My flight. The food. My uber. The other food. MY HOTEL! MY 5 STAR HOTEL! Restaurant fine dining! A bunch of swag. And most importantly industry exposure, connections, and advice I received.
ASME genuinely just wants to help as many talented and motivated engineers that they can. I’m so happy that I found this program (or maybe this program found me?), I would highly recommend anyone that is in college and majoring in engineering to apply to this program.
Here’s the latest Jeff Hanson ASME LEAD advertisement video. Applications for 2024-2025 are now open! Apply now!! Go do it!!!