Patrick Johnson, Partner, White and Case LLP
Patrick Johnson is a partner in White & Case's Global Project Development and Finance Practice and Global Energy Industry Group based in Houston. His practice focuses on advising clients in transactions that involve carbon capture, sequestration, and utilization projects; clean fuels projects; offshore and onshore wind generation facilities; merchant fossil-fuel electric generation facilities; upstream oil and gas projects; pipelines and other midstream facilities; and downstream facilities. He represents energy industry companies, private equity investors, alternative lenders, and financial institutions in transactions that include acquisitions and divestitures of assets and companies, joint venture arrangements, structured finance, project development, and project finance.
From 2015 to 2017, Patrick worked as in-house counsel to ExxonMobil. In that role, he worked on upstream, midstream, and infrastructure projects under development in jurisdictions across the globe, with such projects including ExxonMobil's deepwater oil production project offshore Guyana and deepwater natural gas project in the Black Sea offshore Romania.
Olivia Woodruff, VP for Decarbonization, Kimmeridge
Olivia Woodruff is VP for Decarbonization at Kimmeridge supporting the investment team and facilitating the implementation of carbon solutions across the portfolio. Ms. Woodruff has over 13 years of experience across the energy and environmental sectors in both technical and investment functions. Prior to joining Kimmeridge, Ms. Woodruff served as a geoscientist at Pioneer Natural Resources focused on business development & new ventures, M&A, asset planning, and active operations. In addition, Ms. Woodruff was a physical scientist at the US Geological Survey within a geochemical research team.
Ms. Woodruff holds a BS from University of Colorado in Geology and an MS from University of Kentucky in Geology.
Moderator: Tayler Amatto, Associate Principal, Charles River Associates
Tayler Amatto is an associate principal in Charles River Associates’ Energy Practice located in Calgary, where she advises clients on investment strategy, energy market participation, and long-term planning across North American electricity and fuel markets.
With a background in both consulting and private equity, Ms. Amatto brings over a decade of experience helping utilities, developers, and public sector agencies navigate market reform, deploy capital, and integrate large-scale energy loads. Her work is grounded in techno-economic analysis, resource adequacy planning, and commercial strategy development for emerging energy technologies.
Ms. Amatto has deep expertise in capacity and energy market reform, large-load integration—particularly for data centers and industrial decarbonization—and early-stage project development. She supports clients in market entry strategy, due diligence, and go/no-go investment decision-making for capital-intensive infrastructure, with a strong focus on energy transition and decarbonization investments. Her advisory work spans utilities, oil and gas, pipeline, agriculture, low-carbon fuels, and manufacturing sectors.
Before joining CRA, Ms. Amatto served as Senior Vice President at Azimuth Capital Management, a private equity firm focused on energy transition investments and held consulting roles at PwC Canada. She supported portfolio companies and clients with strategic planning, valuation, commercial structuring, and stakeholder engagement.
In addition to her professional work, Ms. Amatto serves as Vice President and Board Member of the Energy Leadership Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building a community of connected and solutions-oriented leaders for the evolving energy sector.
Ms. Amatto holds a BA in Economics with a concentration in Energy Economics from the University of Calgary.