BIOS
Education
University of Texas
BA Economics
Accreditations
Energy Risk Professional – Certified by the Global Association of Risk Professionals
randy s. baker
managing director
Randy is Managing Director of Smith Street Advisors. He is a former Senior Manager in the Risk Advisory practice at Ernst & Young specializing in Enterprise Risk Management. Prior to joining Ernst & Young, Randy was co-founder, CFO and CRO of Molecule Software, a venture capital funded start-up Energy Trading & Risk Management (ETRM) system in the cloud, specifically designed to meet the needs of firms that hedge market risk in power, natural gas, natural gas liquids and crude oil markets. Randy has over 15 years of risk advisory experience in the United States, Canada and Europe.
In the area of risk advisory, Randy has led a variety of risk-focused engagements throughout the risk spectrum, including efforts focused to manage enterprise, market, credit and operational risk.
Randy’s focus has been designing and implementing the risk infrastructure required to support the identification, measurement, management and monitoring of risk. Specifically, Randy has advised clients for the development and deployment of operational risk models to allow for the assessment of the effects on risk and return of utilizing various risk mitigants as well as growth strategies to make better decisions for capital allocation, and mitigation of operational risk.
In addition, Randy has managed comprehensive assessments in Enterprise Risk Management for clients, identifying most significant inherent risks, developing risk mitigation activities and determining residual risks to the enterprise, including the design of complete ERM frameworks, governance, processes, people, performance and technology.
Randy has contributed extensive time and energy to writing articles and papers, as well as presenting at numerous conferences and workshops organized by Incisive Media, Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), and the International Energy Credit Association (IECA).
Education
University of Phoenix
BS Management
Academics
Adjunct Professor of Technology, C.T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston
ed bell
Principal
Ed Bell is a Principal with Smith Street Advisors as an integration and management consultant to the energy and utility industries, specializing in risk management and transaction capture and reporting systems.
Ed’s career includes over 25 years of technical, managerial and executive positions in industry and as a consultant to industry. He has worked on risk management technology, strategic review and organizational realignment topics for the oil and gas, merchant energy, utility and IPP sectors within the energy industry. His assignments have spanned the energy value chain including large systems implementations in risk management and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance review and remediation.
Prior to Smith Street Advisors, Ed was the North American energy trading practice lead at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, the successor to E&Y’s energy trading and risk management practice. He has held multiple executive level positions in industry and consulting including divisional CIO for the wholesale trading division of Florida Power & Light Company and was one of the principal developers of the natural gas and wholesale electricity commodity risk management infrastructure at a major industry pioneer.
Ed holds a Bachelor of Science degree in management, serves on the board of the directors of the Global Energy Management Institute at the University of Houston, and is an adjunct professor of technology teaching courses in energy trading technology at the C.T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston.