World-Class Management Team
Venture Global has assembled a best-in-class management team committed to delivering safe, reliable, and low-cost LNG exports. From senior management to engineering, regulatory, legal, finance and environmental, Venture Global has market-leading expertise in every aspect of the business.

Robert Pender
Executive Co-Chairman and Founder

Robert Pender
Executive Co-Chairman and Founder
Robert (Bob) Pender is Executive Co-Chairman and founder of Venture Global LNG, where he previously he served as Co-CEO. Prior to founding the company, Bob was a partner at a global law firm, where he was the Chair and Practice Group Director of its Project & International Finance Group for a decade. Bob led large-scale energy infrastructure transactions throughout North America, Central and South America, and South Asia, including representations of nation states, lenders, equity investors and developers. He worked on over $35 billion of energy projects during the formative years of the US sustainable energy transition, including biomass, wind, hydro, geothermal, LNG, nuclear, transmission, and carbon capture projects.
Bob provided pro bono support to, among others, the American Red Cross for tsunami relief in South Asia; Accion for micro-finance capital projects in Africa; and the Republic of Haiti, beginning with legal support to the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, then serving as a counselor to the Minister Delegate for Energy Security, Republic of Haiti.
Prior to law school, Bob worked as a staff assistant on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics and then on the White House Staff. During law school, at Georgetown, he continued on the White House Staff as a law clerk in the Office of Counsel to the President.

Michael Sabel
CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder

Michael Sabel
CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder
Michael Sabel is the CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and founder of Venture Global LNG. He has served as one of the Managing Partners of Venture Global Partners, LLC since 2010.
Prior to the founding of the company, Mike spent decades working in the energy, technology and financial service sectors in senior leadership, new company formation, technology licensing and corporate business development and capital market transactions.
Leadership Team

Keith Larson
General Counsel

Keith Larson
General Counsel
Keith Larson serves as General Counsel. Prior to joining Venture Global LNG, Keith was a partner at Hogan Lovells, a global law firm, heading its infrastructure, energy, resources and projects practice for the Americas. His previous experience also includes serving as Senior Legal Counsel for Royal Dutch Shell plc at its headquarters in The Hague. Keith has over twenty years of experience advising major energy companies on LNG matters and strategic transactions in the oil and gas sector. He has been frequently recognized as a leading lawyer by Chambers Global, The Legal 500, IFLR and Law360. Keith received his B.A. from Lafayette College and his J.D. with honors from Syracuse University.

Tom Earl
Chief Commercial Officer, VG LNG Marketing, LLC

Tom Earl
Chief Commercial Officer, VG LNG Marketing, LLC
Tom Earl is the Chief Commercial Officer of VG LNG Marketing, LLC. Tom previously served as Vice President at the international oil company Total, focusing on the development of its global LNG business.
After graduating from City University in London with a degree in Engineering, Tom joined Total’s newly formed gas marketing and trading team in 1998. After various responsibilities within the trading division of the newly combined Total, Elf and Petrofina operations, he managed the natural gas option desk and gas trading desk. Tom successfully led significant commercial negotiations on long-term gas and LNG contracts in countries such as Russia, Norway and Qatar.
In 2006, Tom was appointed Head of Electricity Trading at Total where he led a significant expansion into newly opened power markets across Europe. In 2011, Tom moved to Houston, where he was appointed as head of Total’s North America commodity trading business, including its LNG, gas, power, coal, petcoke and LPG operations. Tom also represented Total in its US LNG liquefaction transactions from 2012 to 2015.
In 2015, Tom was appointed Vice President of Development for Total’s global LNG activities. Tom led Total’s most recent and highly regarded global expansion into new LNG markets. This work has included innovative new LNG terminal projects and new downstream asset transactions across the world.

Jack Thayer
Chief Financial Officer

Jack Thayer
Chief Financial Officer
Jack Thayer serves as the company’s Chief Financial Officer. Jack has over twenty-five years of finance, strategy and mergers & acquisition leadership experience including serving as Chief Financial Officer at two Fortune 500 energy companies. Prior to joining Venture Global, he served as Chief Financial Officer of Exelon Corporation, a leading utility, power marketing and generation holding company, and Chief Financial Officer of Constellation Energy Group, Inc., a large, integrated energy company, with power generation, gas and electric distribution utilities and energy marketing and risk management services. He has also held roles in investment banking, first with SBC Warburg Dillon Read, and subsequently with Deutsche Bank Securities. Most recently, Jack served as Vice Chairman, Corporate Operations and Chief Financial Officer of Woodward, Inc. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, Cum Laude from Middlebury College and holds a Master of Business Administration from Harvard University.

Brian Cothran
Chief Operating Officer

Brian Cothran
Chief Operating Officer
Brian Cothran serves as the company’s Chief Operating Officer. Brian has over two decades of operational and strategic experience in the Oil & Gas and Power Generation industries. Prior to joining Venture Global, Brian served more than 20 years with General Electric and Baker Hughes, after its merger with GE Oil & Gas. During that time, he held a number of executive and general management roles both in the United States and abroad, which included leading GE’s Energy Services business in Eastern Europe and Russia, Vice President of Global Sales for Baker Hughes and President of GE Oil & Gas North America. Most recently, Brian served as Chief Executive Officer of The Flexitallic Group, a global market leader in the manufacture and supply of static sealing solutions.

Sarah Blake
Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer

Sarah Blake
Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer
Sarah Blake serves as Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer. Ms. Blake was most recently the Vice President, Controller and Chief Accounting Officer at AES Corporation, a leading multi-national energy company. Since November 2017, Ms. Blake managed the global Controllership organization of AES, a team of approximately 350. In her more than 13 years at AES, Ms. Blake previously served as Vice President – Internal Audit and Advisory Services and Managing Director – Technical Accounting, as well as holding various roles in Financial Reporting. Prior to joining AES, Ms. Blake held roles in Financial Reporting and Analysis with Gannett Co. Inc. and in Public Accounting with PwC. Ms. Blake has a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the University of Virginia and is a Certified Public Accountant.

Mark Dodge
Senior Vice President, Project Director

Mark Dodge
Senior Vice President, Project Director
Mark Dodge serves as the company’s Senior Vice President – Project Director. Mark has over 16 years’ experience in EPC construction and industrial manufacturing, predominantly with Zachry Group. Mark has an extensive background in planning, scheduling, and executing large scale EPC projects from concept through completion, including combined cycle gas power plants and large-scale process and LNG projects.
Most recently, Mark served as an EPC Project Executive for the Freeport LNG project. Mark has also served in the US Army Honor Guard conducting and leading-high profile missions throughout our nation’s capital. Mark earned a BS in Ag Business from Texas A&M University while playing football for the Aggies.

Ngoni Murandu
Chief Information Officer

Ngoni Murandu
Chief Information Officer
Ngoni Murandu serves as Venture Global’s Chief Information Officer. Ngoni has over 20 years of experience leading and directing information technology, most of which has been focused in the energy industry. Ngoni began his career at PWC before moving onto the information technology practice at IBM. Prior positions he has held include: Vice President and CIO at Southwest Gas, Vice President and CIO at NW Natural Gas; and Senior Vice President and CIO at NDC. Ngoni also served as the President of Oregon InfraGard and CyberSmart NV, non-profit organizations focused on cybersecurity, and on the American Gas Association Cybersecurity Taskforce.
In his role at Venture Global, Ngoni is focused on stewarding the Company’s technology roadmap in addition to overseeing the acquisition and development of information technology systems to support plant maintenance and corporate business solutions.
Ngoni graduated with a Master of Arts degree in Technology Education from West Virginia University.

Fory Musser
Senior Vice President, Development

Fory Musser
Senior Vice President, Development
Fory Musser serves as the company’s Senior Vice President of Development. He has more than 15 years of experience in a variety of financial, strategic planning and business development roles.
Before joining Venture Global LNG, Inc. in September 2014, Fory was the Vice President, Corporate Development for Tervita Corporation, a privately held, leading provider of environmental services to the oil and gas industry in North America. Fory served at Tervita for 4 years and his primary responsibilities included strategic planning, executing corporate acquisitions and divestitures and special projects. Before joining Tervita, Fory served as the Vice President, Strategy for Covanta Energy, one of the world’s largest owners and operators of energy-from-waste facilities and other renewable energy infrastructure.
Fory’s primary responsibilities at Covanta included strategic planning, executing corporate acquisitions, and developing new lines of business that complemented existing operations. Fory was with Covanta for 3 years. Fory also worked at The AES Corporation, a global independent power company, for 5 years in a variety of roles, principally focused on project financing, business development, and subsidiary debt restructuring. Before AES, Fory was a banker in the private placement group at Deutsche Bank Alex Brown for 3 years.

Tom Newton
Senior Vice President, Engineering

Tom Newton
Senior Vice President, Engineering
Tom serves as the company’s Senior Vice President of Engineering. Tom has 33 years experience in the development, construction, and operations of power plants in over 30 countries.
He has demonstrated success in turn-around and asset optimization situations as an executive with the AES Corporation, where he was responsible for performance improvement of over 120 plants worldwide. Tom also set up and managed construction management teams for $7 billion of capital projects in the Middle East. He is also an engineer and former plant manager with Southern Company. He earned a MBA from University of Notre Dame (2000) and a BSE in mechanical engineering from University of Alabama at Birmingham (1982). Tom is a registered P.E. in the state of Alabama.

Michael Perkins
Senior Vice President, Project Director for Plaquemines

Michael Perkins
Senior Vice President, Project Director for Plaquemines
Michael Perkins serves as the company’s Senior Vice President – Project Director for Plaquemines LNG. Michael has over 25 years’ experience in EPC industrial engineering and construction, predominantly with the Zachry Group. Michael has significant experience in project execution, planning, controls, procurement, engineering and commissioning of large complex EPC projects throughout the United States including combined cycle gas power plants, chemicals and energy projects and LNG projects.
Most recently, Michael was the Vice President of EPC Execution for Zachry’s Construction Group overseeing execution of a portfolio of EPC projects. Michael has a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Jim Strohman
Senior Vice President, Project Director for Calcasieu Pass

Jim Strohman
Senior Vice President, Project Director for Calcasieu Pass
Jim Strohman serves as the company’s Senior Vice President – Project Director for Calcasieu Pass. Jim has over 25 years’ experience in the energy and transportation industries and recently directed and delivered Dominion Energy’s Cove Point 5.25 mtpa liquefaction project, on time and budget, with a OSHA recordable incident rate of less than 0.45. To date, Cove Point is the largest construction project for Dominion Energy and also the State of Maryland, with a budget exceeding $4 billion and the involvement of over 10,000 craft workers and 20 million total work hours.
Jim has held leadership positions in engineering, utility operations, gas infrastructure project teams and LNG vessel operations. As a retired Commander of the US Navy Reserve, Jim held leadership positions in ship and security operations, shipyard operations and directed major command business process inspections.
Jim earned a BS in engineering from the United States Merchant Marine Academy and a MBA from the College of William & Mary.

Leah Woodward
Treasurer and Managing Director - Investor Relations

Leah Woodward
Treasurer and Managing Director - Investor Relations
Leah Woodward serves as the company’s Treasurer and Managing Director – Investor Relations and focuses particularly on the company’s capital markets activities. Leah has over 16 years of experience across the capital structure and has worked with Venture Global’s founders since 2014 to raise more than $32 billion of outside capital for the business. She was part of the team that led the company’s inaugural project financing for Calcasieu Pass LNG, which was the largest project financing in the world in 2019, and recently led another record-breaking $13.2 billion project financing for Plaquemines LNG.
Prior to joining the company in 2017, Leah was a Managing Director and Head of Institutional Sales at Height Capital Markets, a Washington, D.C.-based broker-dealer and investment bank, and in that capacity worked on Venture Global LNG’s first five capital raises. Previously, Leah was an institutional salesperson in the Interest Rate Group at BNP Paribas, one of the world’s largest banks. Leah holds a B.A. in Economics with Honors from the University of Virginia and earned her Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charter in 2010.
Board of Directors

Robert Pender
Executive Co-Chairman and Founder

Robert Pender
Executive Co-Chairman and Founder
Robert (Bob) Pender is Executive Co-Chairman and founder of Venture Global LNG, where he previously he served as Co-CEO. Prior to founding the company, Bob was a partner at a global law firm, where he was the Chair and Practice Group Director of its Project & International Finance Group for a decade. Bob led large-scale energy infrastructure transactions throughout North America, Central and South America, and South Asia, including representations of nation states, lenders, equity investors and developers. He worked on over $35 billion of energy projects during the formative years of the US sustainable energy transition, including biomass, wind, hydro, geothermal, LNG, nuclear, transmission, and carbon capture projects.
Bob provided pro bono support to, among others, the American Red Cross for tsunami relief in South Asia; Accion for micro-finance capital projects in Africa; and the Republic of Haiti, beginning with legal support to the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, then serving as a counselor to the Minister Delegate for Energy Security, Republic of Haiti.
Prior to law school, Bob worked as a staff assistant on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics and then on the White House Staff. During law school, at Georgetown, he continued on the White House Staff as a law clerk in the Office of Counsel to the President.

Michael Sabel
CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder

Michael Sabel
CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and Founder
Michael Sabel is the CEO, Executive Co-Chairman and founder of Venture Global LNG. He has served as one of the Managing Partners of Venture Global Partners, LLC since 2010.
Prior to the founding of the company, Mike spent decades working in the energy, technology and financial service sectors in senior leadership, new company formation, technology licensing and corporate business development and capital market transactions.

Andrew Orekar
Board Member

Andrew Orekar
Board Member
Andrew (Andy) Orekar is the former Chief Executive Officer of GasLog Partners LP, an international owner of LNG carriers. As CEO, Andy led the company’s IPO in 2014 and oversaw its growth from three to fifteen vessels through 2020. Under Andy’s leadership, GasLog Partners published its inaugural sustainability report, demonstrating how the company embedded ESG practices into its culture and processes for the transportation of LNG, a cleaner alternative energy source to coal and other hydrocarbons.
Prior to joining GasLog Partners, Andy served as Managing Director at Goldman, Sachs & Co., where he advised natural resources companies on mergers and acquisitions and capital markets transactions. He joined Goldman Sachs in 1998 and held several leadership positions in the investment banking division.
Andy served on the Board of Directors of Tortoise Acquisition Corp., which was formed to acquire a business targeting the energy transition, including clean energy generation and storage, alternative fuels and transportation.
Andy received Bachelor of Science (Wharton School) and Bachelor of Arts degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.

Jimmy Staton
Board Member

Jimmy Staton
Board Member
Jimmy Staton serves on the company’s Board of Directors. Jimmy is a highly accomplished business executive with a proven track record of creating and enabling growth strategies and consistent execution.
Jimmy has broad based energy experience having been Chief Executive of one of the largest gas distribution systems in the United States, a Midwest electric and gas utility and a major interstate gas pipeline and midstream business. Jimmy previously served as Executive Vice President and Group CEO for NiSource, Inc. While at NiSource, Jimmy was responsible for developing and executing strategies resulting in a portfolio of $25 billion of long-term investment opportunities. In addition, Jimmy developed industry leading marketing and regulatory initiatives. Prior to his tenure at NiSource, Jimmy held several senior executive level positions at Dominion Resources, Inc. where he helped create one of the lowest cost operations in the industry. Jimmy has also been active in industry organizations having served on the Board of Directors for the Edison Electric Institute, the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, the American Gas Association, the American Gas Foundation and the Southern Gas Association.

Thomas J. Reid
Board Member

Thomas J. Reid
Board Member
Tom Reid is chief legal officer and secretary of Comcast Corporation. He oversees Comcast’s legal, corporate governance and strategic intellectual property functions and the company’s government and regulatory affairs and political affairs functions. Mr. Reid joined Comcast in 2019 after a successful career at Davis Polk. He began his career there in 1987 and served as chairman and managing partner of the firm from 2011 until his transition to Comcast. Mr. Reid also served as a Managing Director in the Investment Banking division of Morgan Stanley from 2000-2003. Mr. Reid’s private legal practice and banking career were heavily focused on the global energy and utilities sector, advising on privatizations, mergers and acquisitions, financings and board investigations for leading international oil and gas companies and national oil companies. Mr. Reid serves as the secretary of the board of trustees of The Morgan Library & Museum and as a trustee of the National Urban League. In 2018, the Pro Bono Partnership honored him with the “Champion Award” in recognition of his deep commitment to pro bono work, and in 2021 he received the St. Thomas More award from the Archdiocese of New York’s Inner-City Scholarship Fund. He graduated from Edinburgh University with first class honors in law and earned an LL.M. from Columbia Law School.

Sari Granat
Board Member

Sari Granat
Board Member
Ms. Granat is president and chief operating officer of Chainalysis, the blockchain data platform, where she manages the company’s general and administrative functions, including finance, human resources, legal, information security and information technology, and works across the firm on strategies to advance the company’s mission of bringing trust and transparency to the global cryptocurrency community. From 2012 to 2022, Granat was with IHS Markit, a formerly NYSE-listed $45+ billion data, analytics and technology company prior to its merger with S&P Global in February 2022, where she most recently served as executive vice president, chief administrative officer and general counsel, leading information security, information technology, legal, risk management, privacy and compliance functions. From 2010 to 2012, Granat was chief administrative officer and head of business development at TheMarkets.com LLC, a financial technology and data provider. Prior to that role, she has served in a variety of legal and strategy positions with Dow Jones & Company, Kaplan, Inc., Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, and Kenyon & Kenyon. Granat currently serves on the board of ComplySci, a provider of regulatory technology solutions for the financial services sector, Assurant, Inc., a global provider of risk management products and services, and Opening Act, a nonprofit that advances arts equity by providing free theater programs to New York City’s highest need public schools. She has also served on the CxO Advisory Council for VMware and on the General Counsel Steering Committee for the National Association of Corporate Directors.