Leisa: Hello, I’m Leisa Holland Nelson and welcome to another edition of Women Mean Business, where we’re going to take you up close and personal with extraordinary women doing extraordinary things. My guest today is Jennifer Stewart, the Senior Vice President for Finance for Southwestern Energy. Jennifer, welcome to Women Mean Business.

Jennifer: Thank you Leisa, I’m glad to be here.

Leisa: Southwestern Energy is a really big company, tell us about Southwestern Energy.

Jennifer: We are a company – an oil and gas company – we find, produce and sell natural gas and oil and we also have a midstream company which gathers the gas and transports it. My role here is Senior Vice President for Finance. I’ve been here for 6 years; I’m a tax attorney by training and have kind of worked my way into the finance role.

Leisa: So tell me what the difference between tax and finance is.

Jennifer: Tax is a niche, a technical area I would say; it includes planning, compliance, dealing with our friends at the IRS, where the finance role is more holistic. It’s more a strategic role where you’re looking at financing from the debt markets, the capital markets, planning, budgeting; it’s much broader in scope.

Leisa: Like the 50,000 foot view basically.

Jennifer: Yes but I still have tax.

Leisa: But what’s your favorite thing about what you do?

Jennifer: My favorite thing about what I do is not what I do day to day but it’s what I do with the people here. I really enjoy mentoring and growing and making sure people get promoted, both men and women. I particularly like mentoring the young women here so that maybe it’s a stereotypical answer for a female executive but my biggest accomplishment if I can see the young people work their way through our system and become very successful.

Leisa: Thank you very much for sharing that with us.

Jennifer: You’re welcome.

Leisa: There you have it, another extraordinary woman doing extraordinary things. I’m Leisa Holland Nelson, President and Co-founder of ContentActive, Houston’s leading web and mobile app development company. You can find me at ContactActive.com or follow me on Twitter @LHNelson. We’ll be back again next week with another edition of Women Mean Business.