About Our Team

Prior to Nine Point Energy, Mr. Taron worked in various finance roles for Nine Point’s predecessor company, Triangle USA Petroleum Corporation, and Caliber Midstream, Triangle USA’s sister company and largest midstream services provider. Prior to joining Triangle, Mr. Taron worked for Standard Chartered Bank in London and in Houston where he focused on acquisition and divestiture advisory for upstream oil and gas companies in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Mr. Taron began his career at Seven Hills Partners, a boutique investment bank in San Francisco focused on growth stage technology companies. Mr. Taron earned his BA in International Relations from Stanford University in 2006 and MBA from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business in 2014. He is a CFA charterholder. 

Daniel Lockley currently serves as the Subsurface Manager at Nine Point Energy.  Previously, Mr. Lockley served as Reservoir Manager since January 2016 for Nine Point’s predecessor company, Triangle USA Petroleum.  Since joining Triangle USA Petroleum in February of 2014, Mr. Lockley has served in a variety of roles including Production Engineer, Reservoir Engineer, and Reservoir Manager.  Prior to joining Triangle USA Petroleum, he worked for Forest Oil Corporation as an Asset/Team Lead and Production/Completions Engineer.  Mr. Lockley earned a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines.

Patrick J. Bartels Jr. is the Managing Member of Redan Advisors LLC, a firm that provides fiduciary services, including board of director representation and strategic planning advisory services for domestic and international public and private business entities. Prior to founding Redan Advisors LLC, Mr. Bartels was a senior investment professional with 20 years of experience. His professional experience includes investing in complex financial restructurings and process-intensive situations in North America, Asia and Europe in a broad universe of industries. Mr. Bartels has served as a director on numerous public and private boards of directors with an extensive track-record of driving value-added returns for all stakeholders through governance, incentive alignment, capital markets transactions, and mergers and acquisitions.

From 2002 to December 2018, Mr. Bartels served as a Managing Principal at Monarch Alternative Capital LP, a private investment firm that focused primarily on event-driven credit opportunities. Prior to Monarch, he served as Research Analyst for high yield investments at INVESCO, where he analyzed primary and secondary debt offerings of companies in various industries. Mr. Bartels began his career at Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP, where he was a Certified Public Accountant. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.

Mr. Bartels received a Bachelor of Science in Accounting with a concentration in Finance from Bucknell University.

Prior to Nine Point Energy, Dominic Spencer served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Nine Point’s predecessor company, Triangle USA Petroleum Corporation. Prior to becoming Triangle USA’s President and COO in 2015, Mr. Spencer served as its Executive Vice President of Operations from 2014-2015 and in various drilling and operational roles since joining the Company in July 2011. Mr. Spencer’s efforts and expertise significantly aided Triangle USA’s successful transition from a non-op business to a full-scale Williston Basin operator. Before joining Triangle USA, he worked for eight years with Bill Barrett Corporation as Operations Manager and in various other roles on numerous assets. Mr. Spencer graduated from Colorado School of Mines in 2003 with a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering.

Frederic F. (Jake) Brace has over 30 years of experience in strategy, finance, restructuring and transformation for numerous industries including airlines, health care, retail, E&P, electrical production, hospitality and real estate. He is currently the Chairman and CEO of Sangfroid Advisors. He was formerly the President and CEO of Laser Spine Institute and, before that, Midstates Petroleum, a Tulsa-based E&P company. Previous to those positions, he was the President of Niko Resources, a Canadian E&P company. He also led the restructuring and recapitalization of The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co. (A&P grocery stores) as the firm’s Chief Administrative Officer. Mr. Brace is the retired Chief Financial Officer of UAL Corporation, where he led the company’s Chapter 11 restructuring and recapitalization process, as well the general strategic planning process including the evaluation, design and separation of the Mileage Plus program. Mr. Brace currently sits on the boards Red Lion Hotels, Niko Resources and a private company. He was previously on the boards various public and private companies including Anixter International, iHeart Media, Sequa, Standard Register, Edison Mission Energy, Bally Total Fitness, Neff Rental, Sirva, Galileo International and Bearing Point among others. Mr. Brace holds a M.B.A. from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Michigan. 

Gary D. Begeman has over 30 years of experience managing the legal support for a broad range of strategic, financing and commercial transactions for public and private companies. He has served as an independent director on boards of directors of private and publicly held companies including Intelsat Jackson Holdings S.A., a subsidiary of Intelsat SA (since March 2020), Ascena Retail Group, Inc. (since September 2019) and SolAeroTechnologies Corp. (since November 2018). He is also the Chair and a director of the University of South Dakota Foundation.  

He was previously Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of NII Holdings, Inc., a publicly-traded wireless telecommunications company operating in Latin America, from November 2006 to October 2015. Prior to this, Mr. Begeman served as the Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Sprint Corporation and Nextel Communications. Mr. Begeman began his career in private practice at Jones Day, focusing on capital formation and mergers and acquisitions. 

 Mr. Begeman holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in music education from the University of South Dakota and a Juris Doctor degree from The Ohio State University School of Law.

Alan Dawes has over 35 years of experience in strategic development and implementation, operations, finance, and turnaround roles in a range of capital-intensive businesses at automotive, industrial, and medical companies. He has served on the boards of a variety of public and private companies including AutoNation, Hilite International, Electrical Components International, Insight Imaging, BHM Technologies, and Diagnostic Imaging Services.

He was named GM Vice President at age 39 and turned around the $4 billion Delco Chassis Division before being named CFO of Delphi Corporation and playing a critical role in the company’s spin off from GM. He later was named Vice Chairman and managed the successful resolution of a dozen troubled operations at Delphi.

Alan graduated from Harvard College and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.