Laurie Williams remembers being the only woman in the room during one of her first engineering courses at New Mexico State University.
She joined Public Service Company of New Mexico in 1992 and has risen through the ranks to senior vice president of integrated planning and transmission development.
In her more than three decades at PNM, Williams, one of several New Mexico women in high-profile energy jobs, has made it a point to mentor young women. PNM, she said, is home to several young women in leadership roles who are “really top-notch talent.”
“I think representation matters,” she said. “They can see someone that’s doing the career and doing it with kids at home, with a different kind of leadership style. I think it helps people broaden their thinking about what an engineer can look like, and what an engineering leader can look like.”
New Mexico, ranked third in the nation for energy production in 2023, is undoubtedly an energy state. Oil and gas, driven by a boom in the Permian Basin, has dominated the industry, bringing billions of dollars to state coffers.
The landscape is poised for change as New Mexico aims to decrease emissions, the federal government pushes to meet increasing energy demand and new technologies develop.
The people producing power are changing, too.
According to the 2025 U.S. Energy and Employment Report, about one in four energy workers is a woman. The portion of women is slightly higher in renewable sectors, according to the Center for American Progress.
‘Potential for energy policy’
New Mexico has had a state land commissioner since before it was a state. But until 2019, a woman had never held the title.
Stephanie Garcia Richard, who stepped into the role that year, thinks the State Land Office, which manages around 9 million surface acres in the state, is overlooked when it comes to energy potential. During her tenure, she has pushed to increase renewable energy development on state trust lands and created the Office of Renewable Energy within her agency.
“I think people maybe don’t realize the potential for energy policy here at the State Land Office, just because they think, ‘Oh those people just sign leases,’ “ said Garcia Richard, who is in the last year of her second four-year term.
When she came into office, her staff was given the ambitious goal of tripling the amount of renewable energy in the portfolio. Now, the increase is closer to eightfold.
It was an “exciting time” to take on the position, she said, as federal tax credits were boosting the industry, and interest was high in renewable projects on state land.
Garcia Richard, a former state legislator and longtime Northern New Mexico educator who grew up in Silver City, said she brings a different perspective as the first Latina in the position. She feels the office has become more creative during her tenure in how it uses state trust land beyond mineral development and agriculture, with projects like community solar.
“Nobody had really pushed it in the way that we did,” she said.
A ‘champion’ for women
Giorgia Bettin, the geothermal research team manager for Sandia National Laboratories, said she was “pretty naive” about gender disparities when she was studying engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — despite it being a male-dominated environment.
The disparities became more evident when she entered the workforce and became a mother.
“It was a really hard time with two kids under 2, finishing grad school, working for [oil services company] Schlumberger,” Bettin said. “It was not easy.”
When she first started at Sandia, she was the only woman in her department. Now she prides herself on being a “champion” for women coming into the field. Watching them develop has been satisfying.
“It’s been so gratifying for me, that’s been a big part of my goals,” Bettin said.
Mentor paying it forward
New Mexico Oil and Gas Association President and CEO Missi Currier, originally from Carlsbad, knew she would always return to New Mexico. That opportunity arrived when she was offered a position at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
Currier, a graduate of Texas Tech University, would start working in one of Carlsbad’s other major industries in 2023, when she became the first woman in the top job at the oil and gas group — originally called the New Mexico Oil Men’s Protective Association.
At the time, there was also a female chair, Betty Read Young.
“It was pretty unique and really cool to have a woman chair when I came in as the first president and CEO,” Currier said.
Selected as one of the 2026 “Influential Women in Energy” by Oil and Gas Investor magazine and one of Albuquerque Business First’s 2026 female mentors, said she’s benefitted from mentorship and wants to “pay it forward.”
In the 2026 legislative session, Currier said priorities for her organization include increasing the distribution of the oil and gas conservation tax to the oil and gas reclamation fund, which is used to plug and clean up orphaned wells.
She sees a need for the state to diversify its revenues — and keep more of its produced energy in the state, which exports about 11 times more energy than it uses, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
“Oil and gas is very proud to be the number one contributor to the state’s budget,” Currier said. “But we also know that our state does need to diversify away from being such a one-trick pony.”
Developing technologies
Bettin sees an overlap between geothermal energy and the oil and gas industry.
Sandia National Laboratories were involved in the development of polycrystalline diamond compact drill bits, an advancement that shaped the nation’s shale revolution. The research project started in perhaps an unexpected place: the geothermal team.
With advancements in geothermal technologies, New Mexico could be well-positioned to take advantage of the energy source, which Bettin noted has a small footprint and low emissions.
“New Mexico has been on everybody’s radar,” she said.
Bettin herself is a product of the overlap between the oil and gas and geothermal worlds. After graduating with a doctorate in mechanical engineering, she worked for Schlumberger, an oil services company.
When she was hired at Sandia National Laboratories, it was in an oil and gas capacity. She was assigned to projects involving wellbore integrity, working closely with the geothermal research team. About eight years ago, she fully transitioned to geothermal.
The advent of enhanced geothermal systems has also opened new doors for the state.
For traditional geothermal energy production, a few components need to be present: heat, pressure, water and hot rocks with fractures.
“All of the traditional work was based on that principle, in which you have to have all of this on site, and then you can produce,” Bettin said. “That does not happen very often.”
That’s limited geothermal production to a few places like Nevada, California and Iceland, Bettin said, where those elements are plentiful.
Thanks to the shale revolution, however, technologies used to boost oil and gas production can also be used to manufacture some of those components by pumping in water — effectively opening up more sites for geothermal development.
In recent years, New Mexico was found to have a high potential for these enhanced geothermal systems, Bettin said.
Working to strike a balance
The renewable energy industry was still in its infancy when Garcia Richard won a seat in the state House. Nevertheless, there had been a push to transition to more renewables during Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson’s administration, she said, including a road map for renewables developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.
The state also is working toward a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45% from 2005 levels. In December, state environment agencies released a Climate Action Plan to get there.
While the share of renewables is growing in the State Land Office’s portfolio, oil and gas still dominate revenue. In fiscal year 2024, leasing for renewable projects brought in more than $4.5 million; royalties from the oil and gas industry brought in around $2.3 billion.
Finding a replacement for that revenue will be a challenge.
“We haven’t found the thing that will do that,” Garcia Richard said. “We don’t have that. So having more spokes in the diversification wheel is one way to kind of strike that balance.”
The State Land Office acts as a landlord, raising money for its beneficiaries through leasing and other land use programs. But that mandate is balanced with a stewardship requirement.
“The person who has this position, that’s their job, literally every single day, is to try and strike that balance as best as they can,” Garcia Richard said.
Kickstarting geothermal
PNM is working to become carbon free — currently, the utility’s portfolio is about 70% of the way there.
But the remaining 30% is going to be difficult, especially while balancing affordability and reliability, Williams said.
She expects advancements in technologies including long-duration storage for renewable energy, small modular nuclear reactors and advanced geothermal.
Williams would like to see changes on the federal level on policies surrounding transmission lines and a statewide effort to streamline permitting. She pointed to the massive SunZia Wind and Transmission line across New Mexico, which took more than 15 years to come to fruition.
She also would like to see funding for pilot projects for advanced geothermal and other emerging technologies that aren’t currently ready for market.
Bettin agrees additional investment is needed to kickstart geothermal projects.
Once a handful of successful “anchor projects” are established, she believes geothermal production in the state will snowball. But she warns there’s a longer runtime for geothermal than for wind or solar, due to the length of time needed for exploration and high initial costs.
As the state hopes to transition away from fossil fuels, Bettin sees geothermal as a natural fit for oil and gas workforce and equipment. She said there’s been interest from the state Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department.
“We have the interest, we have the resources, we have the workforce,” Bettin said. “It would be an easy win for people to start moving in and investing.”