Irene Haas, MBA, CFP®, joined Financial & Insurance Consultants in early 2024 after earning her CFP® certification in late 2023.
You can view Irene's LinkedIn Profile by clicking Here.
Education
After graduating from Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, Irene relocated to Houston and attended Rice University and graduated with a BA in Geology and Fine Arts. She continued her Earth Science education and earned an MS from the University of Delaware. Upon graduation, she joined Exxon Corporation, working in the Upstream Department, as an exploration geophysicist, looking for oil in Offshore Gulf of Mexico, Offshore Alaska, Onshore North Africa and Central America.
Looking for a career change, she enrolled in the MBA program at Rice University in 1994. After graduating in 1996, she joined Morgan Stanley’s Energy Equity Research Team here in Houston. She enjoyed a long tenure as an Energy Equity Analyst, working for a handful of Brokerage Firms. She enrolled at Rice University’s Glasscock School of Continuation in 2022 and completed the Certified Financial Planning® Program and earned her CFP® certification in late 2023.
Experience
Irene has been a Teaching Assistant for Rice University’s Certified Financial Planning® Program since early 2024. She spent most of her financial careers working for Brokerage Firms, functioning as an Equity Analyst, doing “bottoms up” research on American and Canadian Exploration and Production Companies. The job entailed quarterly publications on companies under coverage and timely communication with institutional clients.
As an equity analyst, she monitored the E&P Sector as it transitioned from traditional exploration to resource plays, she was early to recognize and published comprehensive theme pieces on Coal-bed methane discoveries, the Eagle Ford Shale Play, the Niobrara Play and Permian Resource Play. She chronicled E&P companies seeking capital market solutions to meet their funding needs and documented M&A activities and C-suite changes. She also assessed capital structures of E&P companies as the industry went into the 2020 downturn.
Hobbies
Irene loves visiting Europe and bringing back new recipes to share with friends and family. With multiple venues for performance art here in Houston, she enjoys attending classical concerts with a preference for Italian Baroque music. She also spends time on the family farm in the Mid-West, managing “home improvement” projects and cooking with farm grown produce.