We're looking ahead to International Women's Day which is Tuesday, March 8 as we discuss the glass cliff, a phenomenon where women often get promoted during times of crisis. That very thing has happened to Chief Operating Officer Andrea Westcott Passman. Passman joins the VOE Podcast to discuss how she's navigated the glass cliff, advice she has for women and we learn about her career in oil and gas. She is currently the COO of Caerus Oil and Gas. 
The VOE Podcast is an extension of Voices of Experience, the signature speaker series at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. Keep tuning in each month for more business insights from Daniels’ alumni voices of experience.
Hello and welcome to the VOE Podcast, an extension of Voices of Experience, the signature speaker series at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business.
I’m your host, Kristal Griffith from the Daniels Office of Communications and Marketing. We’ll be unpacking topics at the intersection of business and the public good with CEOs and other business leaders from the Daniels community.­ Let’s dive in.
Joining me today is Andrea Westcott Passman, Chief Operating Officer of Caerus Oil and Gas. Caerus is a privately held natural gas producer, the largest in the Western U.S. Andrea leads operations, engineering and environmental, health and safety for the organization. She’s been with Caerus for three years and in the oil and gas industry for more than 20 years. She received her bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and is a graduate of the Daniels College of Business, receiving her MBA in 2008. While we’ll talk to Andrea about her industry, we’ve also asked her here as a guest for International Women’s Day, which is coming up March 8. Andrea is an advocate for women in leadership and has some great insight into the glass cliff phenomenon and women needing sponsors, not mentors.
Kristal Griffith:
Andrea. Welcome to the VOE Podcast.
Andrea Westcott Passman:
Thank you for having me.
Kristal Griffith:
You are most welcome. So, before we get to our big topic of the day, I'd like to get people to know you. So, you were raised in a gold mine in Alaska, which sounds super interesting. And now you're a COO. So, talk a little bit about your background. How on earth did you get where you are today? 
Andrea Westcott Passman:
It's because I love dirt. I've spent my entire life in the dirt. And I'll say so I'm a pioneer, not just from the Daniels DU perspective, but my grandparent's homesteaded the land that we lived on up in Alaska. So, I grew up on a gravel pit that ended up providing a lot of the gravel for the Alyeska Pipeline up there.
Kristal Griffith:
Wow.
Andrea Westcott Passman:
And then my dad was a Vietnam vet, and he got transferred into Alaska because he was an Army guy. And then he fell in love with gold mining. So, we had a family mine that was about 100 miles south of the Arctic circle. And this is really the beginning. In Alaska, people just do. There is no women don't do this and men do that because you're just trying to survive and not freeze to death in the dirt. And so, it was actually... I think back to like one of the beginning things that really drove me into operations and really the industrial world was my mom taught me how to drive a loader before I learned how to drive a car.
And it was my mom. My dad could have, but my mom because there was a need. And it was like, "Get your tail up on that loader, we got work to do." And I was like, "I can't reach the brake." But that was really the beginning of it. And so, because my grandparents had pioneering mindset, my mother and father had a pioneering mindset. And the gravel business from my grandparents, the gold mine from my parents, really started all of that. And then I never got the message that women don't do certain things and that women make less money. Nobody ever told me any of this,