About

The Company

Oak Leaf Energy Training was incorporated in April 2010, a spin-out of the Training Services Department of the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI). The President of Oak Leaf, Jon Rozhon, was the former head of CERI’s Training Services Department, and he is still employed at CERI as Senior Researcher.

Over its first year and a half as a training company, Oak Leaf has continued to offer the CERI courses but under the Oak Leaf name. The CERI instructors stayed with Oak Leaf, so clients will continue to benefit from their unmatched expertise, both in terms of energy industry knowledge and instructional experience.  We were also fortunate to bring onto the team Dr. Alan Murray, former Head Engineer at the National Energy Board, and a charismatic, experienced instructor. In April 2012 we will welcome GuyLaine Charles, a lawyer with the New York firm of Teigland-Hunt LLP, who will instruct courses on the ISDA and NAESB documentation.

The courses themselves are changing as the energy world continues to evolve. Oak Leaf intends to carry on in the spirit of CERI by offering independent, relevant training courses that are up to date with the latest energy industry trends, statistics, and economic data.

Oak Leaf is also branching out into renewable energy forms and technologies. This is in keeping with the world-wide trend to make energy more economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable. The first of our renewable courses is Wind Energy Fundamentals, which has been offered several times to the public and received strong reviews.

Our Mission

Our mission is to provide at a reasonable price relevant, independent energy industry training to industry, government, and interested members of the general public. We will continue to develop learning materials and courses that are understandable and that can be useful to people in the context of their work. We will strive to present clearly, and without bias, all the sides of the issues that the energy industry faces today and into the future.

Our Team

Jon Rozhon

Jon was born and raised in Alberta, completing a BA in English at the University of Calgary, an MA in English from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, and an MBA from McGill. For 13 years, Jon worked in Japan as an Associate Professor at Gifu Shotoku Gakuen University. In addition to teaching and administrative duties, he was involved in developing curriculum for the university’s Department of Foreign Languages, working in areas as diverse as British History, English Composition, and Sustainable Development.

Jon entered McGill’s MBA program in 2004 and attended courses both in Tokyo and Montreal, graduating in 2006. During the second year of the program, he completed a comprehensive study on Strategies in Sustainable Development at Exxon, Shell, and BP. Wanting to bring his young family home to Canada, Jon accepted an offer to join CERI as a researcher in 2007.

Jon has worn a number of hats at CERI, including Senior Economist and Manager of Training Services. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Geopolitics of Energy.

As Senior Researcher at CERI, Jon is continually keeping up to date on the energy industry, reading and writing about technology and industry issues. Recently, Jon has written for CERI a study on the potential for Natural Gas Vehicle (NGV) infrastructure development in North America (CERI Study 123 – Part IV) and a briefing paper, “Foreign Investment in the Oil Sands & British Columbia Shale Gas” . He is also a co-author of CERI’s recent study, “Economic Impacts of Staged Development of Oil Sands Projects in Alberta (2010-2035)”, which considers the economic ripple effects throughout North America of potential transportation projects such as the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipelines.  At the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC on September 22, Jon delivered a presentation concerning the economic impacts of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.  His review of Jeff Rubin’s Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller appeared in the summer 2011 edition of the journal Energy Bridge.

Please see the CERI website at www.ceri.ca for all of the Institute’s recent studies.

Jon took over the CERI courses in a spin-out that occurred in March 2010. He maintains a close working relationship with the Institute; CERI’s cutting-edge economic research will continue to inform the existing and the new Oak Leaf courses.

Lillian Yuko Ono

Lillian Yuko Ono brings over 20 years of curriculum design and general educational experience to her position at Oak Leaf. Born and raised in Hawaii, university-educated in Japan, and holding an MTESL from Pennsylvania State University, Lillian has a diverse background and a varied career. She began work as a High School teacher in Japan, and then moved on to a lecturing position at Temple University’s Tokyo campus. For the past decade, Lillian worked at Gifu Shotoku Gakuen University, an institution known throughout Japan as a top teacher-training university; there she specialized in training undergraduate education students in teaching English to primary school students. Lillian has published a number of articles on curriculum design and pedagogy.

Though she brings value to Oak Leaf in a number of areas, Lillian is a special asset in the design of new courses and in developing learner-centred activities to invigorate existing courses.

Sam Chan

Sam Chan, recently retired from the Canadian Energy Research Institute, offers to Oak Leaf the experience and knowhow of a person that has spent his entire career in the energy industry. Upon graduation from university with a degree in Economics, Sam took a position at Shell as an Economic Analyst and spent the next 20 years working for Shell in Malaysia and the United Kingdom. In mid-career, Sam decided to emigrate to Canada, and after a year as a business analyst for a credit union, he accepted an offer to work for CERI.

In his 20 years at CERI, Sam held a number of roles – from Research Director to head of Business Development, to Manager of Training Services. On several occasions, Sam taught Energy Economics at the University of Calgary, once earning an award for teaching excellence. He is widely-published, conducting research and writing several highly-regarded reports on natural gas, pipelines, and the oil sands.

Sam designed and delivered a course module on energy geopolitics for a seminar that Oak Leaf ran for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) in Ottawa. Sam will be at the centre of new course development for Oak Leaf.