Economist turned energy leader

Tisi Barlock MS ’17, PhD ’19 may not have envisioned her career being largely based around energy supply chains and natural resource policy, but she has spent the last several years working as an expert on the topic and even served as a senior advisor for the United States Department of Energy’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains.

However, Barlock’s journey to get to this point started long before she was presenting data and strategies to White House staff. In fact, before she earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in mineral and energy economics from Mines, she had earned a master’s degree in economics at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and spent seven years as an economist in the country’s Ministry of Treasury. She thought she’d begin a career in macroeconomics, but the treasury had another plan for her.

“When I started my first job, they told me they really needed people in fiscal policy,” Barlock said. “The person in charge of fiscal policy told me, ‘I want when people think about natural gas they think about your name.’ I knew nothing about natural gas, but I did end up becoming an expert.” 

Barlock’s job sent her around the world to resource-rich countries, where she learned how they were managing their natural resources policies. She even represented her country at the United Nations General Assembly. A couple years in, she led a cross-organizational team that created Tanzania’s first Oil and Gas Revenue Management Policy and subsequent law, which passed in 2015. 

“After that, I looked at the huge, complex decisions I was making, and I thought, ‘Wow, I don’t know enough,’” she said. “I looked at the impact the policy was making, and I was very excited. But I needed the confidence that came with in-depth study.” 

This ultimately led her to Mines, and she finished her master’s degree and PhD in four years—remarkably fast. She then scored a coveted post-doctoral position at the National Renewable Energy Lab with respected green energy researcher Jill Engel-Cox, who was instrumental in Barlock being considered for her DOE position just a few years later. 

By the time Barlock joined the DOE, she was an expert on natural resources economics with a policymaking mind, but she didn’t fully know how policy becomes law in the U.S.—she’d only had experience with Tanzanian processes. She had to learn on the job.

“It was intimidating at first, but I worked with a bunch of smart and patient people who walked me through how it works,” she said. “We identified problems, produced analysis and policy suggestions, then hoped someone in Congress would pick it up—a different system to what I was used to. In Tanzania, the technical staff in the executive branch identify the problems, write the policy and a bill to address it and the respective minister takes it to Parliament for review, discussion and voting to into a law.” 

In the two years Barlock worked at the DOE, she led a department-wide effort to create policy on securing the U.S.’s clean-energy supply chain—the first of its kind. She then moved to the DOE’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains as a senior advisor where her thought leadership was instrumental in designing two funded programs: the Heat Pump Defense Production Act and the 48C Advanced Energy Tax Credits program.

Now, Barlock works at Argonne National Laboratory as a supply chain specialist for the nuclear technologies and national security directorate.

“I never thought, in my wildest dreams as a girl living in a small town in Tanzania, that one day I would be talking to anyone in the United States White House,” Barlock said. “Coming to Mines was the first step that made that happen—that put me in this position to make a difference.”