The Growth Fund Management Committee manages existing investments and reviews and presents new investments to Southern Ute Tribal Council. They ensure that the investment portfolio meets diversity, risk, and liquidity requirements. The Management Committee also reviews and reports Growth Fund performance to Tribal Council periodically.
Shane Seibel
Growth Fund Executive Director
Shane Seibel is the Executive Director of the Southern Ute Growth Fund, the business arm of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe located in Ignacio Colorado. Shane oversees on and off-reservation investments including real estate, private equity, energy exploration, production, and midstream companies. These business units have a combined market value in excess of $3.3 billion.
Shane also serves as Chairman of the Growth Fund Management Committee which advises Tribal Council on all its enterprise business investments.
Previously Shane was President of ONE Enterprises LLC which he owned and operated. Before working for himself, Shane worked for the Growth Fund in numerous leadership positions, completing many projects on and off the reservation, including restoration of plugged and abandoned well sites, residential development projects and stream restoration. Shane has also coached local high school teams.
Shane earned a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration/Management from Fort Lewis College and is currently completing a Master’s of Science in Leadership and Organizations with a minor in Strategic Innovation and Change from the University of Denver.
Shane is a Southern Ute Tribal Member and resides in Ignacio, CO with his wife Melanie. Shane and Melanie have six children and 10 grandchildren. He is a lifelong learner, farmer/rancher, coach, Sundancer and entrepreneur.
Darrell Owen
Growth Fund Finance Director
Darrell Owen is the Finance Director of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe Growth Fund. He also serves as a member of the Growth Fund Management Committee and a manager of GFMC, LLC. Mr. Owen was appointed to these positions in March 2015. In addition, he has been appointed to the Permanent Fund Investment Committee.
Mr. Owen is responsible for overseeing the corporate finance and accounting department as well as the private equity business unit. He has worked for the Southern Ute Indian Tribe since 2003 in various finance and accounting positions. Mr. Owen served as the Growth Fund’s Chief Financial Officer during the four years prior to being appointed Finance Director. Before working for the Tribe, Darrell spent over ten years in the energy industry in finance, mergers and acquisitions, and operations and he holds a B.A. in Business Administration from Fort Lewis College.
Kourtney Hadrick
Growth Fund Operating Director
Kourtney Hadrick is responsible for overseeing the Southern Ute Indian Tribe’s business units associated with direct investments in energy and non-energy as well as the departments associated with the Tribe’s Department of Energy. She serves as a member on the Growth Fund Management Committee which advises Tribal Council on all its enterprise business investments including real estate, private equity, energy exploration and production, midstream operations, and energy transition. Previously, Ms. Hadrick was President and Chief Operating Officer of Red Cedar Gathering Company (a midstream oil and gas joint venture between the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and Kinder Morgan LLC “A”) and Aka Energy. She has over 25 years of technical and management experience in industry. Prior to her employment with the Tribe, Ms. Hadrick was employed by BP America Production Company which included engineering, operations, and multiple leadership positions in both upstream and midstream assets located in Colorado, Louisiana, Texas and Wyoming. Ms. Hadrick earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University and a Management Certificate from MIT Sloan Business School.
Peter Shepard
Assistant Operating Director
Peter Shepard is Assistant Operating Director of the Southern Ute Growth Fund, the business arm of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe. In this role he is responsible for the management of GF Properties Group, which owns and manages a diverse commercial and multifamily real estate portfolio, and GF Ventures, which is focused on direct PE investments in middle market operating companies. Previously, Mr. Shepard was COO & CFO of Walker & Dunlop Investment Partners (formerly JCR Capital Investment Corporation), a Denver-based real estate private equity firm. Earlier in his career, he founded and served as Managing Director of Athena Business Solutions, a CFO consultancy, and sister company First Business Partners, an out-sourced back-office administration firm. Previously, Mr. Shepard was President & CEO of CapTerra Financial Group, Inc. a publicly traded real estate finance company, and Executive Director of Constellation Real Texhnologies, a strategic venture capital fund. Peter received an MS from MIT, a JD from Cornell Law School, and a BA from NYU.
Dr. Stacey I. Oberly
Tribal Council Representative
Marvin Pinnecoose
Tribal Council Representative – Alternate
Tom Shipps
Legal Director
Tom Shipps is the senior partner in the Durango, Colorado law firm of Maynes, Bradford, Shipps & Sheftel, LLP, which has served as the general legal counsel for the Southern Ute Indian Tribe for more than forty years. He has served as the legal advisor to the Southern Ute Indian Tribe Growth Fund and as a member of the Growth Fund Management Committee since its inception.
As a young attorney, Mr. Shipps assisted the firm’s founder, the late Frank E. “Sam” Maynes, with a growing practice that included general representation of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, numerous water districts, and the community’s rural electric cooperative. Principal areas of his early practice involved tribal governmental administration and jurisdiction and monitoring tribal oil and gas lease compliance and related litigation.
In the course of his career-long representation of the Tribe, he has been a negotiator of a number of intergovernmental agreements, including: the initial tribal gaming compact with the State of Colorado; congressional confirmation of the boundaries of the Southern Ute Indian Reservation; Memoranda of Understanding on oil and gas regulation among the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission; and the Taxation Compact Between the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, La Plata County and the State of Colorado of 1996. He served as the lead counsel for the Tribe, from the trial court through final arguments before the Supreme Court, in the seminal federal case involving ownership of coal bed methane gas on federal and tribal lands (Amoco Prod. Co. v. Southern Ute Indian Tribe, 526 U.S. 865 (1999)). Successful settlement of that case provided initial capital for the Tribe’s extensive economic diversification through the Growth Fund.
As the legal advisor for the Growth Fund, Mr. Shipps has been the senior legal counsel in thousands of commercial transactions ranging from oil and gas acquisitions and mergers, commercial real estate purchases and development, syndicated financings, and venture capital investment. His recognized advocacy on behalf of tribes led to his appointment by the Secretary of the Interior to the Federal Royalty Management Advisory Committee and to the Royalty Policy Committee under the Clinton Administration and both Bush Administrations. Mr. Shipps has authored a number of professional articles addressing Native American natural resource regulation and development, and he has been a lecturer at programs sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, the American Bar Association, and the Federal Bar Association.
Mr. Shipps received his law degree from the University of Houston (J.D. 1979) and his undergraduate degree from Fort Lewis College (B.A. 1976, summa cum laude). In addition to serving as president of his law school’s academic honor society, while in law school, Mr. Shipps assembled and co-edited a casebook on Native American law, DANIEL L. ROTENBERG & THOMAS H. SHIPPS, THE AMERICAN INDIAN AND THE CONSTITUTION (1978).