Dana Meadows has seen enormous advances in artificial lift systems over the past 15 years and says today is more exciting than ever.
“We are the true enabler for the energy industry and that really energizes me,” says Dana Meadows, who joined Baker Hughes in 2010 as a business graduate in the company’s Sales Academy program. Today she’s Global Portfolio Director for Artificial Lift Systems (ALS) Strategy and Technology and make no mistake, she’s talking about ALS as the “true enabler.”
“Operators have large budgets for drilling but by the time they get to production it can sometimes get smaller, and yet that’s the time we’re producing the fluid,” she says. “We’re doing a lot of super-cool things with ALS technology because it’s our job to make sure that we optimize the life of that well and make sure it’s efficient. AI and digital solutions are a big part of it now, but we remain focused on R&D for the hardware, too. We’re manufacturing equipment that can operate downhole in extreme temperatures and alternative deployments – it’s fascinating. We had 11 interns here at Claremore this summer and as I explained to them, we are no longer just delivering equipment, we’re delivering the intelligent solutions that go with the equipment. Pairing those two together makes it very exciting for me.”
Claremore is the home of the Baker Hughes ALS Research and Technology Center in Oklahoma, which was purpose-built and opened in 2014. It’s the global hub for ALS and has team members from all over the world.
“Claremore is a small town, and even though I’ve lived in many big cities with Baker Hughes I’m a smalltown girl, so I love it here,” says Meadows. “Our R&D facility is 82,000 square feet, with seven test wells and we’re very active in the community with around 850 staff here in Claremore, including our cable facility. As well as developing our new technologies here, we bring in customer equipment to do the System Integrity Test (SIT) before they go off to operations.”
For critical wells, the test wells at the facility in Claremore are a vital resource.
“When you have a high-risk critical well, daily rig costs can be up to $1 million, so operators really can’t afford any downtime,” says Meadows. “For those customers PRIMERA is our white-glove ALS service – it’s a program with a whole team of project managers and systems testing in our state-of-the-art Artificial Lift Research and Technology Center to ensure we optimize lift performance and field reliability.”
The Baker Hughes cable plant has also called Claremore home for 42 years, and many employees have been working there for decades.
“Across those years we’ve produced enough ESP (electrical submersible pump) cable to wrap around the world eight and a half times,” says Meadows. “High-quality ESP cable is critical to ALS, and the technology we produce here is shipped to 69 countries. I’m blessed to have a window in my office where I get to see the equipment going out on the trucks.”
Connecting to customers
Dana’s career path has provided a hands-on education across the Baker Hughes Oilfield Services & Equipment portfolio.
That ability to bridge cutting-edge technology and commercial reality is one of the reasons Meadows is such a valued employee and was named on Hart Energy’s 2025 Forty Under 40 list of the industry’s rising stars. “I made it by a few months,” jokes Meadows, who was 39 years old when the list came out and has married and had two daughters during her career at Baker Hughes.
Her start in the Sales Academy gave her exposure to many different divisions within Baker Hughes across six months.
“After I ‘graduated’, I was assigned to Drilling Services in Dallas, where thankfully I had a manager who sent me out into the field,” she recalls. “The next five years launched me into various sales roles in drilling services and that foundation really helped me. I knew how the equipment operated in the field so I could relate well with customers.”
She shifted to ALS to work in operations in late 2014.
“I’ve been lucky to learn from many exceptional leaders throughout my career,” says Meadows. “Who pushed us to always be better, taught me the importance of caring for people and leaving things better than you found them. They also showed me how to build a strong business foundation and taught me that your career is your own race – don’t compare, just focus on growth.”
This unique combination of hands-on education and experiences has brought Meadows to where she is today.
“I work with our engineering and technology team all day, every day – they’re the brilliant minds that bring technologies to life,” she explains. “The other essential part is assembling a really good business case, which is when we define what the engineering and tech teams need to deliver for our customers.”
How R&D is leading energy forward
There have been numerous technological advances across the ALS portfolio during Meadows’ tenure in Claremore, which has changed the way that oil and gas producers operate.
“On the hardware side, our equipment is more durable and more efficient,” says Meadows. “For example, last year we launched a new LIFTPrime high-efficiency pump, the E2000. Where you used to have three pumps, you now get the same lift per stage with two pumps.”
Meadows says the combination of AI and “our brilliant engineers” is helping Baker Hughes develop technology faster to meet customer needs and reduce carbon footprints. “We are seeing customers getting up to 28% power savings by using our permanent magnet motors. While of course we are still running induction motors, we are designing to meet the market needs around energy’’
As the capabilities of digital solutions grow, cybersecurity is paramount.
“It’s critical to develop our hardware with the software for the future,” says Meadows. “For example our FusionPro intelligent production drive (IPD) with edge integration allows operators to remote-in securely and adjust settings. If a well goes down, it’s a game changer. Recently, one of our field-service technicians got a call at 2 am. He got out of bed, logged in and got the customer’s well back up and running in five minutes from his hotel room. There was no need for him to drive to the location three hours away. Just in the past 18 months integrating our Leucipa™ edge app has allowed us to further increase uptime and decrease downtime for our customers. We’ve designed hardware and now the software to come on that journey with it, too.”
Meadows says it’s interesting to watch customers change their own behaviors as they become more confident that these sophisticated digital solutions can deliver smarter decisions for operators. “Leucipa optimizes field production by monitoring hundreds of wells,” says Meadows. “There’s an option for it to flag wells and for the production engineers to make the adjustments, or for it to do it autonomously. We’re seeing that as customers – and the production engineers – get more comfortable with the technology they let Leucipa make the adjustments. It’s improving all the time through machine learning.’’
A full suite of production solutions
Baker Hughes delivers ALS, oilfield and industrial chemicals, and digital solutions under the umbrella of production solutions. This enables a holistic, integrated approach to help solve customer problems. Working closely together also leads to better interoperability and new ideas.
‘’Each of our product lines is focused on flawless execution at the well site but we are a cohesive team with one goal” says Meadows. “For example, it’s really helpful to work with the chemicals team to help customers with mature assets and unconventional wells.”
“We can extend the run life of wells by combining our chemicals with our ESP equipment,” Meadows says. “Then you add digital solutions like Leucipa to the equation, and that further extends run life and improves efficiency.”
The technologies developed in Claremore have applications beyond traditional oil and gas production, however. As geothermal and CCUS projects expand, the production solutions teams are busy devising solutions for these new energy frontiers.
“We’re investing in developing high-temperature ESP systems so we can go hotter and higher horsepower with our motors which will be needed for geothermal projects,” she says. “As CCUS also expands, our HPump surface pumping systems reliably boost CO2 injection with lower power demand.”
As she talks about her ALS portfolio there’s genuine excitement in Meadows’s voice. It’s easy to see why she was named on the Hart Energy list.
“I feel lucky that I joined Baker Hughes and I’ve loved it ever since,” she reflects. “Over my career so far, I’ve learned so much from the people around me, about collaboration, grit and resilience. Baker Hughes has a saying, ‘run your own race’, and they have really given me the opportunity to do just that. I’ve been shown respect and I’ve been empowered and that in turn fuels my passion.”
Stay tuned – Dana Meadows is only getting started.