Iain has 38 years of experience in the energy sector, including 15 years at public company Board level. He was Group Chief Executive of Centrica plc from January 2015 to March 2020. A Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 energy, services and lower-carbon solutions company including British Gas, Iain drove the strategy to reposition the company back towards the customer and to build new capabilities for the energy transition.
Prior to Centrica, Iain was an Executive Director on the Board of BP plc for 10 years and CEO Downstream from 2007-2014. Iain spent 29 years at BP from 1986 to 2014 and previously held a number of senior roles in nearly all areas of the company. He co-authored BP’s first Point of View on Climate Change in 2006.
A chemical engineer by training, Iain possesses a deep understanding of the energy sector. Over his career Iain has advised governments on energy and climate policy, and from 2017-2020 Iain Co-Chaired the World Economic Forum System Initiative on the Future of Energy.
Iain is Senior Advisor to Blackstone, and a Non-Executive Director of Applegreen Ltd. He is Chairman of EngineeringUK, and of Empirisys Ltd, and a Non-Executive Director of Oxford Flow Ltd. He is also Senior Advisor to BCG, and an Advisor to Oxford Science Enterprises’s deep tech portfolio. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, Co-Chairman of the Singapore Green Finance Centre, and a member of the Board of the Stop Multiple Sclerosis Appeal.
He served as a non-executive director and latterly Senior Independent Director of both BT plc (2014-2023) and Rolls-Royce plc (2005-2014). He was Chairman of the Advisory Board of Imperial College Business School from 2004-2020 and was a member of Imperial College’s governing body from 2010-2019. From 2015-2020 he was a member of the European Round Table for Industry.
Iain was born in Edinburgh and educated in Musselburgh, Scotland. He studied chemical engineering at the Imperial College London. Iain is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Institution of Chemical Engineers, and the City and Guilds of London Institute. He is married with three children.
