Gerard Penning is a senior executive at Royal Dutch Shell, based in London. Over the course of a successful career he has gained a true breadth of business and professional experience. Assignments in Marketing, Sales, and Commercial roles have been followed by a distinguished career in Human Resources, in which Gerard has built a strong track record in multiple areas of the business, including Global Recruitment, Information Technology, and the Corporate Functions. More recently, he has been on the executive teams of the two largest businesses in Royal Dutch Shell – Upstream and now Downstream.

Gerard’s passion lies in working within global, highly complex businesses to navigate the full range of external trends and disruptors and transform them into business opportunities. Royal Dutch Shell has a history of providing energy solutions to the world for over 100 years, but now faces one of its biggest challenges yet as it sets out on a deliberate path to become a provider of sustainable energy solutions. For Gerard personally, the global energy transition creates an exciting leadership challenge in which he is “front and centre”. Finding ways as a business to deploy a range of lower carbon products and quickly develop new, innovative solutions for customers, supported by different business models and ways of working, is the sort of complex, business-critical challenge from which he gains personal and professional satisfaction and motivation.

Gerard holds a Master’s degree in Law from Leiden University. In 2018 he was elected as board member for the Sustainable Energy for All organisation.