To date, I have had a career of two halves with the first part in academia before moving into industry, where I remain to this day. After graduating in Geology from University of Edinburgh and University College Dublin, I started at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton working on the Cenozoic evolution of the North Atlantic west of the UK and Ireland, including some memorable trips to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Following the stint on the south coast, I moved to Imperial College London to work on a Statoil funded research project on the syn-rift of Mid Norway. It was at Imperial where I got my first taste of mentoring students from the MSc program and this has continued to present. After Imperial, I moved into industry firstly with Lukoil and latterly with New Age working in asset, business development and regional geologist roles predominantly along the West African margin from Morocco to South Africa. Throughout my industry career I have maintained strong links with academia through my continued mentoring of MSc summer projects and provision of datasets.

The PESGB has been a constant presence throughout my career and provided many invaluable short courses, workshops and conference which have benefited every one of us. The standard, scope and depth of these events are something I would strive to maintain and develop in line with memberships demands. I would look forward to working with the universities to ensure that the society continues its support for MSc programmes to ensure we keep the talent emerging from our world class programmes in our industry. Our industry is changing not only in terms of public perception, technology, demands for clean/renewable energy but perhaps the biggest change is the loss of experience and knowledge that has arrived with people leaving or retiring. I believe that we, the PESGB, can counteract this through our education and training programme to ensure we don’t lose the learnings from experienced explorers.