Leigh-Ann Russell

Leigh-Ann Russell (born April 1975) is a Scottish engineer. She has worked as an executive at BP, where was Executive Vice President of Innovation & Engineering until she resigned in 2024 to join the financial services firm BNY as head of engineering and CIO as part of their executive team.

Biography
Leigh-Ann Russell was educated at the University of Aberdeen, where she obtained her Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering. Her career in engineering began in the late 1990s, beginning as an executive at the service company Schlumberger. Russell joined the energy company BP, where she served as Engineering Manager and Operations Manager for the North Sea and as Global Vice President of Technical Functions. In June 2020, amidst supply chain issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, Russell publicly objected to the practice of mailing letters to companies demanding cost reduction, saying that waste reduction was a more productive alternative. Russell was promoted from head of procurement and supply chain management to senior vice president of procurement on 1 July 2020. On 1 March 2022, Russell was promoted to Executive Vice President of Innovation & Engineering; that position is equivalent to the roles associated with chief digital officer, chief scientific officer, and chief technology officer. She resigned from bp in 2024 to join financial services firm BNY as head of engineering and CIO as part of their executive committee.

Outside of engineering, she also serves as a non-executive director for the manufacturing company Hill & Smith.

Russell was elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2019. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2022. She was also made an honorary Professor of Practice at Queen's University Belfast in 2022. She is also a Fellow of the Energy Institute and a Chartered Petroleum Engineer.

Russell is from Aberdeen.