Ian is passionate about helping organisations to understand and exploit the opportunities presented by the energy transition towards a low-carbon future.

 

He's worked in startups, multinationals and academia, and from 2016-2020 he was the Director of Robert Gordon University’s AMBA, AACSB and Energy Institute-accredited MBA programme, where he taught strategy and consultancy to managers and executives. He's supervised and advised on dozens of consultancy projects for organisations across several industries, mainly with a focus on the energy sector.

 

Since 2016 he's organised the highly-acclaimed annual MBA Leadership Week event, bringing together students from across the world to study leadership, communication, and strategy in an interactive week of activities, workshops and prestigious industry guest speakers. He also developed the MBA Rising Star Award with the Energy Industries Council (EIC) to provide scholarships for outstanding candidates to join the RGU MBA programme.

 

He was part of the team that developed the early stages of the Kincardine Offshore Wind Farm, working alongside Pilot Offshore Renewables Ltd. and Atkins to gain the site lease from the Crown Estate and deliver the environmental scoping report. He also helped to establish the Offshore Renewables Institute, a collaboration between University of Aberdeen, University of Dundee and Robert Gordon University to facilitate research into non-technical barriers to offshore renewable industry development. This led to his participation in the EU Horizon 2020-funded RiCORE (Risk-based Consenting of Offshore Renewable Energy) project, an international project to provide recommendations on consenting processes for offshore renewable projects.

 

Recently, he supervised a PhD student researching energy transitions and offshore renewable industry development, and has published articles in peer-reviewed journals on project consenting issues and UK offshore wind project costs and performance.

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He is a Member of the Energy Institute (MEI), a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), and has a BSc (Hons) from University of Bristol, a PhD from University of Aberdeen, and an MBA with Distinction from Robert Gordon University.

 

He is married and lives in Aberdeen with two teenage kids, and when not working he can often be found birding at Inchgarth Reservoir.