Susan M. Ward ’80 ChE
Susan Ward has been a senior executive at Shell since 2007and has served as Head, M&A and Commercial Finance - Americas for Shell Oil Company since 2010. From 2010, she has also served as trustee and vice chairman of the board of trustees of the Shell Pension Trust and chairman of its investment committee for retirement funds currently at ~$25 billion. From 2014 to 2017, Susan was vice president and chief financial officer of Shell's midstream MLP, Shell Midstream Partners and was also a director of the MLP's GP Board. Prior to her current role, she served as vice president, Upstream Commercial Finance for Shell International Exploration & Production B.V. based in The Hague from 2007 through 2009. Since joining Shell in 1998, Susan has worked primarily in M&A and commercial finance roles across all of Shell's global businesses. From 2007 to 2016, she also served on the board of Shell's Bully deep-water drillship joint venture.
Prior to joining Shell, Susan worked as an investment banker in the energy sector for 11 years at Kidder, Peabody, PaineWebber and UBS in New York and Houston, including as a managing director in the Natural Resources and Energy investment banking group of UBS Securities. She began her career working for Exxon Company USA as a refining engineer and subsequently worked for Mobil Corporation in its finance organization at its headquarters in New York City.
In addition to her Villanova bachelor's degree, Susan earned an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1984. In 2009, she and her husband Patrick Cunningham established an endowed engineering lecture series to offer students exposure to experts from various engineering fields and educational opportunities outside the classroom. She was appointed to Villanova's board of trustees in 2018.
Susan lives in Houston, TX, with her husband, and has two grown step-sons living in Boston, one of whom is also a graduate of Villanova.