Lord John Browne

Lord Browne of Madingley serves as Chairman of Climate & Sustainability investing and is a Managing Director at General Atlantic, providing strategic support and advice to the firm’s investment teams and portfolio companies. He advises the firm on environmental, social and governance considerations, with a particular focus on climate solutions and the path to Net Zero emissions. Lord Browne co-founded BeyondNetZero, General Atlantic’s climate growth equity fund focused on supporting and scaling high-growth companies that are developing innovative solutions seeking to meet and exceed net zero emissions targets. 

Lord Browne served as Group Chief Executive of international energy company BP from 1995 to 2007, after having joined the company in 1966 as a university apprentice. He led the company through a period of significant growth and transformation, including BP’s merger with Amoco in 1998. His landmark speech at Stanford University in 1997 established BP as a global leader in the way it thought about and sought to address climate change.

In 2007, Lord Browne joined Riverstone, where he was co-head of the world’s largest renewable energy private equity fund until 2015. He is also a former Chairman of Wintershall Dea, Europe’s largest independent oil and gas company. Lord Browne is Co-Chair of the Prime Minister’s Council on Science and Technology, Chairman of Windward and Chairman of Spark Cognition. From 2010 to 2015, he was the UK Government’s Lead Non-Executive Board Member.

He was knighted in 1998 and made a life peer in 2001. Lord Browne is the Chairman of the Francis Crick Institute, Chairman of the Courtauld Institute of Art, Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow and Past President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He previously served on the boards of DaimlerChrysler, Goldman Sachs, Intel and SmithKline Beecham.