Gretchen M. Gillis is a geologist who is passionate about the global energy business and its role in building economies and improving lives. Her long-term service to the industry has been recognized through a 2023 Professional Excellence Award from the Association for Women Geoscientists, a 2022 GRIT Executive Award from ALLY Energy, an organization that supports an equitable energy transition, and a 2018 Honorary Member award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG). Gillis has worked as a senior geological consultant at Aramco Americas in Houston, supporting oil and gas exploration and production for energy giant Saudi Aramco. She previously worked as an exploration geologist and in a variety of marketing communication roles for SLB, where she established the SLB Energy Glossary and wrote 80 Years of Innovation, an award-winning book about the company’s technology milestones. She has served more than a decade on three nonprofit boards. As 2021-2022 AAPG president, Gillis led the effort to set a new strategic direction for the Association, resulting in the development of a proposal to merge AAPG and the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). She also was a member of the leadership team that proposed the creation of the International Meeting for Applied Geoscience & Energy (IMAGE) with the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG). She is a Trustee Associate of the AAPG Foundation and the SEG Foundation and served as a director of the SEG Foundation. She is a member of the Advisory Council of the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin, serving on the Endowment Committee, and she chairs the Governance Committee of independent publisher GeoScienceWorld. Gillis earned a bachelor’s degree in geology from Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, a master’s degree in geological sciences from The University of Texas at Austin, and certification from the Yale School of Management “Women on Boards” program and the University of Texas at Austin Executive Education for “Finance and Accounting for Non-Financial Managers.