Shell Malaysia has appointed Siti Hurrairah Sulaiman as the new country chair of Shell Malaysia, effective January 1, 2023. She succeeds Ivan Tan, who will be taking on the role of executive vice president, Wells, for Shell Group. Tan will be based in The Hague, Netherlands, upon taking up this global role.

As country chair of Shell Malaysia, Sulaiman will oversee all Shell Malaysia businesses, in addition to her role as senior vice president (SVP) for the Upstream business in Malaysia. She will be the first female country chair and SVP Upstream for Shell Malaysia.

Sulaiman originates from Kuching, Sarawak, and started as a Shell scholar. She graduated from Imperial College in London, UK,  with a first-class degree in Mechanical Engineering and started her career as an operation engineer in Shell Malaysia Upstream.

In the early days of her career, Sulaiman took on roles in Development, Planning, Commercial and Strategy in the United Kingdom and Malaysia. In 2011, she was appointed as the first female Malaysian asset manager and director of Sabah Shell Petroleum Company Limited, responsible for Shell’s upstream oil and gas operations in Sabah.

In 2015, she moved to London as general manager of Commercial Operations in Shell’s Trading and Supply business, where she was responsible for global commercial services for the Shell Group. She was then appointed vice president of Integrated Gas Ventures East, where she was responsible for a diverse portfolio of Shell joint ventures across different countries in the East, prior to assuming her current role as vice president, Technical Asset Operations, where she oversees a large global technical organisation that supports assets and operating units across the Shell Group.