Cheryl Gomez-Smith is currently Senior Vice President, Imperial Oil, leading Imperial’s Upstream organization. The organization has ~2500 employees and produces ~ 500 kOEBd. This position sits on Imperial Oil’s Management Committee and Board of Directors. Responsibilities include Research, Exploration, Project Development, Drilling, Production Operations, Commercial and Land. Producing assets include Kearl, Cold Lake, Norman Wells, Syncrude and a number of smaller operations. Responsibilities include all aspects of Upstream operations including safety, operations, maintenance, reliability, engineering, logistics, cost management, personnel development and overall profitability. She is located in Calgary, Alberta.

Prior to her current position, Cheryl was the GO&S Safety/ Risk EPO Director for Exxon Mobil Corporation. In this role she led global organizations focused on tackling some of the most challenging opportunities including development, delivery, and support of the world’s best process safety, personnel safety, and work management solutions for ExxonMobil’s wide array of work.

Cheryl joined ExxonMobil in Midland Texas as a Facilities Engineer in the Permian. Since then, Cheryl held facilities, reservoir, and projects engineering roles in many of ExxonMobil’s Upstream assets in the United States including Texas, Wyoming, Utah, Louisiana, as well as operations leadership roles for several offshore deep-water developments in the Gulf of Mexico.

As Upstream Global Operations Producing Manager in Houston, she led ExxonMobil global production operations and maintenance organizations with accountability for development, execution, and sustainment of Best Practices including Operations, Maintenance, Logistics, Work Management, Alarm Management, and Competency Assurance. While on expatriate assignments, she held leadership roles associated with Joint Venture LNG processing projects in Doha, Qatar and in Upstream Conventional operations in Sakhalin, Russia.

Cheryl was the President and Lead Country Manager for ExxonMobil Kazakhstan Inc. located in Astana, Kazakhstan. In this role she was responsible for leading development and execution of ExxonMobil’s Kazakhstan country strategy associated with ExxonMobil’s interest in the Tengiz field, North Caspian Sea Joint Venture (including Kashagan field), and the Caspian Pipeline Consortium assets.

Cheryl holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, and an MBA from Tulane University.