Chris Gopsill is a senior executive with more than 30 years’ experience in the renewable energy, precision electro-mechanical OEM, chemical, life sciences and IT sectors, with both major multi-nationals and start-ups.

His most recent executive roles have focussed on management of major capital investment initiatives.  He was Chief Project Management Officer at BioEngineering (leading supplier of production plants for Biopharmaceuticals) and Director of Project and Site Management at TEL Solar (formerly Oerlikon Solar).  In this role he had full P&L and operational responsibility for all TEL Solar customer project sites globally, with a total project value of €800 million.  Projects were green-field turnkey factories for the fully automated production of thin-film silicon photovoltaic modules. (Fabrication capacity of 650+ Mega Watts power annually, work force of more than 250 in multiple locations)

Prior to joining Oerlikon Solar, Chris was Director of Network Advisory at First Tuesday Zurich, which was subsequently acquired by the professional online network XING. During this time he was the Project Manager responsible for the XING partnership with IBM to build “The Greater IBM” network http://www.ibm.com/ibm/greateribm/.  In addition, he was Executive Producer for several First Tuesday Think Tanks, which used a unique three-stage methodology to analyse current and emerging issues: Knowledge creation; Interactive discussion (a structured facilitated workshop with a diverse panel of thought leaders) and Knowledge dissemination, in the form of in-depth white papers.  (See side-bar)

Previously Mr. Gopsill was responsible for a portfolio of Consulting Projects, for clients and business partners including BASF, Roche, Dow, PwC, Solvay, Dow Corning, Cap Gemini, Novo Nordisk IT (NNIT) Stanford Research Institute (SRI Consulting), and technology start-ups.  One major project was a full global structural analysis for high volume chemicals including in depth assessment of supply/demand, pricing, detailed sales, competitive situation, player relationships and industry drivers and dynamics. This detailed analysis led to the discovery of major new opportunities for value generation and business improvement, delivering business opportunities of $200 million annually

Chris spent 14 years at Dow Chemical, in various management positions in the USA, UK, Germany and Switzerland. In his final role he was Business Process Coach for Project & Portfolio Management (StageGate^TM) where he established and maintained the project portfolio management systems for a $1 billion business. He started his career as a production engineer at Thorn EMI, working on complex precision electro-mechanical devices.

Mr. Gopsill is an experienced innovator, facilitator, change manager and trainer.  He holds an M.B.A. from Indiana University and an M. Eng from Cambridge University.  Chris is a joint UK / Swiss national and lives with his family near Zurich, Switzerland.