Stephen Greenlee retired from ExxonMobil after a 39-year career working in upstream research, exploration, production, business development and corporate management. He was hired by Exxon Production Research Company in 1981 and helped develop, apply and train the concepts of sequence stratigraphy in clastic and carbonate reservoirs worldwide. Exploration and production assignments followed in Norway, the UK, US Gulf of Mexico, Russia, Kazakhstan, Brazil and Saudi Arabia. In 2001 he was named Corporate Upstream Advisor at ExxonMobil Corporate Headquarters. He was appointed Exploration Vice President for Asia Pacific in 2004, President, ExxonMobil Upstream Research in 2009, and President, ExxonMobil Exploration Company in 2010. In 2019 he assumed the additional responsibility of upstream asset management as President of Upstream Business Development. While leading exploration efforts, his teams made numerous giant and super giant oil and gas discoveries in Indonesia, Australia, Tanzania, Cypress and Guyana as well as many smaller discoveries adding to ExxonMobil’s resource base.

Stephen served on the University of Houston Energy Advisory Board from 2010-2020 and was the Chairman for the last 7 years of his tenure. Following his retirement from ExxonMobil in 2020 he became a member and task force leader of the University’s Board of Visitors. He is the Chairman of the University of Rhode Island’ Graduate School of Oceanography Deans Advisory Council and Secretary of the Executive Board of the Alley Theater in Houston.

He holds a BS in Geology from Duke University and an MS in Geological Oceanography from the University of Rhode Island. He is married to his wife of 39 years, also a geoscientist, and has 3 children and 3 grandchildren.