He currently leads the US Energy Transition Program for Shell which involves assessing emerging risks and opportunities, bringing together an Energy Transition project funnel across all Shell’s businesses, developing policy and advocacy positions, implementing long‐term strategies to make Shell resilient to expected changes in the energy system, and allowing its businesses to thrive as the world moves to lower‐carbon energy. Chris joined Shell as an experienced hire in 2008.
Prior to joining Shell, he was a Vice President at AECOM (URS) where he directed a team of technical and commercial professionals, offering technology, process safety, and optimization solutions to a wide variety of upstream, midstream and downstream clients.
Chris earned a Mechanical Engineering degree and an MBA from the University of Houston and a Graduate Diploma in Strategic Decision and Risk Management from Stanford. He is a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and a Certified Six Sigma Green Belt Practitioner (CSSGB).
He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Houston (UH) C.T. Bauer College of Business where he currently teaches a course on Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethics in Energy. He also serves as a Board Member of the Gutierrez Energy Management Institute (GEMI) at UH Bauer, and as an Advisory Board member of the Consortium for Energy Corporate Social Responsibility (CECSR) at UH.
Chris was born and raised on the island of Cyprus and maintains very close ties to both Cyprus and Greece. He served in the Greek Army / Cyprus National Guard prior to moving to the US in the 80’s.
He was recently appointed as the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Cyprus to Texas.
He is married to Michelle since 1994 and they have two daughters. He and his wife are very passionate about the arts especially the Opera. Chris serves as a Trustee for the Houston Grand Opera.

 Prior to this role, Yavuz was Engineering Operations leader managing engineering programs, technical planning, budget, productivity initiatives and overall engineering operations of Evaluation & Optimization organization at GE Oil & Gas which includes Wireline, Drilling and Production Monitoring & Optimization Product Lines. Yavuz also managed R&D teams while serving as the Director of Research at the Woodlands Technology Center of Baker Hughes.
Yavuz received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering and his MSc in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from the University of Illinois at Urbana, IL and, an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business, NY. He also holds a BSc degree and a MSc degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Middle East Technical University, Turkey.

 At the University of Houston, he held the position of Adjunct Professor, both in the Mechanical Engineering Department (ABS Adjunct Professor of Subsea Engineering Program) and the College of Technology (Mechanical Engineering Department). He teaches classes in thermo-fluid sciences, design of experiments, computational methods, and data science. Ed has taught at Clemson University and Texas A&M University, College Station.
Ed’s experiences/responsibilities involve the management of the Multi-Physics Simulations Group for GE Oil & Gas, FMC Technologies, and Landmark Graphics (Halliburton). In this capacity, Ed was responsible for leading several groups of engineering specialist responsible for performing thermal, mass diffusion, and multi-physics analyses on all major systems and sub-system components, development of thermal best practices for multi-physics analyses specific to each respective product. At Landmark, Ed was actively involved in Digital Twin development for upstream and production operations for Onshore & Offshore assets.
Ed holds the rank of ASME Fellow, AIAA Associate Fellow; is active in API and ASME technical committees (e.g., ASME Offshore Technology Conference OTC), served on several ASME committees (ASME South Texas Section and North-West Texas), and was an Associate-Editor for the ASME Journal on Transaction of Energy Resources Technology.

A certified public accountant with MBA and advanced degree in Corporate Finance, his career started as a Tax Analyst for Deloitte before moving to GE Capital where he had a progressive career through various financial and mergers & acquisitions roles. After that, he served as Executive Commercial Finance and Financial Planning leader for GE Global Growth Operations in Latin America. Prior to his current role, Santiago worked for GE Oil & Gas serving as Chief Financial Officer for Latin America, and subsequently as Global Chief Financial Officer for Downstream Technology Solutions.