Catherine MacGregor

"I have a conviction, which is based on my own experience, that you will lack innovation and cannot properly understand customers and markets if your team is not diverse. New ideas cannot develop in a uniform environment [...]; rather, they are generated through diversity of genders, experiences and lives. In our highly-competitive markets, diversity is an asset."

— Catherine MacGregor

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Overview

Catherine MacGregor
Born	1972 (age 53–54) Salé, Morocco
Citizenship	France
Education	École Centrale Paris
Alma mater	École Centrale Paris
Occupation(s)	Engineer; business executive
Employer	Engie
Known for	Leading Engie's energy-transition strategy
Title	Chief Executive Officer
Term	2021–present
Predecessor	Isabelle Kocher
Board member of	Engie; Microsoft; World Business Council for Sustainable Development; Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders
Spouse	Formerly married (name not public)
Children	2
Awards	Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur (2020)

🧭 Catherine MacGregor (born 1972) is a French engineer and business executive who has served as chief executive officer of Engie since 1 January 2021, leading the utility’s strategic shift toward renewable energy while maintaining a focus on energy security. After more than two decades at oilfield services company Schlumberger and a senior role at TechnipFMC and its spin-off Technip Energies, she was appointed to the helm of Engie in October 2020 and formally took office in 2021, later joining the board of Microsoft in 2023. Her tenure has been marked by portfolio simplification, accelerated investment in renewables and gas infrastructure, and the management of Europe’s energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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Early life and education

🌍 Origins. MacGregor was born in 1972 in Salé, Morocco, to French parents who were both mathematics teachers, and she spent her first fourteen years in Morocco before moving to France, growing up in a bilingual, multicultural environment with family roots in Corsica and the Basque Country despite a married surname that suggests Scottish heritage. This background, she has said, helped to instil adaptability and ease with different cultures long before she entered the global energy industry.

🎓 Education and early field work. A strong student in mathematics and science, MacGregor earned admission to École Centrale Paris (now CentraleSupélec), from which she graduated as an engineer in 1995, and rather than opting for a conventional office posting she chose an overseas field assignment that took her to an oil rig in the Congolese jungle as the only woman on site. Immersed in a harsh, male-dominated environment, she learned to manage both technical and human pressures offshore, later describing this experience as formative and emblematic of her preference for “going where I am not expected”, a theme that would recur in her subsequent career choices.

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Career

🛢️ Schlumberger career. MacGregor joined Schlumberger in 1995 and over the next 23 years held a succession of operational and managerial posts across Africa, Europe, Asia and North America, including assignments in Pointe-Noire, Aberdeen, Kuala Lumpur, Paris, Houston and London. She led various business lines such as drilling, reservoir characterisation and, later, human resources as group vice-president, building a reputation as an oil and gas specialist comfortable with both technical complexity and people management, and by the late 2010s she had risen into the company’s senior ranks, reportedly being shortlisted in 2019 for the chief executive role before it went to another candidate.

🔧 Technip Energies spin-off. After hitting what some commentators described as a glass ceiling at Schlumberger, MacGregor moved in 2019 to TechnipFMC, where she was appointed to lead Technip Energies, the group’s engineering arm that was being prepared for separation. She oversaw the operational and organisational preparations for the spin-off of Technip Energies, a company with around 12,000 employees, and played a key role in readying it for a successful stock-market listing, broadening her experience beyond services to large-scale engineering and project management in the energy sector.

⚡ Appointment at Engie. In October 2020, amid strategic tensions at Engie and the departure of chief executive Isabelle Kocher, the utility’s board chose MacGregor—little known in Paris business circles and coming from oil services rather than power and renewables—as the new chief executive officer, with her mandate beginning on 1 January 2021. Working with chairman Jean-Pierre Clamadieu, she set about refocusing the former gas monopoly on the energy transition, combining a push into renewable power with a streamlining of its portfolio, notably negotiating the €7.1 billion sale of services subsidiary Equans to Bouygues with commitments on employment, and reorganising the group’s management structure to make it leaner and more focused on core businesses. She articulated a strategy built around what she calls the “electron–molecule alliance”, arguing that Europe cannot rapidly dispense with natural gas and must instead combine electrification with lower-carbon gases and new technologies such as battery storage and hydrogen to ensure both decarbonisation and security of supply.

📈 Energy-transition strategy. Under MacGregor’s leadership Engie accelerated its investments in renewable energy, increasing annual capacity addition targets from about 3 gigawatts to 4 gigawatts by 2022 and planning to reach 6 gigawatts per year from 2026, while at the same time investing in grids, gas storage and other infrastructure to underpin reliability. She has promoted the phased exit from coal, an expansion in solar, wind and hydrogen projects and the development of green gases, presenting these initiatives as a way to align Engie with Europe’s decarbonisation goals without compromising system resilience. Internally, she launched efficiency and digital-transformation programmes but has framed capital reallocation toward growth sectors rather than cost-cutting as her priority.

💹 Financial performance. The strategic refocus coincided with a strong recovery in Engie’s financial results and market performance. Between early 2021 and early 2024 the company delivered a total shareholder return of roughly 100 per cent, significantly ahead of many European utility peers, and analysts highlighted improved profitability and clearer strategic positioning under MacGregor’s tenure. During Europe’s 2022 energy crisis, Engie filled its gas storage to high levels and secured alternative liquefied natural gas supplies from countries such as the United States, Norway and Algeria to replace Russian volumes; while some competitors such as Germany’s Uniper required bailouts, Engie generated record profits, with energy trading accounting for a substantial share of earnings, leading even initially sceptical commentators to acknowledge that “the group managed the crisis very well”.

📌 Renewed mandate. By 2023, assessments in the French and international press had shifted from viewing MacGregor as an unlikely appointee to portraying her as firmly in control of Engie’s strategic direction, and in April 2025 shareholders unanimously renewed her mandate as chief executive for a further four-year term. In public statements she has presented her approach as “forward-looking leadership” that must combine financial robustness with the capacity to finance the energy transition, arguing that “you cannot carry out the energy transition if you are not making money”.

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Compensation and wealth

💶 Remuneration. As chief executive of Engie, MacGregor receives a pay package that is substantial by general standards but broadly in line with that of peers at large French listed companies. In 2024 her total remuneration was reported at about €4.3 million, including a fixed salary of €1.0 million and roughly €3.3 million in performance-linked variable components such as annual bonuses and long-term incentives, with a large share of her income therefore contingent on achieving financial and strategic targets approved by shareholders. Analyses of Engie’s governance have noted that her pay sits close to the median for chief executives of similarly sized firms in the CAC 40 index.

💰 Shareholding and wealth. In addition to cash remuneration, MacGregor holds Engie shares valued at around €2 million in her own name, aligning part of her personal wealth with the group’s performance, although she does not own a significant percentage of the company, in which the French state remains a major shareholder. Her overall net worth is not publicly disclosed, but commentators describe her as having built a comfortable fortune through senior roles at Schlumberger, TechnipFMC and Engie, without belonging to the ranks of France’s wealthiest business figures.

🌐 External roles. Beyond Engie, MacGregor serves on a limited number of external boards and industry bodies. In December 2023 she joined the board of directors of Microsoft as an independent director, an appointment highlighted as bringing energy-sector and engineering expertise to the technology company. She is also involved in international organisations devoted to sustainability, including the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders, and participates in broader climate and environmental, social and governance (ESG) discussions on behalf of corporate leaders. These roles extend her influence beyond the utility sector and reinforce her public profile as an advocate for the energy transition.

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Personal life

🏡 Family and privacy. Away from corporate life, MacGregor is generally portrayed as discreet and unpretentious, preferring to keep her private life out of the spotlight. She was previously married to a Scottish man she met during an assignment in Aberdeen, from whom she took the surname by which she is widely known, and the couple had two daughters before later divorcing; friends describe her as a devoted parent who nonetheless carefully protects her children’s privacy from media attention.

🎭 Personality and interests. Colleagues and profiles often characterise MacGregor as “very simple” in her tastes despite her senior roles, noting that she enjoys low-key activities such as going to the cinema, playing games like Scrabble, hiking and occasional skiing trips in the Alps as a counterbalance to professional pressures. Those who have worked closely with her describe a leadership style that is direct, methodical and highly operational, but also humble and unusually attentive for a chief executive: she favours clear, jargon-free exchanges and places emphasis on teamwork and constructive feedback. Early in her Engie tenure she organised numerous one-on-one discussions with managers and external experts—more than a hundred in total, according to some accounts—in order to “learn what I do not know” and to better understand the organisation she had been chosen to lead.

👥 Diversity and mentoring. As one of the few women heading a company in the CAC 40 index, MacGregor has embraced a high-profile role in promoting diversity and inclusion in business leadership. She has argued that teams lacking diversity will struggle to innovate or fully understand their customers, and that breakthrough ideas are generated through a mix of genders, experiences and backgrounds; under her leadership Engie launched the “Fifty-Fifty” programme in 2020, aiming for women to hold half of management positions by 2030, and she appointed several women to the executive committee soon after taking office. Beyond formal targets she mentors young women in engineering and supports initiatives to encourage girls from remote or disadvantaged areas to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, while business media have increasingly cited her as a prominent figure in women’s advancement in industry.

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Controversies and challenges

🧪 Appointment debates and expectations. MacGregor’s nomination as Engie chief executive attracted scrutiny and some scepticism at the time, with observers questioning whether an executive whose career had been almost entirely in oilfield services was the right choice to lead a largely gas and power utility into the clean-energy era, particularly following the departure of her predecessor Isabelle Kocher amid strategic disagreements with the board. Commentators noted that she was relatively unknown in Parisian corporate circles and that her appointment came in a context of turbulence at Engie, but profiles published in the following years generally concluded that she had succeeded in asserting her authority and giving clear direction to the group.

🌀 Energy crisis and “superprofits” debate. The Russia–Ukraine war and the ensuing European gas crisis in 2022 provided an early crucible for MacGregor’s leadership. As Russian pipeline flows dwindled, she publicly warned that any decision to halt Russian energy imports would have repercussions for the following winter’s supplies and urged governments and companies to prepare accordingly, while Engie worked to secure alternative gas and liquefied natural gas sources and to fill storage sites ahead of winter. Engie emerged from the crisis without major supply disruptions and with sharply higher profits, particularly from trading activities, which prompted political and public debates in France about “superprofits” earned by energy firms; in interviews MacGregor defended the company’s conduct, stressing its “social and societal responsibilities”, including measures to shield vulnerable customers and reinvestments to accelerate the energy transition, while supporting windfall contributions and targeted relief schemes decided by public authorities.

⚖️ Policy, nuclear and industrial competitiveness. Internally, MacGregor had to convince Engie’s workforce and unions of the merits of the board-endorsed strategy while avoiding major labour conflict, and externally she has navigated complex policy issues, such as the Belgian government’s decision to extend the life of Engie’s last two nuclear power plants until 2035 rather than close them in 2025 as initially planned, forcing the company to renegotiate arrangements while pursuing its coal phase-out elsewhere. She has been outspoken about the obstacles posed by slow permitting and fragmented regulation to the roll-out of renewable energy projects in Europe, arguing that “we need to go much faster” in deploying low-carbon infrastructure and calling for a more coherent, Europe-wide energy policy and stable frameworks to encourage investment. In interviews with the press she has warned that persistently higher energy costs in Europe could lead to the offshoring of energy-intensive industries, urging a balance between climate ambition and competitiveness so that decarbonisation does not result in large-scale industrial relocation.

🔮 Reputation and future challenges. MacGregor has so far avoided personal scandals and is generally regarded as attentive to ethical and compliance issues, with sources noting her preference for consultation and transparency in major decisions. In 2020 she was made a chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur in recognition of her professional contributions, and subsequent profiles have remarked that she has moved from being viewed as closely aligned with Engie’s board to being recognised as “the boss” in her own right at the head of a company with strong state influence. Observers point out that her long-term success will depend on maintaining Engie’s profitability while delivering on ambitious renewable-energy and decarbonisation targets in an uncertain geopolitical and regulatory context, tests that will determine how her tenure is ultimately judged within the history of the European energy sector.

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