Job Title : Group CIO

Organization : National Grid

David Lister, group CIO, joined National Grid in March last year. He is a member of the group executive committee responsible for the vast IT infrastructure that underpins the utility company’s operations.

Before joining National Grid, Lister was global CIO and chief architect for the Royal Bank of Scotland. Here, he was responsible for the delivery of centralised back office services, including IT for the banking group’s many brands such as Churchill, Direct Line and NatWest.

Before RBS, Lister spent almost four years at Reuters where he put in place a global technology transformation aimed at reducing costs and improving customer service.

Prior to that, Lister was CIO at Boots, where he overhauled the health and beauty retailer’s IT strategy with a £300m modernisation programme and major outsourcing deal with IBM.

Lister trained as an architect before moving into IT in local government and then the chemicals industry. A spell in management consultancy at Coopers & Lybrand followed, before joining Guinness where he spent 10 years in senior IT roles, including more than two years in Seville where he had to learn Spanish.

He then joined Glaxo Wellcome just before the pharmaceutical giant’s merger with SmithKline Beecham.