Dr Simon was head of the Climate, Biodiversity and Water Division of the OECD from 2014-2022, the founding policy director of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London from 2007-201, and part-time pro-rector for International Affairs, a Management Board position, from 2011-13. He played a key role in creating the EIT Climate Knowledge and Innovation Community (Climate KIC) in 2009 and was a member of its advisory board (2011-2013).
Before joining Imperial, Simon was a senior UK diplomat, working both in London and overseas, and spent four years at the Bank of England on financial stability issues and, earlier, also worked at the UK Ministry of Defence. He was a senior subject matter expert on climate finance for the UNFCCC in 2022-2023 and spent some months as Director of Research at Cambridge Zero, the University of Cambridge, during that period.
He volunteers as a citizen scientist on a local chalk stream and is the Policy and Applied Research representative on the Climate Change Ecology Special Interest Group of the British Ecological Society. He has a DPhil in Theoretical Physics, a Master’s in Financial Economics and has just enrolled on a part-time Master’s in Social Anthropology.
