Nicola Shaw

Nicola Shaw is the chief executive officer at Yorkshire Water. She has previously held roles as the executive officer at National Grid, the chief executive of High Speed 1, and director of FirstGroup. She was appointed a CBE in the Queen's New Year's Honours List 2016.

Education Shaw attributes her fascination with transport to her father, a stockbroker who commuted to London Bridge from Oxted in Surrey. She attended Croydon High School and The King's School, Canterbury. In 1995 she completed a Master of Science in Transportation degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Career Shaw joined Transport for London in 1990. Shaw then completed a master's degree in interdepartmental transport at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1995 Shaw joined World Bank.

In 2003 she was appointed managing director of operations at the Strategic Rail Authority, where she was responsible for the contractual negotiations between the government and private sector train operators.

Between 2010 and 2015 she was a non-executive director of Aer Lingus. Shaw was responsible for customer relations, including St Pancras railway station and Stratford International station. She published the Shaw Report in 2016, which made several recommendations for the future of British Transport: Passengers and freight shippers to be at the heart of Infrastructure management Focus on customers with deeper route devolution with independent regulation – splitting Network Rail into nine different groups, each with greater autonomy over construction and maintenance Create a route for the North Clarify governmental role in railway and Network Rail Explore new ways for financing growth in freight and passengers Industry-wide plans to develop skills and diversity Patrick McLoughlin said publicly that he "welcomes Ms Shaw’s suggestions". She is working with DeepMind to use Artificial intelligence in the future of Utilities. In May 2022, she was appointed as the chief executive officer of Yorkshire Water.

Shaw received a CBE for services to transport in the Queen's New Year Honours in 2016.

Controversy According to investigative journalism published in the UK's Guardian newspaper in August 2025, as chief executive officer at Yorkshire Water, Shaw reportedly received bonuses amounting to £1.3m in previously undisclosed extra pay in the 2023-24 and the 2024-25 financial years via an offshore parent company, Kelda Holdings. Yorkshire Water is one of six companies banned by the UK government from awarding bonuses to its bosses after environmental breaches. It paid £40m in March 2025 for storm overflow spills resulting from poor maintenance practices and was fined £850,000 in late July 2025 for pumping chlorinated water into a stream in 2017. Shaw was appointed in 2022.