Steven L. Miller

Steven L. Miller is a businessman who has been a prominent leader in the American oil industry, serving as chairman of the board of directors, president, and CEO of Shell Oil Company from 1999 to his retirement in 2002. A native of Kansas City, Missouri, he was born in 1945, and graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1967. He currently resides in Houston, Texas, where he promotes volunteer work through his company, SLM Discovery Ventures.

Early and personal life

Miller was born in 1945 in Kansas City, Missouri, but spent most of his childhood in Bismarck, North Dakota. It was there, living next to 5 baseball fields and a golf course, that he developed his lifelong passion for both sports.

Miller's family moved to the Chicago, Illinois, area during high school, and from there he went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He chose to major in chemical engineering, within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, later stating that he preferred the wider range of education provided by a liberal arts education. He has also credited part of his later success in management to this decision.

Career

Upon graduating from the University of Illinois with a B.S. in chemical engineering, Miller went to work with Shell at the Deer Park refinery outside of Houston, Texas, in the cracking and distillation operations. He moved on to a stint at Shell's head office in New York, and then in the Netherlands at the Hague, in 1973. By 1988, he had become the VP of marketing and refining, and in 1992, he was promoted to the Royal Dutch/Shell Group Management Team, in London, where he oversaw global supply and marketing operations.

Miller became one of the five managing directors of Shell in 1996, where he started the Grassroots Leadership Program. This was an effort designed to improve the company's operations through acquiring feedback from employees at all levels and departments, and helping those employees develop and implement new business strategies to address the problems they saw. His work in employing grassroots leadership was instrumental in turning around several of Shell's troubled and failing operations worldwide, most notably in Malaysia, Austria, and France – where brought profits into the double-digits.

Retirement

In his time at Shell, Miller was noted for his dedication to community service, and after retirement, was able to give more of his time to charitable causes. He has done this primarily through SLM Discovery Ventures, Inc., which supports community outreach, higher education, and volunteer efforts through commercial projects.

Additionally, Miller has remained active in the business community, serving on the boards of Applied Materials, a semiconductor wafer fabrication company in Santa Clara, California (1999–2005), and Reliant Energy in Houston (2003–present); and as chairman of the board of the Greater Houston Partnership (2002), Momentum Bio Ventures, Inc. (2003–2004). In 2003 and 2004, he chaired CEO Diversity Initiative for Diversity Best Practices in Washington, D.C., and is a former member of the Business Roundtable and National Petroleum Council. He has also served on the Texas Governor's Business Council and as a director for the American Petroleum Institute.

Awards

Point of Light Award, Points of Light Foundation, 2002 Volunteer Of The Year Award, United Way, 2007 Alumni Achievement Award, University of Illinois, 2002 Father of the Year, Houston Community Partners, 2002 Man of Vision Award, Prevent Blindness, 2002 Muriel Folloder Phillips Award for Advocacy of Children and Charitable Causes, ChildBuilders, 2002 Diversity CEO Leadership Award, Diversity Best Practices, 2002 Executive Communicator of the Year, Houston Business Journal, 2001 City Proclamation for United Way Fundraising, Mayor of Houston, 2001 The Agenda Award for Grassroots Leadership, Fast Company Magazine, 1998