Suzanne Elizabeth Heywood

Suzanne Elizabeth Heywood, Baroness Heywood of Whitehall, (; born 25 February 1969), is a British executive and former civil servant. She has been the chief operating officer of the Exor Group since 2022 and the chair of CNH Industrial since 2018. She is also the chair of Iveco.

Having sailed around the world with her family as a child for a decade, she studied at Somerville College, Oxford and King's College, Cambridge. Her early career was spent as a civil servant in HM Treasury. She then joined McKinsey & Company, where she rose to become a senior partner before leaving for Exor in 2016.

In the 2024 Birthday Honours, Suzanne Heywood was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to business leadership.

Early life and education Suzanne Cook was born on 25 February 1969 in Southampton, England, to teachers Gordon Cook and Mary, née Brindley. Having sold the family house and a family-owned hotel, and initially sponsored by a hotel group, from 1976 to 1986 the Cooks sailed around the world in a schooner called Wavewalker, retracing initially the third and final voyage of the eighteenth-century explorer and cartographer Captain Cook (to whom they were not related despite the shared surname). Although three years were planned for the sailing, they ended up spending a decade doing so. In 1977, the ship was almost destroyed in a storm between Africa and Australia. Cook was below deck and received a serious head injury eventually requiring seven surgeries, but the rest of her family and crew received only minor injuries; her father had been the only one on deck and was thrown overboard but was saved by his lifeline.

Having been denied the opportunity to settle at a boarding school to enjoy the education she craved- and for requesting which she was berated for selfishness by her parents- Cook undertook her secondary education through the Queensland Correspondence School, doing both the Junior Certificate and the Senior Certificate.

The family arrived in New Zealand when Cook was 15, and Cook was left with her younger brother to live in a small holiday house at the isolated Lake Rotoiti. A year later, she returned to England alone and matriculated into Somerville College, Oxford in 1987 to study zoology. Her college tutor was Marian Dawkins. She completed her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in 1993: her thesis was titled "Filial imprinting in chicks: processes and stimulus representations".

Career In 1993, Heywood joined Her Majesty's Treasury as a fast stream trainee. Additionally, she has been chair of CNH Industrial since July 2018, following the resignation of Hubertus Mühlhäuser. As Deputy Chair of Trustees she became Acting Chair of the Royal Opera House from December 2019 until July 2020. Heywood is also on the board of the Covent Garden Foundation, Chanel Ltd., The Economist Group Ltd. and the Royal Academy of Music.

Personal life In 1997, the then Suzanne Cook married Jeremy Heywood. Together they had three children, including twins.

In 2021, Heywood spoke out in defence of her late husband, following criticisms made in Nigel Boardman's review of the Lex Greensill affair.

In 2023, Heywood published Wavewalker: Breaking Free, a memoir of her childhood at sea and her efforts to educate herself in order to escape back to a more normal life.

Selected works