Think Women’s 40 Outstanding Global Women 2025 | Gill Gordon, Permits Foundation
With a career spanning multiple continents and industries, forging alliances and working with trade unions and governments, Gill Gordon’s journey has been one of collaboration, negotiation and teamwork. From Paris to Berlin to the United States, each experience has shaped her leadership approach and fuelled her passion for driving change.
4 March 2025
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Gill spent most of her career with Schlumberger (now SLB) and was HR Director UK from September 2014 until her retirement in October 2020, based in London. Since 2020 she has continued to be chair of the Permits Foundation, a role she first took on in 2007, a not-for-profit organisation established to persuade Governments to remove work permit barriers for the partners of highly skilled mobile employees in order to facilitate global dual careers.Over the years, she has played a pivotal role in expanding best practices for dual career couples across more than 40 countries via the work of the Permits Foundation. However, she acknowledges that hard-won agreements need to be defended when new political leaders take over. The hard work has paid off - twenty plus years ago at Schlumberger International, dual career couples were the exception, but today there are thousands, and the number is rising rapidly across most international organisations.
A curiosity to see the world
Gill grew up in Bangor, Northern Ireland, about 12 miles outside Belfast. From an early age, she had a restless curiosity about the world beyond.“My parents would probably tell you that I had a habit of wandering off as a very young child—there were a couple of "escapes" that required bringing me back home, once by the police!” she explains. “A close family friend, who travelled extensively (which was unusual at the time), used to return from her trips with tiny decorative bottles for the cocktail cabinet. I was completely fascinated by the idea of seeing different places.”Continue reading on our sister website, Think Global People
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