Mark Leonard Bio

Mark also served as a member of the Indiana University Geological Sciences Advisory Board from 2001 to 2011, has been a member of the Indiana University College of Arts and Sciences Executive Dean’s Advisory Board since 2010, and recently became a founding member of the IU Astronomy Advisory Board. He's also a director of the Reynolds Field Station in New Mexico.

Mark retired from Shell Oil after over 28 years of operational experience in domestic and international oil and gas exploration and production. He began work in 1979 as a geophysicist, moving to manager of exploration economics, chief geophysicist for Shell Offshore (US Gulf of Mexico), and deepwater prospect development manager. Mark was named vice president, new business development, for Shell EP International Ventures in 1998. In this role, he and his family moved to Moscow in July 2003, where his responsibilities included creating new Shell businesses in Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan. In 2002, he became director of Shell Deepwater Services.

He was named chairman of the board for Enventure Inc., a joint-venture company with Shell and Halliburton. Mark also served as the director of Shell Technology Ventures Inc., which was created to monetize other Shell technologies as appropriate.

Mark loves to share his passion for astronomy and geology with students—and anyone else who will listen—and has “planted” telescopes in Indiana, Montana, Texas, Michigan, New Mexico, Brazil, and Kenya. He created an observatory at the YMCA’s Camp Cullen in Trinity, Texas, and can be found there on clear nights leading the astronomy outreach program.