On the Move: Drax and Yorkshire make senior hires

Drax has appointed a chair designate ahead of Philip Cox stepping down after nine years in the role.

Andrea Bertone has joined the company’s board as a non-executive director and will take over chairing duties from 1 January 2024.

Bertone was formerly the president of Duke Energy’s international division. During her 15 years with the company she managed an energy portfolio of 4,400MW of hydro and thermal assets. Prior to that, Bertone held senior legal positions and sits as a non-executive on the boards of various companies across manufacturing, waste management and energy firms, including coal mining firm, Peabody Energy Corporation.

She said: “As the global transition to net zero intensifies, opportunities are growing in carbon removals, renewable power and biomass.”

Meanwhile, Yorkshire Water has appointed Imran Patel as group director of customer experience as part of its overhaul of how it delivers customer services. Patel joins from Sky where he spent 20 years developing transformation programmes focused on customers.

His most recent role was overseeing 4,000 engineers to deliver Sky’s home services.

Prior to Sky, Patel worked at BT leading field teams, contact centres and other service-related teams.

Yorkshire chief executive Nicola Shaw, said: “Imran’s experience in managing the delivery of UK-wide services for Sky and BT, along with his passion for transformation and customer experience match well with our ambitions and we’re delighted that he will be joining our team.”

CCW’s  independent board member Robert Wilson has had his tenure extended for another three years. Environment secretary Therese Coffey confirmed the reappointment of the former Conservative MP for Reading, who first joined CCW in 2018 before having his term extended to December 2023.