• Elisabeth Brinton, a utility-industry alum, helms oil major Shell’s new energies division. 
• She’s a key figure behind Shell’s commitment to becoming a net-zero company by 2050. 
• Known by her peers as a visionary, Brinton says she will take an approach grounded in data and centered on customers to get there. 
• Her vision for change within the slow-moving utility sector was met with tension in some of her prior roles. 
• Brinton was selected as one of Business Insider’s 100 people transforming business. 
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Elisabeth Brinton doesn’t seem to have trouble reconciling her love for nature — shaped by an upbringing in the Pacific Northwest — with a top job at Royal Dutch Shell, the third-largest oil company in the West. 

Perhaps that’s because, in her role overseeing the firm’s clean-energy business, she has an opportunity to push a large