1. Christopher Pell Liddell was born on 24 April 1958 and is a New Zealand-American businessperson who served as chief financial officer of Microsoft, the vice chairman of General Motors, senior vice president and CFO of International Paper, director and chairman of Xero and the White House deputy chief of staff in the first Trump administration.
Chris Liddell was born in Matamata, New Zealand, the youngest of five siblings.
Chris Liddell's father was a school teacher and died while Liddell was young.
Chris Liddell holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree with honors from the University of Auckland and a Master of Philosophy degree from Worcester College, Oxford University.
Chris Liddell was named one of Auckland University's Distinguished Alumni in 2003.
Chris Liddell has been married to Renee Harbers Liddell, since 2011.
Chris Liddell rose to the role of joint-CEO and managing director of CS First Boston NZ.
When Chris Liddell left Carter Holt Harvey, the company was New Zealand's largest forest owner managing around 330,000 hectares and the country's second largest listed company by market capitalization, with sales of NZ$3.75 billion.
From 2003, Chris Liddell served as CFO of Carter Holt Harvey's parent company International Paper until 2005.
Chris Liddell was a senior vice president and CFO of Microsoft, where, from 2005 to December 2009, he was responsible for leading their worldwide finance organization.
Chris Liddell oversaw Microsoft's acquisition strategy and helped to transform the company by tripling the rate of acquisitions.
Chris Liddell served as vice chairman and chief financial officer at General Motors, where he managed the company's $23 billion IPO in November 2010, which, at that time, which was the largest public offering in history.
In 2012, Chris Liddell was executive director of transition planning for the Romney Presidential Campaign and helped author The Romney Readiness Project, a comprehensive presidential transition guide.
Chris Liddell proposes that candidates should focus on key tasks during this "Year Zero" to set themselves up for success, such as assembling a leadership team and preparing for crises.
Chris Liddell opted to receive the minimum salary required to get health insurance, $30,000.
Chris Liddell was appointed director of the American Technology Council and was a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
Chris Liddell served as the White House lead for the Trillion Trees Initiative, part of the Trillion Tree Campaign, which aims to conserve, restore, and grow a trillion trees around the world by 2030.
Chris Liddell oversaw the Administration's contribution, and represented the White House during its engagements with 1t.
On 20 January 2021, the OECD confirmed that Chris Liddell had withdrawn his nomination to serve as the secretary-general of the OECD.
Chris Liddell is founding chairman of the Next Foundation, a NZD $100 million dollar foundation in New Zealand focused on environmental and education projects.
Chris Liddell was a signatory to the Tomorrow Accord, an agreement between the New Zealand government and NEXT to focus on large scale ecological restoration projects, and commit to maintaining their ecological benefits in perpetuity.
In 2001, Chris Liddell was on the conference committee for the Catching the Knowledge Wave project, one of the biggest meeting of minds to take place in New Zealand history.
In 2008, Chris Liddell was patron of the University of Auckland's inaugural Leading the Way fundraising campaign.
Chris Liddell was chairman of Project Crimson, a conservation group, and was active in a number of environmental projects in New Zealand, such as the restoration of Rotoroa Island and the Abel Tasman National Park.
Chris Liddell was a founding trustee of Pure Advantage, a registered New Zealand charity, which supports a broad range of sustainability, regenerative and green growth-focused research activities.
Chris Liddell is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Later that year, Chris Liddell donated $450,000 to Auckland University to fund a postgraduate scholarship to Worcester College, Oxford.
In 2021, Chris Liddell joined the Blavatnik School of Government on a Transformational Leadership Fellowship.
In 2022, Karthik Ramanna and Chris Liddell raised philanthropic funding to help drive further carbon accounting pilots of the E-liability accounting method, resulting in the creation of the E-liability Institute, where Chris Liddell serves as chairman.
Additionally, Chris Liddell is a visiting research fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford.
Chris Liddell has served as trustee of the New Zealand Sports Foundation and as a director of the New Zealand Rugby Union.
Chris Liddell was the driving force behind the purchase of Peter Snell's 1964 Tokyo Olympics running singlet for Te Papa Museum.
Chris Liddell spearheaded and funded a campaign to assemble and publicly display the most important All Black jerseys in the team's 120-year history.