Doug Gurr

Gurr was born in Leeds, England, in July 1964, to parents from New Zealand, and his father was head of the English department at the University of Nairobi.[2] He was educated at the University of Cambridge[3] where he studied the Mathematical Tripos and the University of Edinburgh where he was awarded a PhD in 1990 for research on semantic frameworks using monads supervised by Gordon Plotkin.[1]

Gurr began his career as an academic teaching maths and computing at the Aarhus University in Denmark,[4] before working for the United Kingdom's Civil Service.[5]

Gurr then worked for McKinsey & Co, for six years, where he became a partner.[2][3][5] He then founded Blueheath, an internet-enabled stockless wholesaler, which was later sold to Booker Group.[3][5]

He was then a main board director of Asda.[3] He joined Amazon in 2011, and was China country manager from 2014 to 2016, before becoming UK country manager in 2016, succeeding Chris North who left to become CEO of Shutterfly.[3][6]

Gurr has been the chairman of the British Heart Foundation since 2015, and a non-executive director of the UK government's Department for Work and Pensions.[3][6][7] He is also a trustee[8] of the Landmark Trust.[9]

In July 2018, Gurr received widespread attention for his claim that a no-deal Brexit could lead to civil unrest "within two weeks".[10][11]

Gurr was appointed as director of the Natural History Museum, London in 2020.[12]

As of 2021, he is a non-executive director of the Department of Health and Social Care, with 'responsibility for the union'.[13][14]

From July 2022, Gurr was appointed chair of the board of trustees of The Alan Turing Institute, the UK's national institute for data science and artificial intelligence. [15]

Gurr is married, with two children, and lives in London and Yorkshire.[7][16] He is a former Scottish international triathlete, and a keen ski mountaineer.[4][17]