2015 Alumni Professional Achievement Award Winner
Jim Flood grew up in Clarksville, Tennessee. After his father died in an accident in military service, his mother worked hard to raise and send three boys to college. All three Flood brothers graduated from UT with engineering degrees. As a result of his dad’s accident, Flood came away with a real commitment to safety and has continued to work hard to assure everyone comes home safely to their family every night. As the ExxonMobil Development Company’s vice president of Arctic and Eastern Canada, he is responsible for major upstream projects in Arctic regions in Russia, Alaska, and offshore Newfoundland. It is no coincidence that his teams have won the ExxonMobil Development Company’s President’s Safety Award 15 times.
Flood joined Exxon in 1980 after graduating from the Tickle College of Engineering with a BS in civil engineering. He worked for 12 years in production operations in Louisiana, Texas, and Wyoming. For more than 28 years, he has been involved in major projects in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, Russia, and Newfoundland. Flood is a regular speaker at major industry conferences on topics including both leadership in safety and best practices for major projects.
Flood has established the Larry and Alex Flood Endowed Scholarship to honor his late brother and nephew. The scholarship is awarded with preference given to students who benefit from the Tennessee Pledge Scholarship. He is a member of the Tickle College of Engineering’s Board of Advisors and was inducted into the college’s Hall of Fame in 2017. Additionally, Flood is lead champion for the initiative to engage UT alumni employed by ExxonMobil to take advantage of the ExxonMobil Foundation’s three-to-one educational matching gift program.
