We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit. - AristotleAs Chief Strategist and COO I challenge boundaries and push organizations to achieve excellence. I confront the mores that have become ingrained in organizations, but limit performance. I enjoy tackling complex problems and difficult organizational issues. I utilize my unique mix of technical expertise, business acumen and organizational savvy to create winning strategies. I operate comfortably across industries and technologies; from specialty and commodity chemicals to emerging technologies, universities, government agencies, healthcare organizations, professional sports teams and many others. There is no challenge too difficult.

When organizations become enamored by technology for the sake of technology, they STOP innovating.Early in my tenure, a former R&D director called me and said, “You don’t understand, our job in R&D is to create intellectual property.” To which I responded, “Our job is to innovate, driven by the voice of the customer and generate new product sales.” Vision, focus, structure, process, were the “issues” I attacked as VP R&D and Marketing to rejuvenate innovation. Additionally, I was charged with leading the acquisition of FMC's European Process Additives Business. My strength in innovation comes from a continuous desire to improve, to deliver the best, to lead, to define, to remake with an eye towards excellence. I have the energy and focus, skill and temperament to create and lead highly innovative organizations.

Understand your customer, but don’t be defined by them.When I took on the VP/GM role for the Personal Care market I inherited acquisitions, supply agreements, shared manufacturing and a legacy of less than perfect customer satisfaction. With a nucleus of talented functional people, I led a strategy that could either fail miserably or succeed wildly. I refused to fail. By segmenting our markets, being ruthless about quality, creating global customer service, and setting impossible goals for innovation (and reaching them) we moved closer to the final customer and became more valuable to our direct customer along the way.My strength is in building and operating high performance organizations.

Focus on “the critical few” and build strength through diversity and equifinality.Accomplishing a green-field start up and conversion to 7-day operations while growing dramatically is challenging enough, but doing that in a very compressed time frame is almost impossible. With two experienced production superintendents from totally different backgrounds, one an ex-marine and the other from the training function, I learned there is more than one way to get exceptional results. By mapping our operations, incorporating experimental design, building stringent safety and quality processes and utilizing the power of MBTI® to create superior team performance, we outperformed even our “stretch” goals and had fun doing it!My strength is delivering exceptional outcomes by creating open, committed, team environments.