PC P RO F I LE S
Beyond the Fundamentals Anna Davis OPC ’92 by Mark F. Bernstein OPC ’79
Of all the things Alice Davis taught her in 10th grade chemistry, Anna Davis OPC ’92 said that one line stands out. “She used to say, ‘Everything I am telling you now is a lie,’” Davis (no relation) recalled. By that, her teacher meant that real-world chemistry is actually much more complicated than the simplified, introductory version that necessarily forms any high school curriculum. “She wanted you to understand the subject but also know that there was so much more to come.”
her current job, as R&D Strategy Leader, she helps Dow’s chief technology officer manage the company’s R&D portfolio ($1.6 billion as reported in 2016), developing and improving products for one of the largest chemical companies in the world. Davis has spent her entire industrial career at Dow, based in Midland, Mich. She started in the lab as a senior chemist focusing on watersoluble polymers and renewable chemical feedstocks, eventually heading several large R&D projects and supervising teams of researchers. In April 2016, she moved into her current post, where she interacts across Dow’s multiple businesses, advancing materials
and technology that impact consumer and industrial products across many markets. “When I came to interview here, I was amazed at the depth of science and the significant investment in cutting-edge methods,” Davis said. She attributed Dow’s dominant position in the market to its ability to translate that basic research into products that address important challenges and touch people across the globe. “It is an interesting approach to science,” she said. “A new product isn’t just something to be written up for a journal article. It has to be scaled and go to market.” Research and development is critical for an international corporation such as Dow, with ties to so many different industries. “We’re introducing new products all the time and improving existing ones,” Davis explained. Having someone in a strategic role who understands the basic chemistry is critical. A PC lifer, Davis was also in the first class of girls to graduate from Penn Charter and was
Anna Davis lives in Michigan with her husband, Jeff, and daughters Abigail, 8, and Lucy, 6–and their Newfoundland dog.
Anna Davis learned how true those words were, majoring in chemistry at Yale, earning a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, and conducting postdoctoral research as a National Institutes of Health fellow at Northwestern. For the last 10 years, she has worked as a research chemist and research and development (R&D) leader with Dow Chemical Company. In
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Anna Davis, far left, was president of the Class of 1992, the first in the modern era to graduate girls. The other class officers are Catherine McGuckin, Todd Goulding, and Alexander Colley.
