SMC CORPORATION OF AMERICA

from Women in packaging 2023

STACY

Mission: Our mission is to contribute to automation and labor-saving operations in industries through delivering highquality and high-performance automatic control equipment to customers in all kinds of industrial sectors throughout the world. Location: Noblesville, Ind. (Global HQ: Japan)

Leadership: Kelley Stacy, CEO/President of SMC Corporation of America

Revenue: Approximately $6 billion

Employees: More than 1,500 in the US, more than 21,000 globally

Facility: 2.6M+ sq. ft. North American Headquarters plus 30 sales of ce locations.

Markets served: Global

Industries: Food and beverage, brewery, packaging, medical, pharmaceutical, bio-pharma, semiconductor, automotive, machine tool, natural resource, mining, water treatment, power generation, steel, asphalt and aggregates

Product range: Comprehensive range of automation, controls, and process components including actuators, grippers, valves, electric actuators, ionizers, vacuum, air preparation, sensors, process gas, industrial communication, chillers, dryers, connectors, tubing, high vacuum, regulators, and training equipment.

Unilever

Location: London, U.K.

Company Revenue: €60.1 billion

Employees: 148,000

Industry: Beauty and Wellbeing, Personal Care, Home Care, Nutrition, and Ice Cream products

KELLY MUROSKY Sustainable Packaging Manager

What is the most rewarding part of your job today?

I love that my work directly contributes to Unilever’s waste-free world vision and helps to reduce our environmental impact. For example, helping to roll out 100% PCR (post-consumer recycled) content in our plastic bottles, which involves a huge amount of technical work and innovation.

Being on the front lines of the sustainable packaging movement allows me to actively contribute to protecting the planet and create a more sustainable future — something I personally nd incredibly rewarding.

What has been the most important skill you’ve developed as you advanced your career?

One of the values and skills I’ve learned is to collaborate deliberately – a key value that is taught and instilled in everyone who works at Seventh Generation. Collaboration is of course vital to the work we do in the packaging eld. To launch a product, we naturally nd ourselves working cross functionally within our organizations and across value chains.

Deliberate collaboration, however, is so important because when you actively seek out diverse opinions from people with different backgrounds, expertise, and perspectives, you can learn so much more. In my current role and at a global business like Unilever, being a deliberate and effective collaborator when leading a team can really help to improve decision making and increase ef ciency, especially when working across multiple geographies and packaging formats.

What can the industry do better to support women and increase the number of women in leadership positions?

In my view, companies have a very important role in supporting women throughout their careers. For example, everything from addressing unconscious biases in recruitment processes and providing exible working arrangements to supporting the work-life balance of parents. These types of considerations absolutely provide the necessary opportunities, skills, knowledge, and con dence to help women thrive and advance in their careers.

Research from UNESCO suggests that women account for just 30% of the world’s scientists and researchers, and only 35% of all higher education students enrolled in science, technology, engineering or mathematics-related (STEM) courses, so it’s really important that educational opportunities are also simultaneously opened up to help more women get into science-based careers in the rst place.

Within Unilever, 49% of our packaging R&D team are women — a balance I appreciate greatly as part of our ambition to build the most innovative, high-performing R&D team in the industry.

The Packaging & Processing Women’s Leadership Network (PPWLN) is a place for women in the packaging and processing community to build connections, share experiences, and be inspired.