ACA Industry Awards Dinner

April 29, 2024 | Indianapolis Marriott Downtown Indianapolis, IN

PRESENTATION OF AWARDS

The American Coatings Association (ACA) recognized industry members with awards presented during ACA’s Awards Reception & Dinner, which was held prior to the American Coatings Show in Indianapolis.

Learn more about the Awards and recipients below by clicking the ‘+’ sign.

   

short-course-Radiation-cured (WordPr)
tom kelly (Worpress)
sandy berg (Worpress)
molly-burns (Worpress)
greg-johnson (Worpress)
chuck bennett (Worpress)

Industry Statesman Awards

The Industry Statesman Award is an honor given to individuals in recognition of their career-long devotion and service to the industry.

Jeff Filley retired at the end of 2023 as president of Behr Paint Company, after 39 years in the industry. He began his career at Behr in 1985 and became CFO in 1990; executive vice president in 1999, and then president in 2002. Under his leadership, Behr experienced global growth, innovative product innovations, retail partnership expansions and earned numerous product, brand and industry recognitions. Filley served several terms on ACA’s Executive Committee, Board of Directors, Awards Committee, Nominating Committee, and was an active member and participant of ACA’s California Paint Council. He received his B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and MBA from Pepperdine University.

Jeff Filley

Laurel Jamison spent 50 years with the Rudd Company, where she began her career in 1974 in afternoon wallpaper sales and progressed to the role of president and CEO. During that time, she led Rudd’s entry into the decorative concrete and specialty market with the acquisition of an artisan-finish, cement-based product that became the foundation for the SkimStone brand; as well as the acquisition of Glitsa American, Inc. — a key supplier to the professional floor finisher and the original source for Swedish Floor Finish. Throughout her career, Jamison has been an avid industry and ACA supporter, serving on several ACA Committees, including the Industrial Coatings, Consumer Products, SME, Sustainability, and PaintPAC Steering Committees. She also served several terms on ACA’s Board of Directors, Budget and Finance, and Nominating and Awards Committees. At the local level, she was an outspoken leader of ACA’s Pacific Northwest Paint Council, raising the profile of local industry and its concerns at the state and local level, as well as through the Puget Sound Paint & Coatings Association. Prior to joining the industry, Jamison served as a U.S. Army Nurse in Vietnam from 1970 to 1971, after earning a B.S. in Nursing from the University of Michigan.

Laurel Jamison

Doug Mattscheck retired from ICP Group after 15 years as president and CEO in July 2023. He joined the company in November 2015 after serving as CEO and president of Quest Specialty Chemicals for three years. Prior to that, he was CEO and president of AGY, Inc., from 2004 to 2012, and president of Saint Gobain Technical Fabrics Group from 1996 to 2004. Mattscheck served several terms on ACA’s Executive Committee, Board of Directors, Budget & Finance Committee, and Awards and PaintPAC Steering Committee. He earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Villanova University and MBA from the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School.

Doug Mattscheck

Michael McGarry retired as PPG executive chairman on Oct. 1, 2023. He served as chairman and chief executive officer from 2016 to 2022, after transitioning into the CEO role in September 2015. McGarry served as ACA’s chairman from 2020 to 2022. He also served several terms on ACA’s Executive Committee, Board of Directors, Budget & Finance, Nominating, Awards, and PaintPAC Steering Committees. McGarry joined PPG in 1981 as an engineer at the company’s Lake Charles, La. chemicals complex. He then progressed through management assignments, including market development manager, Silica Products; operations manager, Silicas, Thailand; business manager, TESLIN® Sheet; and product manager in the Derivatives, Chlorine, Liquid and Dry Caustic Soda businesses. In 2000, McGarry became general manager, Fine Chemicals, and in 2004, was named vice president, Chlor-alkali and Derivatives. He relocated to PPG’s European headquarters in Rolle, Switzerland, as vice president, Coatings, Europe, and managing director, PPG Europe, in 2006. McGarry returned to the United States as senior vice president of the Commodity Chemicals reporting segment in 2008 and was elected executive vice president in 2012 and chief operating officer in 2014. He became president and chief operating officer in March 2015, and joined the company’s board of directors in July 2015 while serving in that role. McGarry currently serves on the Board of Directors of United States Steel Corporation and is a former member of the board of Axiall Corporation. He is a Mechanical Engineering graduate of the University of Texas and completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.

Michael McGarry

John Morikis is executive chairman of The Sherwin-Williams Company. He retired as the company’s chairman and CEO in December 2023. He has served on ACA’s Executive Committee, Board of Directors, Nominating Committee, and PaintPAC Steering Committee. Morikis joined Sherwin-Williams in 1984 as a management trainee in the Paint Stores Group and is the first member of this program to become CEO. During his more than 39 years at the company, he has held positions of increasing responsibility including president and general manager of the Paint Stores Group, and chief operating officer. In addition to serving as a member of The Sherwin-Williams Company Board of Directors, Morikis is a director of Fortune Brands Innovations, Inc. and General Mills, Inc. He also serves as chairman of the Board of Directors of University Hospitals Health System and is a director and former chair of the Policy Advisory Board of the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. Morikis earned bachelor’s degrees in both Business Administration and Psychology from Saint Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Ind., and a master’s degree in Business from National Louis University in Evanston, Ill.

John Morikis

Thierry Vanlancker retired as global CEO and chairman of AkzoNobel in April 2023. From 2018 through 2022, Vanlancker served on ACA’s Executive Committee, Board of Directors, and Nominating Committee. He is currently chairman of Sika AG, chairman of Aliaxis, and serves on the Boards of Etex and Stahl, and as advisor for private equity firm CVC Capital Partners. In 1988, Vanlancker joined DuPont in Sales Benelux for Packaging & Industrial Polymers Division in Belgium, remaining there through 1998, in roles such as global technical manager and global product line manager, including two years in Germany and four years in Wilmington, Del. In 1999, he moved to the DuPont Performance Coatings division to be part of the Global Acquisition and Integration team, where he helped implement the Herberts (former Hoechst coatings) division. From 2000 to 2004 he was European business manager at DuPont Car Refinish Coatings for EMEA & Asia. Then, after a 5-year period as global business manager of DuPont’s Fluoroproducts Division in Wilmington, he returned to Germany to work on the divestiture of DuPont Performance Coatings, which became Axalta. Vanlancker was named global president of Chemicals and Fluoroproducts in 2012. This division became part of DuPont’s spin-off, Chemours, in late 2015. He joined AkzoNobel in mid-2016 as a member of its Global Executive Committee to run the Performance Chemicals Division out of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, before being appointed AkzoNobel’s Global CEO and chairman mid-2017. Vanlancker earned an M.S. in Chemical Engineering and Philosophy at the State University of Ghent in Belgium.

Thierry Vanlancker

Industry Excellence Award

 

The Industry Excellence Award recognizes individuals with numerous years of service to the industry, specifically for technical contributions or participation on ACA’s Issue Management Committees. ACA presented this award to Kurt Wood, retired senior principal scientist at Arkema, Inc., and current consultant in coatings and service-life prediction, who has over 30 years of experience in the coatings industry.

Wood began his industry career at Rohm and Haas Company in 1989, working in Industrial Coatings R&D, where he developed outdoor-durable coatings for the European building industry, acrylic binders for two-pack urethane and radiation-curable latex coatings for the wood coatings industry, and provided applications support for the first commercial powder coatings crosslinker based on hydroxy alkylamide chemistry, Primid® XL-552. His accomplishments were recognized by the Rohm and Haas Company Vice-President’s Award and resulted in four commercial latex products and seven granted U.S. patents. In 1996, Wood joined the Coatings R&D group of the KYNAR® PVDF business of Elf Atochem (now part of Arkema, Inc.), contributing significantly to the development of a then-new waterborne platform (KYNAR Aquatec® emulsion platform) for coatings, based on semi-crystalline PVDF polymer. Notably, to make the new platform commercially viable, Kurt developed specific models for Florida gloss and color retention, chalking and film erosion for these materials. The work to develop this platform was recognized with the 2014 American Chemical Society Award for Team Innovation and the 2010 Prix Pierre Potier Award for Innovation in Chemistry related to Sustainable Development.

Wood received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Davis in 1977, and Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1981. He is the recipient of several industry awards for his research, including the 1994 Eurocoat 2nd Prize Best Paper; the 2004 John A. Gordon Best Paper Award; the 2014 American Coatings Conference Best Paper Award; the 2017 CoatingsTech Conference Best Paper Award; the 2021 SSPC Technical Achievement Award; and ACA’s CoatingsTech Conference Mattiello Memorial Lecture Award.

Industry Achievement Award


The Industry Achievement Award recognizes individuals for their specific contributions to an industry project or association effort. ACA presented Adriana Hemann, senior R&D scientist at The Sherwin-Williams Company, with the Industry Achievement Award for her stewardship of ACA’s ACA’s STEM video project to attract college-level STEM students to a career in the coatings industry. This video features industry members talking about the expansive nature of coatings with themes of sustainability, diversity, social impact, and answering growing technology challenges. With a call to action to Explore Coatings and learn more about the industry, this effort aims to aid in the recruitment of the next generation of the coatings industry workforce.

Hemann joined Sherwin-Williams in May 2015. In this role, she applies her extensive experience in materials design and development, analytical data science, and multi-project management. She has served as chair of ACA’s Science & Technology STEM Subcommittee since September 2021.

Hemann received her B.S. in Chemistry from Baldwin-Wallace College, where she received abundant recognition, including the Lubrizol Foundation Chemistry Award; Chemistry Department Memorial Scholarship; and American Institute of Chemists Award. In 2015, she earned a Ph.D. in Inorganic/Analytical Chemistry from Case Western Reserve University, where she received the Graduate Student Appreciation Award for three consecutive years.

She is a member of the American Chemical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Material Research Society, and Iota Sigma Pi — Fluorine Chapter.

Distinguished Partner Award

 

The Distinguished Partner Award recognizes longstanding partners who have distinguished themselves through profound commitment and support of industry that has proven vital to the success of the association. ACA presented this award to Juergen Nowak, who retired at the end of 2023 as a member of the Vincentz Network’s Executive Board, and is now Vincentz’s Special Middle East Envoy and member of the Board of the Middle East Paint and Coatings Association based in Dubai.

During his 35-year career, he served as junior editor at “Europe China Business” in Rheine, Germany; and editor, and subsequently editor-in-chief at Vincentz Network in Hanover, Germany, prior to becoming publisher and manager of Vincentz’s Coatings Division.

From 1990 to 2023, Nowak collaborated with ACA on various publications, conferences and international initiatives aimed at educating and raising the profile of the coatings industry worldwide. This culminated in the joint design and launch of the fledgling American Coatings Show and Conference in 2008. For the last 16 years, this partnership has given industry a platform to showcase the most innovative coatings products and solutions and create connections for our industry and the professionals who work in it.

Additionally, the ACA and Vincentz Network partnership grew to co-hosting the World Coatings Summit — a seminal event bringing together industry’s thought leaders for a global forum on coatings — as well as the founding of AC Media.

Nowak earned degrees in Literature and Communication from London University in the United Kingdom and the Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany.

 

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS

CONTACT

To learn more about the ACA Awards Dinner and recipients, please contact ACA at communications@paint.org.