Angie Schewe
Vice President - Industrial Segment
Valudor Products, LLC
Please meet this week's WOTW, Angie Schewe! Immediately after college, Angie started her career in financial analysis roles. After a few years, she realized she wanted a direct line management position, so she found a mentor that helped her attain a commercial role approximately fifteen years ago as a product manager. Angie quickly realized she was more of an introvert and knew that if she was going to be successful in the commercial arena, she needed to develop an understanding and comfort level with presentations and being in large settings. Angie worked to overcome these hurdles by attending trade shows and taking presentation courses. She also realized that advanced planning was crucial to her success, particularly understanding her role in each meeting or interaction with customers. Seven years ago, Angie received an opportunity to begin a movement into global procurement role at ICL. She later left ICL as VP of the specialty fertilizer business for the Americas. Angie joined Valudor Products two years ago and was excited for this role because it was an opportunity to grow the business line from ground up.
Throughout Angie's time in the industry, she has witnessed changes with DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion). Angie joined the chemical industry in her late 20s at Monsanto, and she stated that Monsanto was a very progressive company at the time, so she saw many female senior executives. They also had a daycare at one of their facilities, and she believed this was a big move because it kept females at the company and allowed them to work knowing their children were being cared for. However, Angie realizes this was very rare in the industry. Today, looking at chemical industry, she sees a lot more women in the C-suite roles or roles on the Board of Directors. She stated that she is not one of the only women at tradeshows anymore and encouraged WIC community members to encourage their organizations to set goals related to DEI and ESG (environmental, social, governance) to help with this movement.
At the end of the interview, we asked Angie for advice for our community and book recommendations. Angie recommended two books: The Cultural Map and Start with the Why She also emphasized how important it is for the industry to find people early in their lives and to involve them in the industry if they want people to find their careers in this industry. Lastly, Angie shared the traits she believes makes an effective people leader - openness, confidence, resilience, trust, and emotional intelligence.
This episode was sponsored by:
