From Attendee to Leader: How Women in Chemicals Is Shaping the Next Generation of Industry Leadership

Attendees at the 2025 Conference

© Women in Chemicals

The WIC conferences have changed how I show up as a leader in the broader industry. The openness I experienced at WIC encouraged me to share more reflections on leadership, sponsorship, and career progression on LinkedIn. I didn’t expect what came next, including private messages from women saying a post resonated or that it helped them feel less alone. That feedback reminded me that visibility can be an act of service. When we speak with clarity and generosity, we make the path feel more accessible and help others believe there is a place for them in this industry.

Value for Attendees and Organizations 

One theme that particularly resonated in Houston was leading through ambiguity. A speaker framed it simply: start with what you can control, then consciously choose your perspective on everything else. This landed at a time of restructurings, shifting markets, and pressure to do more with fewer resources. The message was not about pretending to have certainty, but about disciplined focus:

• What can I decide today?
• Where can I create clarity for my team?
• How can I look at constraints from a different angle?

I have carried that approach back to my own organization and into my work with Women in Chemicals. The ambiguity hasn’t gone away, but my response to it has changed. I’m more deliberate about pausing, identifying what I can influence, and translating uncertainty into a small set of clear next steps. By not spending energy on factors I can’t change, I’ve become more focused on my actions. That focus has translated into faster decisions, cleaner execution, and simply getting more done in less time.

The most enduring value of these conferences are the relationships that continue afterwards. In Houston, a talk by Julia Hanft, General Counsel of Wego Chemical Group on navigating board politics stayed with me. She spoke candidly about influence, timing, and how to frame difficult messages in senior forums. I approached her after the session, and we stayed in touch. Today, Julia is someone I call when I am preparing for politically sensitive discussions. She is a senior voice outside my own company who understands both the context and the stakes and makes herself available to lend support to me when needed. This is a connection I would not have had without this forum.

Another example is Svjetlana Jerkovic, Global Procurement Head of Raw Materials at ICL Group. We first connected as peers at WIC and quickly realized we shared similar views on leadership and sponsorship. Over time, we moved from occasional conference conversations to active collaboration inside Women in Chemicals, and she has since joined the board. It is a good illustration of how a conference encounter can grow into shared impact. These are not “contacts” in a superficial sense. They are people I rely on when I need perspective, challenge, or partnership. The WIC Conference has given me access to these women, and the access has allowed me to grow and expand my impact.

From the Leadership Team side, I also see how sponsors engage and how much difference it makes when they truly lean into the WIC community. Our strongest partners, including Brenntag, Jungbunzlauer, Bakelite and Koppers, do more than place a logo. They deliver real impact through thought leadership from their speaker circuits, nominate engaged mentees and mentors, actively participate in sessions, and amplify internal visibility to what their people bring back from the WIC Conference. The impact is concrete. These organizations have stronger talent pipelines as women gain exposure and development beyond their own employer, higher engagement because employees see that their growth is taken seriously, and stronger employer brands for early- and mid-career talent choosing where to build their future. Sponsors who actively participate extract far more value because they choose to fully leverage the platform they have enabled.

Beyond “Once a Year”

The WIC conference lasts three days. The rest of the year we go back to professional settings where women are again the vast minority. After Houston and Chicago, that contrast felt sharper. I carried the memory of a space where women set the tone and men showed up as allies back into my usual, male-dominated meetings.

It left me with a few simple questions I now ask myself and that other leaders should too:

• How can I bring some of this openness and psychological safety into my everyday meetings?
• Which women am I actively bringing into key conversations?
• Am I treating the WIC Conference as a one-off inspiration, or as part of a real strategy to develop and promote women?

The companies that benefit most from WIC do not leave the experience at the conference. They use it as a catalyst to change the rooms women walk into all year long.

When I think about the next five to ten years, my aspirations are clear. For the industry, I want to see a much more balanced participation of women across the entire chemical value chain. These women should be empowered and confident that their gender does not limit what they can achieve. We need that visibility in more women holding P&L responsibility, leading technical organizations, and sitting on boards. For Women in Chemicals, I see continued global reach and deeper, long-term partnerships with key players in every region. We aim to serve women at all career stages, from students deciding to pursue a career in the chemical industry to board level leadership. For my own contribution, I want to keep building the sponsorship function into a truly global engine, with team members on all major continents. Our commitment is to keep our core programs, especially our beloved mentorship program and webinars, free of charge for members. Only the in-person annual conference is a paid exception, so that women’s access to resources that improve their professional lives is never determined by budget.

Houston showed me what it feels like to walk into a room where you finally belong. Chicago showed me what it means to help create that room for others. My hope is that we carry that standard back into our companies and boardrooms and do not save it for just one week a year.