SCI Stephanie Burns Interview
Stephanie Burns, new Honorary President of SCI
Dr. Stephanie Burns, chairman, president and CEO of Dow Corning Corporation, has recently been appointed Honorary President of SCI, which comes in recognition of a very successful career in industry and her ability to act as a prestigious figurehead for SCI.
1. You are Dow Corning’s second scientist CEO. How has being a scientist shaped your leadership of the company?
Being a scientist in a very technology-driven company has helped me understand the need for a strong innovation portfolio, both short-term and medium- to long-term. My background in research early on in my career helped me develop a strong understanding for the need to combine science with an understanding of the marketplace and of trends that hint at where the world might be in five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years. Companies need to develop products that find their way into useful, sustainable applications. The full understanding of the marketplace was something I brought forward throughout my career.
2. You began your career as a researcher, and then progressed in the corporate ladder up to the position of CEO. What are the biggest lessons you have learned along the way?
One is to stay very close to your customers to understand what their needs are, and the problems they are trying to solve. Don’t just be internally focused; the more you can get out there, the better. I try to spend as much time as I can with current and potential customers in different industries to get a sense of where we need to go with our technology.
The second one is to constantly communicate in the most transparent way that you can. Whether that’s with my colleagues on the leadership team, with all employees, or with external stakeholders such as the communities we live in, our customers, government, or regulators - you have to constantly communicate. I have learned to say things five and ten times as a rule; you can’t just say it once and assume that the communication has been received.
At Dow Corning, we spend a lot of time holding ‘town halls’ with employees, doing what I call ‘teaching’, which is describing what the strategy is, why we are doing things, and what we expect to happen. This provides an opportunity for them to ask questions and for me to learn from employees in the company about what is important and what they are seeing in their aspect of the business or in the countries where they live. It is a wonderful two-way process. I believe the communication the other way is as open and transparent as it is from me.
3. From your own experience as a scientist leading a world-class company, how can SCI effectively play a part in innovation within the chemical industry, to be ‘where science meets business’?
I believe SCI can play a very strong role with respect to sustainability and linking science and its application to solving problems that are important to the world right now. Think of the challenges with carbon footprint reduction, energy efficiency, fuel efficiencies, the whole realm of renewable energy, and combine that with what’s becoming demographically more important, with world health. I believe that chemistry and science can play a bigger role than they play today. To me, chemistry is so vital to help us address all of these issues.
SCI can highlight the importance of these issues, and bring academics, government, business people and other stakeholders together in forums where discussions can take place. SCI can serve as a real knowledge holder, a communicator and problem solver. I think now is the time to step up and do it.
4. You have led Dow Corning to engage with the community and use its ‘brain power’ to support science education. Can you offer pointers for SCI to engage with the community?
At Dow Corning, we spend a lot of time in the community, contributing to science and math education. When I look at the three pillars of sustainability, the social responsibility pillar is critical for us as we contribute to education. It’s important to me personally, and to our company. For kids around the world to engage more in math and science – and to be excited about it – would be a great thing. We’ve seen children in grade school ages absolutely loving science and embracing it, yet in many Western countries they lose this interest in their teenage years. I’d love to encourage more kids to get into math and science, and not view it as something that may be extremely difficult or maybe ‘nerdy’. I think SCI could help facilitate getting scientific leaders into grade schools and middle schools to talk about the real-life application of science into products and materials, and things that these kids experience every day.
In the US and I suspect also in the UK, teachers need a lot of support. They are working with limited budgets and their time is spent on a lot of bureaucratic requirements; there’s a lot we can do to help them teach science. One thing we did last summer, which was a success and we’re going to repeat, was to have an academy for science teachers. They came into Dow Corning for two days, and they went into our labs, they did experiments, they made products, they understood how personal care products work on the skin, for example, and they walked out with a different level of excitement. We followed that up with support for them to put on some of these programs in their classrooms. Some of the teachers we brought in were from the same school, yet they had never had a day to interact with their colleagues because they are so busy.
In Wales, we have a facility where we have a natural pond that we have restored to its natural state, and we’ve built an educational facility powered by renewable resources and with energy-efficient methods for lighting and heating. We bring in kids from the local schools to experience the natural wildlife that is now starting to come back into the area – birds, fish and insects. I believe this is the kind of thing that companies should be doing, and it’s an area where I think SCI could contribute.
Getting scientists out there; getting pensioners and retirees more active, whether they have an academic or business background, getting them to volunteer to schools and to run laboratory demonstrations at shopping centres. We need to capture the imagination of these kids again. These are some ideas I have that I believe we can incorporate into our thinking in SCI.
5. How can SCI contribute towards the development of young scientists’ careers?
Young people today use different methods for networking than people my age grew up using. To them, social networking is very powerful. I think we need to think differently about how we reach out to the next generation. We need to provide a mechanism for mentorship that uses the kind of tools they’re used to using for communication as opposed to the more traditional tools. Maybe SCI could help facilitate Twitter mentorship, for example.
Certainly, when we’re reaching out to young career employees, we know we have to embrace these tools, because that’s how they communicate, learn and network.
6. As Honorary President, you will be representing SCI in industrial forums. Will knowledge transfer be on the agenda as you represent SCI in meetings of industry leaders?
I think we can play a strong role in technology and knowledge transfer amongst various groups of industrial stakeholders, and I hope I can contribute. I know that the knowledge transfer role is a key one SCI has played in the past and intends to play in the future. As Honorary President, I will do what I can to encourage collaboration across different groups.
7. Finally, are you excited to become SCI’s Honorary President?
Absolutely! I am very excited. It’s truly an honour. I will embrace the responsibility that comes with this and dedicate myself at every opportunity to SCI. Obviously, I have a full-time job at Dow Corning that keeps me busy, but with my travels and with the interactions that I have the opportunity to be present at, I hope to represent SCI very well.