Mary Beth Seasholtz
Technology Principal
Dow Inc.
I am excited to reproducibly make something that is useful for family, neighbors and society. Within the manufacturing environment, I want technical people to be successful with little frustration. Data and knowledge should be readily available and easy to contextualize, so brainpower is spent on excellent decision making, not searching and formatting!
Mary Beth is well known in the chemical industry and has played an integral role throughout her 27-year career at Dow. Perhaps most notably, she was an early developer of advanced multivariate technologies, having the foresight to see the opportunities inherent in process chemometrics and hiring talent that proceeded to set Dow’s analytics apart. Her initial idea has since delivered hundreds of millions of dollars to Dow in vetted value/ROI. She is also responsible for introducing Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence (EMI) to Dow, and as technology leader, she continues to develop new analytics tools through the Manufacturing 4.0 program.
Mary Beth regularly shares her experiences and knowledge with groups and individuals. Besides supporting women’s career development through Dow’s own Women’s Innovation Network and other employee groups, Mary Beth hosts a televised series geared toward young professionals in which she interviews senior Dow technical contributors about their careers. Mary Beth also supports young women who want to go back to school for advanced degrees by helping them focus on their precise goals and ensuring they select the best program to achieve them.
Mary Beth drives positive change both inside and outside of the workplace with her vision and “can do” attitude. For example, she recently led an effort to revitalize neglected ball fields in her neighborhood. She convinced the township of the benefits and then worked with civic and private organizations to make her dream a reality. Mary Beth also successfully led an unlikely coalition of lakefront property owners to build a handicap-accessible ramp to a new fishing pier. Helping commercial landowners understand that not only was the ramp important, it would help their businesses—she arranged for the township to manage the funds she secured for the project. In the end, the whole community pitched in.
