Gary Griffith

After graduation, Gary joined Arkansas Eastman as a process improvement engineer in their Specialty Intermediates area. In addition to process improvements, Gary also worked with new product startups and technology transfers before moving to manufacturing where he worked directly with customers in addition to day-to-day management of all aspects of his assigned chemical processes. In 2005, Gary transferred to the Eastman headquarter facilities in Kingsport, TN, where he was a Staff Engineer for the Ketones and Plasticizers plants which included leading a multimillion dollar capital project in the Plasticizers area. In 2007, Gary became Plant Manager for the Plasticizers area, which produced 340 million pounds of product (over 20 different products) per year resulting in over $50M in earnings from operations. In 2010, he moved to manage the world wide process improvement engineers group which supported Kingsport’s Plasticizer plant and newly acquired plasticizer units in Chestertown, MD, Texas City, TX, and Estonia, and during this time, two new plants in Texas City and Estonia were designed, built, and started to support the recent extensive growth of Eastman’s Plasticizers business. In August of 2013, Gary moved to his current role as the Technology and Business Research Manager for the Plasticizers business, responsible for the direction and coordination of all R&D including the intellectual property for the business as well as Eastman’s IP strategy for future developments.