Published Monday, May 12, 2008

Dow-Corning CEO visits

By Brenda Pedraza-Vidamour

The Times-Herald

Dr. Stephanie Burns -- named as one of Forbe's Most Powerful Women -- is the chairman, president and CEO of Dow Corning Corporation, and on Monday she conducted experiments with students at the Central Educational Center and spoke to a group of women executives and professionals in Newnan.

Burns came to town to address the Executive Women's Forum's inaugural meeting, which was held at the Newnan Country Club. The Executive Women's Forum is a new program offered by the Newnan-Coweta Chamber of Commerce to provide leadership and networking opportunities for Coweta's female business leaders. The invitees and attendees included several high profile women leaders from the Coweta area including Dr. Li Zhu, vice president of Kingwason, Georgia's first Chinese company; State Representative Lynn Smith, R-Newnan; State Court Judge Seay VanPatten Poulakos as well as a host of local attorneys, doctors and other female executives and professionals. Brad Down, vice president and general manager of Cargill, the event's sponsor, was also on hand.

Chamber President Candace LaForge and Jan Alligood, area manager of Georgia Power, explained the program is aimed at informally bringing together women in business to get to know, share and learn from each other. Vicki Kaiser of Piedmont Fayette and Piedmont Newnan Hospitals, introduced Burns.

"This is a very proud moment for me, but very importantly I get to introduce my sister," she said before the sisters fell into a long, warm embrace at the podium.

Burns' opening remarks were about her sister.

"Everyone today has been asking me stories about my sister," Burns said.

She explained that she had waited for a sister for such a long time that when her sister was born, she didn't believe it. Her parents had her oldest brother first, then Burns and 11 years later, she had another brother. The then 12-year-old was so disappointed after the second brother's birth that when Vicki arrived 11 months later, she asked her parents to prove the baby was a girl.

"This was the time when family members didn't go into hospitals," Burns said.

So Vicki was held up naked against the glass of her mother's hospital room.

"My sister had no diaper on or anything. So that was my first image of my sister," she said to bursts of laughter.

The 53-year-old chemist gave the group a brief overview about the $5 billion company, a global leader in silicon-based technology. When the company researched markets that they didn't impact, the only market they found where silicon was not used was worm farming. Silicones, which are highly heat-resistant, are used in thousands of products from hand lotions to the tiles on the underside of the space shuttle.

"Everything we do is based on silicon technology," she said.

Burns shared her career experiences and life "journey," which included marrying young, having a child at 18, divorcing and managing a full-time job and attending college full-time.

She recalled how she took her daughter to classes and labs. She credited her parents -- a father who pushed education and a mother who pushed independence -- as well as a female chemistry professor at Florida International University for encouraging her to pursue her education and career goals.

The professor told her to "put the baby in a backpack and bring the baby to lab."

"She actually went to grad school with me," she said of her daughter who now has two of her own. "I have memories of her writing on the chalkboard," Burns said while she conducted experiments.

Burns later remarried a graduate student. She and her husband Gary, also a organosilicon chemist, earned their doctorate degrees together and joined Dow Corning, also as a couple in 1983 as researchers. They've been married for 28 years, and he's now the senior researcher at the chemical company. While he stayed in research, she was asked to go into management after several years with the company.

"I went home and told my husband, 'I have really messed up. I must have done something wrong in the lab. They want me to go into management,'" she said.

The grandmother of two said she almost declined the opportunity because she loved research, but took the risk anyway -- heeding some of her father's early advice to pursue the most difficult tasks and take risks, one of the many tips and "leadership learnings" she offered to the women in the audience.

In the early '90s, at the heyday of Dow Corning's public relations troubles and lawsuits with leaky silicone breast implants, Burns was asked to join the company's CEO on the Oprah Winfrey Show to defend the science of silicon technology. She had been on the job as the director of the women's health for only six months.

"That was ultimately my most challenging moment," she said. "We went on to the show to talk about subject A, and ended up talking about subject B."

The CEO was told later by colleagues that he would have done a lot better if he would have let Burns do all the talking.

Reaching out and openly communicating was Burns' first and most important lesson in her new role as a leader, she said.

The other things she passed on to the local women business leaders were besides learning to taking risks and openly communicating were:

* Always be yourself.

* Establish a set of core values, be true to them and flexible with everything else.

* Develop and nurture good relationships.

* Hire and retain the right people.

* Discuss issues early and take full responsibility for them.

* Give 100 percent of the credit to your team since they are the ones who do all the work.

* Make yourself accessible.

* Have fun and passion with your career.

Burns has a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Florida International University, a doctorate degree in organic chemistry from Iowa State University and conducted her post-doctoral studies at Universite Montpellier in France.

She became president and chief operating officer of Dow Corning in 2003, and chief executive officer in 2004. She took the helm as chairman, president and CEO in 2006.

Dow Corning, which is jointly owned by Dow Chemical Co. and Corning Inc., has headquarters in Midland, Mich. The chemical company employs 10,000 worldwide in 50 locations including the Americas, Asia and Europe. Under her watch, Forbes noted that she has successfully led the company out of bankruptcy following the silicone breast backlash of the '90s. Burns now preaches to industry groups about the importance of science education in schools.