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Plastics Manufacturing

Reinventing plastics with sustainability in mind

Reinventing plastics with sustainability in mind.
As long as there continues to be a need for plastics, there will be an greater need to use them in a way that can benefit future generations. Revolution is a plastics manufacturing company with a focus on environmental impact. For over 25 years, they have been recovering and recycling their products in order to provide customers with sustainable solutions.
Producer: Melissa Panzer

Revolution is a plastics manufacturing company that also collects and recycles their products in order to create a continuous cycle of sustainability.

“Yes, there’s a place for plastics, but plastics couldn’t continue as it was,” says Cherish Changala-Miller, V.P. of Sustainability & Public Affairs at Revolution. “We needed to begin to recycle it and use it in ways that could help not just this generation but future generations.”

Changala-Miller works as a corporate executive for Revolution. Executives such as Changala-Miller plan strategies and policies to ensure that an organization meets its goals. They often have irregular schedules, which may include working evenings and weekends. Travel is common, particularly for chief executives, and executives typically need at least a bachelor’s degree and considerable work experience to enter the occupation.

Benny Wyles serves as the plant manager for Revolution in Little Rock, Arkansas. “Plastics is what I’ve done my whole life, and I’ve always been involved in conservation,” says Wyles, “I came here as a consultant—it was an eye-opener for me. I had to be a part of it.” Plant managers like Wyles play a critical role in ensuring that the products that come off the line meet the company’s standards.

Billy Knighton works as an assistant plant manager at Little Rock’s plant in Wrightsville, Arkansas. “I interact with the nightshift,” says Knighton, “If they had a bad day I would investigate what happened, and then troubleshoot the issues so we could get the plant back into business.” Aside from ensuring that production processes are running smoothly, assistant plant managers like Knighton also tend to other managerial responsibilities, such as training new hires.

Technical production managers like Wyles and Knighton oversee the daily operations of manufacturing plants. Most technical production managers work full time and some work more than 40 hours per week, and they typically need a bachelor’s degree and several years of related work experience.

Amber Zajac works as a senior quality manager at Revolution. “I oversee three of our plants—I talk with the quality managers as well as the plant managers,” says Zajac. “I also talk with our sales team to make sure that the voice of the customer is heard all the way to the floor.” Senior quality managers like Zajac are vital to establishing customer confidence in all of the products that Revolution sells and then recycles.

A quality assurance manager directs, creates and controls an organization’s policies and procedures to ensure that its daily operations and products conform to their quality standards. 

In 2020, the median annual wage for production managers was $108,790. Employment of industrial production managers is projected to grow 5 percent from 2020 to 2030, according to the BLS. Despite limited employment growth, about 13,900 openings for industrial production managers are projected each year, on average, over the decade. Most of those openings are expected to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to different occupations or exit the labor force, such as to retire.

The median annual wage for corporate executives was $185,950 in May 2020. According to the BLS, overall employment of top executives is projected to grow 8 percent from 2020 to 2030, about as fast as the average for all occupations. About 247,100 openings for top executives are projected each year, on average, over the decade. Many of those openings are expected to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to different occupations or exit the labor force, such as to retire. 

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Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.