Global Director, Environmental, Health, Safety and Process Safety - Specialty Chemicals

Why you should be interested in this role: This role focuses on building the safety operating system for an industry-leading, diverse specialty chemicals platform owned by a private equity firm. The business has moved from a commodity supplier to a specialty ingredients supplier serving pharma, healthcare, personal care, electronics, coatings, and resins customers. Safety is the first slide at the board and the first question in a customer audit. The current leader has delivered real results and is retiring. The next leader is being hired to make those results durable. This is not a corporate compliance role. With sites across the United States, Europe, and Asia, a network built through acquisition, and a spectrum of site maturity that runs from plants needing work on fundamentals to plants ready to set the standard for the rest, this role builds the site-by-site baselines, the cadence, and the site leader ownership that produce safety results without depending on any one person. Site EHS resources report to this role on a solid line. The site leaders who own the outcomes do not. The mechanism is credibility and partnership, not authority. The candidate who fills this role will have done it before. They will have built an EHS management system across a multi-site specialty chemical network, tied it into the plant operating rhythm rather than a separate EHS calendar, moved site leaders from complying with the standard to owning it, and left behind results that held after they moved on. Role CTQs (Critical to Quality) 15+ years of progressive EHS and process safety leadership in specialty or fine chemicals manufacturing, with personal accountability for a global or multi-region, multi-site EHS organization in a recent or current role Personally built an EHS management system with site-specific baselines, an operating cadence, and site leader ownership across a multi-site network, with results that held after the candidate moved on Demonstrated ability to build and hold credibility with site leaders and operations executives who did not report to them, and to use that credibility to change how those leaders ran safety in their plants Personal ownership of process safety management across dissimilar specialty chemistries, including PHA quality, mechanical integrity, management of change, and incident investigation that reached the management system Multi-region governance experience across at least two of the United States, Europe, and Asia, with a common standard held across OSHA PSM, COMAH or Seveso, and Responsible Care Chemical engineering degree strongly preferred. Other engineering degrees acceptable with proven process safety depth. Advanced degree and CSP, CIH, CSHM, CHMM, CEP, or equivalent certification preferred Position Summary Company: Industry-Leading, Diverse Specialty Chemicals Platform (Confidential) Industry: Specialty Chemicals Travel: Up to 40% for site engagement across plants globally (US, Europe, Asia) Reporting: Reports to the VP and General Counsel. Four direct reports lead global process safety, global health and safety, global environmental, and EHS systems. Total EHS organization of approximately 30 across the network. Ownership: Private Equity Owned Compensation: Competitive base salary, performance bonus, and long-term incentive participation, commensurate with experience Company Profile Our client is an industry-leading, diverse specialty chemicals company serving global customers in pharmaceuticals, healthcare, personal care, electronics, coatings, and resins. The company operates multiple sites across the United States, Europe, and Asia, with a global workforce of approximately 1,400. Annual revenue is just under $1B. The company runs Responsible Care facilities, high-pressure reaction and hydrogenation, multipurpose batch chemistry, and pharma-adjacent fine chemicals, and has an active acquisition pipeline. Position Description and Responsibilities Build the Global EHS Operating System. Establish and hold global EHS management systems, standards, policies, and governance across the network, with site-specific baselines matched to each site's chemistry and risk profile. Process Safety as the Anchor. Lead enterprise process safety and operational risk management across high-pressure reaction, multipurpose batch, and formulation sites. Own PHA quality, mechanical integrity, management of change, and the discipline that keeps them current as campaigns change. Site Leader Ownership Through Influence. Coach site leaders to lead safety, make them the face of the safety review, and move the network from compliance to ownership. Site EHS resources are solid line to this role and dotted line to site leadership. Results come through partnership with site leaders and the operations organization, not through escalation. Cadence Inside the Plant Operating Rhythm. Build leading and lagging indicators, action closure, and process safety reviews into the daily and weekly management system the sites run, in partnership with the operations excellence agenda, rather than creating a parallel EHS calendar. Incident Leadership and Organizational Learning. Ensure timely reporting, investigation, root cause analysis, corrective action closure, and learning across the network for incidents, near misses, and significant risk events. Security, Emergency Response, and Responsible Care. Own site security, emergency response and crisis management, the Responsible Care program, and the integration of sustainability objectives into operating practice. Regulatory, Capital, and External Relationships. Monitor emerging regulatory requirements and recommend action ahead of them. Build EHS into capital, investment, and acquisition decisions. Maintain working relationships with regulatory agencies, industry associations, auditors, and insurers. Bench Strength and Succession. Build a high-performing global EHS organization through coaching, talent development, and succession planning, with ready-now successors for critical EHS leadership positions. Position CTQ+S: Technical and Experience Requirements 15+ years in specialty or fine chemicals EHS and process safety leadership, with current or recent personal accountability for a global or multi-region, multi-site EHS organization. Continuous commodity chemicals, refining, and oil and gas are not target industries for this search Personal experience building and holding an EHS management system that drove measurable, durable improvement across a multi-site network with dissimilar chemistries Deep process safety management ownership. Can read a P&ID, challenge a PHA on the merits, and hold a credible conversation with site engineering on mechanical integrity, relief systems, and management of change Real multi-region governance experience across at least two of the United States, Europe, and Asia. OSHA PSM, COMAH or Seveso, and Responsible Care held to a common standard across time zones, languages, and regulatory environments Leading indicator systems built with data and digital tools that gave sites something useful before the incident, not after Personal leadership of serious incident investigations with root cause analysis that reached the management system and changed how other sites ran Experience bringing at least one acquired site onto a corporate EHS standard Experience with emergency response program implementation, chemical facility security requirements, waste minimization, and management of remediation and consultant resources Chemical engineering degree strongly preferred. Other engineering or relevant degrees acceptable with proven process safety depth. Advanced degree preferred. CSP, CIH, CSHM, CHMM, CEP, or equivalent certification preferred Position CTQ+S: Leadership and Behavioral Requirements Process safety by instinct. Leads with process safety in language without being prompted. References describe them as someone who would stop a startup over an open MOC Partnership by habit. Talks about site leaders and operations leaders as partners rather than as the source of the risk. Can name specific relationships built and what those relationships produced Builder, not carrier. Talks about what is still running at the sites they left. Measures their own success by what the organization does without them Technically credible with chemists and engineers. Earns a hearing from process engineers rather than asking for one Reads a plant fast. Comfortable on the floor and in the control room. Reads a site by what they see, what the operators say, and what the MOC log looks like Holds the line without raising their voice. Direct, calm, and consistent. Does not fold when a site leader pushes back on a busy week Commercially literate. Translates risk into production, customer, and enterprise language without effort Comfortable in a small, informal company. Hands-on. Does not need a large staff or a policy for everything Builder of bench, not a single point of failure. Promotes people. Develops successors Plain spoken. Explains a process safety concept to a general counsel and a board member in one paragraph. Does not hide behind acronyms #J-18808-Ljbffr The Avery Point Group, Inc - Executive Search Catalysts for Change™