Dr. Laura Shereda, Senior Materials Scientist at Asahi Kasei Plastics North America (APNA), assumed the role of President of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) Detroit Section. She was elected by the board of directors, where she moved from Second Vice President to her new role as President in a three-year span. The ‘passing of the gavel’ event took place at the yearly planning meeting at the Michigan State Educational Center in Troy, Michigan, on June 24, 2019.
Dr. Shereda joined SPE’s Detroit Section in 2012, where she worked with the Technical Program Chair on the TPO Committee. Since then, she has been on the group’s Board since 2013, and participated in multiple other events managed by the Detroit Section such as Auto EPCON and the TPO Conference in both the US and China.
“Throughout my career, I have been able to benefit from the experiences I’ve gained by working with accomplished plastics professionals throughout the OEMs, Tier 1’s and Tier 2’s that I met at SPE” stated Dr. Shereda. “One of my goals as President will be to help recruit new, young professionals
to the plastics industry and provide them with the same networking resources that helped me in my career. I am also working with our new engineers to help them make connections not only for SPE and APNA, but also themselves”.
Along with helping the SPE Detroit Section with creating a new generation of plastics professionals, Dr. Shereda states that in her term as President, her focus areas will be on evaluating the group’s adherence to its mission and scope, as well as creating a strong foundation for succession planning.
The groups current mission is to be ‘active in educating, promoting, recognizing and communicating technical accomplishments for all phases of plastics and plastic based-composite developments – particularly in the automotive industry’.
“We at APNA are very proud of Dr. Shereda for taking on this additional responsibility and leadership position through SPE Detroit; her accomplishments and contributions to the plastics industry outside of Asahi Kasei will help create growth opportunities” states John W. Moyer, CEO and Chairman of APNA and Senior Lead Executive Officer of Asahi Kasei Corporation. “My expectation is that Laura will grow SPE membership with the next generation of engineers through promoting plastics technology and education”.
For more about the SPE Detroit Section, visit http://spedetroit.org.