Young, Roger K.

Roger Young began a nearly two-decade career working for Dow Plastics in 1973 with assignments in research, manufacturing, and new-technology commercialization and product development. He held both management and scientific roles, before leaving the Midland, Mich., company in 1991.

Young was a 40-year-old development scientist in the engineering thermoplastics business when he quit Dow, with visions of sailing the world. The Long Island, N.Y., native bought a 44-foot sailboat in 1989, left Michigan and spent his next two years at Dow working from his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., before quitting to start his product-development consulting firm called Young Ideas Inc.

His noteworthy successes while at Dow included:

  * Pioneering low-gloss ABS for automotive interiors;

  * Developing and introducing its Pulse-brand polycarbonate/ABS blends;

  * Managing development programs for the firm's Isoplast engineering thermoplastic polyurethane and Questra syndiotactic polystyrene materials.

 

A 1973 chemistry graduate from LafayetteCollege in Easton, Pa., Young has worked for the Akron, Ohio-based consulting firm Robert Eller Associates (www.robertellerassoc.com) since 1995 and currently serves as its vice president for Asian/Pacific operations – primarily China, but also India and Saudi Arabia. In that role he directs single- and multiclient studies, strategy development programs and merger/acquisitions projects.

 

Projects typically involve engineering thermoplastics, thermoplastic elastomers, polypropylene compounds, compounding or automotive technologies and markets. For nearly the past decade he has been based in Tauranga, New Zealand, where he lives and works off his boat named “Ballerina.”