Plastics Hall of Fame 2024: Wendy Hoenig

Houston — For somebody who moved from job to job to job, Wendy Hoenig certainly planted some deep roots.

That's because while she held a variety of positions over her first two and a half decades out of college, they actually all were with Dow Chemical Co., starting in 1986.

Hoenig, one of the new members of the Plastics Hall of Fame class of 2024, spent nearly a quarter century at Dow but was able to work in many distinct positions that were suited to her combination of marketing savvy and technical skills.

"I love the technology; I have a passion for it," Hoenig said during an interview at her alma mater, Rice University, in Houston. "And I worked really hard to find my niche. Between being able to understand what you are selling from a technology standpoint and the business value that can be created, that intersection was really where I worked and found my niche," she said.

"There's a lot of business people that may not understand the finer points of the technology. That translational space was very powerful for me. I still do it in my consulting work today," Hoenig said.

Time has now allowed Hoenig a perspective of looking back at her time at Dow, which ended in 2010 with her decision to retire from the chemical giant and hang up her own consulting shingle. Job-hopping was an approach, Hoenig said, that suited her well.

Hoenig was able to switch roles several times during her stretch at Dow. She often held positions for two to three years, but sometimes longer, on her way to fashioning a diverse career at the Midland, Mich.-based company.

Since her time at Dow, Hoenig has operated her own firm with her husband, Steve Hoenig: H&H Business Consulting.

Her experience at Dow and her 14 years as consultant — totaling nearly 40 years — equals a hall of fame career. But while major league baseball players have to wait five years after retirement to be elected to their hall of fame, Hoenig continues to work as she's inducted this year.

Hoenig is the only woman being inducted in 2024 and just the fifth woman for the Plastics Hall of Fame. She is grateful for her inclusion but does not want the honor to be viewed through a gendered lens.

"I don't want to be called out or put in an organization just because I'm a woman. I want to have earned my way there because of the impact I've had, the people I've led along the way. But I feel like it's time to see more female faces," Hoenig said.

 

Hoenig has worked hard on equity and diversity issues over the years, including identifying people of color and women who are qualified to make their marks in the business. The plastics industry has seen more women enter the field over the years, and this means the pool of candidates for future classes of the hall will include more female candidates, she said.

The Plastics Hall of Fame itself is currently being led by another woman, Maureen Steinwall, a 2015 inductee who nominated Hoenig for inclusion in the hall.

Hoenig found out quickly in her career that she was a minority in plastics as a woman, often being the only female in the room during those early years.

"It was hard at first," she said, but being surrounded by good, smart people helped her push past any barriers.

Hoenig's varied career at Dow afforded her a wide array of opportunities over time.

In some ways, it was inevitable that Hoenig ended up at Dow, where her father spent his career, although on the chemicals side of the business as an engineer and chemist.

Fresh out of Rice with a bachelor's degree in material science and engineering, Hoenig had spent two summers interning at Dow before landing a full-time job.

"I had a love of science and [my father] taught me that. He taught me so many different things over the years. He really helped me grow to be a good-thinking engineer. My mom is an entrepreneur," Hoenig said. "So between the two of them, I got a great foundation in science and a love for innovation and creativity. I think those things intersected and created a nice foundation for me to jump off and get into my career."

These days, Hoenig continues to consult, but she also carves out a portion of her schedule to volunteer at Rice. "I love seeing people who are passionate about technology," she said. "It's fun to watch people develop and come of age and love science. It's rewarding."

Her efforts at Rice also included a stint as president of the Rice Engineering Alumni Board, and she now serves on an advisory board for the school of engineering.

Hoenig also keeps in contact with the greater plastics industry through the Plastics Pioneers Association, where she is president of the nonprofit group that preserves history while also providing education and scholarships.

When Hoenig attended Rice, most of the engineering courses were centered around metallurgy, but there was a smattering of polymer science also being taught at the time. "That intrigued me. That's really the future. Materials were being heavily replaced by plastics," she recalled.

Plenty of the skills and engineering knowledge she acquired at Rice, despite being taught regarding metals, also were applicable to plastics.

Her first job out of college at Dow was in technical services, where she traveled the Midwest — Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania — to help processors run Dow plastics on their machinery.

She transitioned to include marketing and was at the center of an explosive time for growth for plastics at Dow. Many new applications were introduced for polyethylene thanks to what she called the metallocene revolution. Using a metallocene catalyst in PE created new properties and applications.

Moving positions at Dow — gaining experience in technology, marketing, and research and development — allowed Hoenig to build a name for herself that led to more opportunities, including time in Europe and North America in leadership roles.

"They used me as that person to get things done," she said. "Because of the way Dow grew people internally, they wanted people to have experiences.

"It helped build my name across the company as someone who could lead major projects, get them done, get them implemented and then moved on to the next thing," Hoenig said.