Jennye Scott's first job in the plastics industry was as a coordinator at Evansville, Ind.-based Berry Global Group Inc., working with outside agencies who processed art for the plastics packaging company.
The full prepress process was eventually brought in-house and the department grew as business grew.
"I came upon this position by chance, but it turned out to be the beginning of an exciting career," Scott said in her Women Breaking the Mold survey. "Over the years, it was a fulfilling challenge to work on solutions on how to print on plastic substrates. I love to solve problems and enjoy working with internal and external groups to challenge the 'status quo' in order to meet/exceed our customers' needs for decorating plastic packaging."
Scott has an associate degree in commercial art and bachelor's degree in organizational management from Oakland City University. As vice president of creative services, Scott has now been at Berry for more than 30 years and spent most of the time in the graphics area.
"For the first 10 years, I worked with our graphics and printing teams to improve graphics separations for printing dry offset on plastic. ... The remaining 20-plus years, I worked on continuous improvements in [the] dry offset area, as well as improving processes in the flexographic printing on 3D plastic items and flexible packaging," Scott said.
Scott is a board member of the Flexographic Technical Association, co-chair of Women of Flexo, board member of the Arts Council of Southwest Indiana, board member of the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. Foundation and advisory board member of Hangers.
Jessica Leibson, global marketing communications specialist at Berry, nominated Scott for Women Breaking the Mold.
Find more profiles of Women Breaking the Mold here.
Q: What is your greatest achievement?
Scott: One of my greatest achievements in the plastics industry is getting to where I am today and growing up with a wonderful company, while pushing our company to develop different solutions for our customers. I have experienced so many exciting opportunities throughout my career that I would consider each day as a great achievement.
Q: What is your current challenge at work?
Scott: My current challenge happens to be during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have moved the majority of my prepress group home. During this time, I do miss the daily discussions, camaraderie among the group and working together to get a project completed. We have a great team, and they all work very well together to solve the day-to-day problems.
Q: What emerging technology or market most interests you?
Scott: Digital watermarks are very exciting when looking at sustainable solutions for our customers. I am very involved with this technology from a decorating standpoint (embedding it into the graphics), and I look forward to continue educating our customers about all of the use cases around this technology to help solve the sustainability issues we have worldwide.
Q: What is your personal "mold" that you are breaking?
Scott: By being an outgoing female "unicorn" in this industry, I don't like to sit around and wait for things to happen. I have an outgoing personality, and if I don't know the answer to something, I don't have a problem to dig around and ask to find the answer. I love to learn new things and don't want to "ride the wave" of normalcy in my job or in this industry.
Q: Who is your mentor or someone you look up to?
Scott: I have had a few mentors throughout my career, some long term and some of whom I just "bounce" ideas or issues off. Some are women and some are men. Being at a global company has allowed me to have many mentors through the years. I would also say a lot of my bosses were my mentors. I have been very fortunate to have bosses that I got along with very well, so it made it easy to talk through problems or issues I was having.