Leadership Spotlight: What a Year of Listening Taught Me About Leadership

When I became General Manager of Kuraray America, Inc.’s EVAL Business Unit (BU) about a year ago, I deliberately chose not to assume I had all the answers. I was going to listen.

Mornings were spent at the plant with operations personnel, reviewing production status, talking through safety, and understanding the team’s daily realities. I spent afternoons with the commercial side, attending demand reviews, product management meetings, and conversations with our technical services and development (TS&D) team.

For more than a decade, I developed a deep understanding of Kuraray America (KAI), serving in technology, operations, and global production leadership roles within the polyvinyl alcohol (PVOH) business unit. However, the EVAL business unit was new to me, and there’s no shortcut for that kind of learning.

        | This first year shaped everything I now think about leadership and
          reinforced a few principles I’ve been building on for most of my career.

The Hardest Test Came Early

Not long after I became the KAI EVAL BU general manager, we faced a potentially catastrophic situation: the loss of a sole-source supplier for a critical raw material. This supplier was down for approximately one year. For a manufacturing business, that kind of disruption threatens the ability to produce anything at all.

I visited the supplier personally to learn about the situation firsthand, not just through reports. Meanwhile, our team moved quickly to identify, test and qualify an alternative supplier, and they succeeded.

What I witnessed during that crisis told me everything I needed to know about this team. They were resilient. They were resourceful. And, they protected the broader organization from what could have been a crippling disruption.
 

        | As their leader, my job in that moment was to clear the path so
          they could do what they do best.

Stewardship Over Spending

My years in Kuraray America’s PVOH business unit helped me develop a mindset I call “stewardship thinking.” Just because you have resources at your disposal doesn’t mean you should use or abuse them. I brought that mindset to the EVAL team.

In 2025, our team delivered on our cost savings by making disciplined decisions about where every dollar goes.

This kind of conscious stewardship is a form of respect: for the people whose work generates those resources and for the customers and communities who depend on us.

Safety Isn’t Just a Value. It’s the Foundation.

Every leader in manufacturing talks about safety and I want to be precise about why it matters beyond the obvious.

        | Safety isn’t a prerequisite we check off before getting to the “real
          work.” It is the real work.

When people feel physically and psychologically safe, they perform better. They speak up when something is wrong. They make decisions for the good of the organization rather than in fear of consequences. Safety and good leadership are inseparable.

The Ohara Leadership Model: What I Believe About Leaders

I am deeply passionate about leadership and believe it’s rooted in a few key personal characteristics. I put these beliefs into a framework called the Ohara Leadership Model, part of a three-year development program.

1. At its core, the model says a good leader lives by a bigger purpose beyond the job title or the quarterly results.
2. A good leader is patient and compassionate, especially when things go wrong, and creates psychological safety so people feel comfortable being honest.
3. Seeks others’ happiness not as a soft ideal but as a business strategy, and is emotionally intelligent, culturally aware and genuinely comfortable with others challenging the status quo.
4. Most importantly, a good leader treats mistakes as learning opportunities and inspires others not through authority but through example.

I was honored to present this leadership model to President Kawahara and his team at Kuraray in Tokyo, Japan in 2025.

I’m not the expert in every room I enter. I depend on my team for customer knowledge, technical depth, engineering expertise, and commercial judgment. The best thing I can do is make that known, ask questions, and create the conditions for my people to thrive.

Investing in the Community

        
        | Manufacturing leaders have a responsibility to the communities where
          we operate that goes beyond running a safe, productive plant.

I’ve stayed active in the La Porte community through

• the Chamber of Commerce, where I previously served as board chair.
• the Rotary Club, where I currently serve as president.
• the La Porte Plant Managers Network, which brings together leaders from 42 plants across multiple companies.

Those connections have helped build relationships with Lee College and San Jacinto College, where Kuraray America has invested in workforce development, advisory boards, and a dedicated chemistry lab.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

I joined Kuraray America in 2014 through the DuPont acquisition. I’ll be honest: there was uncertainty in that transition, going from a much larger company to a more focused one. I could’ve left. But once I saw Kuraray’s vision, its commitment to innovation, its investment in R&D and how genuinely the company cares about its people, my confidence solidified. The best decision I ever made was to stay.

Now, as Kuraray celebrates 100 years and looks toward the next century, I think about the next generation of materials that will carry this company forward. From its origins in rayon, Kuraray has expanded into a portfolio of advanced materials, including EVAL, PVOH, SEPTON, and many more. The creative DNA that drove those transformations is still very much alive.

        | The challenge and the privilege, is to build the bridge between
          a remarkable first 100 years and whatever comes next.

Nelson Rodriguez, General Manager, EVAL Business Unit, Kuraray America, Inc.