EDITOR INTERVIEW
In conversation with...
Glenn Mazzamaro, Vice President, Vanderbilt Chemicals, LLC
Tell us a bit about your early years. Where/ when were you born, and what is your family background? I was born in the United States (Connecticut) and grew up there as the oldest of three boys. Both my mother and father were of Italian descent and first-generation Americans, as my grandparents were born in Italy and came over to the United States in the early 1900’s. My paternal grandfather was a barber while my grandmother worked at a local pin shop. My father graduated from the University of Connecticut with a B.S. in Chemistry and worked as a chemist for a local metal finishing company during my early childhood years. My mother was a wonderful homemaker and, in my very early years, she owned and operated a roadside hot dog stand, but gave it up not long after my two younger brothers were born.
Education – where did you go, what subjects did you choose and why? I graduated from the public high school in Watertown, CT as the class salutatorian in the 1970’s. Not surprisingly, I took a liking to mathematics and science from an early age. My father ordered a large Periodic Table that hung on my bedroom wall for most of my childhood years, so chemistry was always fun for me to learn. When I was about 10 years old, I started music lessons and eventually worked as an organist at the local Catholic and Lutheran churches. I also became very interested in learning other languages, especially French in high school and, later in life, German, Italian, and Mandarin.
What was your path to higher education? Being very fond of mathematics and science, especially chemistry, my high school guidance counsellor suggested that I consider chemical engineering. I used Barron’s book of U.S. colleges and universities to research schools that offered good
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chemical engineering programs. It was hard to tell which schools were better than others, so I decided to look at their chemical engineering faculty and where they receive their advanced degrees. I noticed that Cornell University was the school most frequently mentioned, so I applied under the Early Decision program to Cornell and was accepted. I joined the chemical engineering program and was hooked after taking the Unit Operations course, which was hands-on working with pipes, valves, and wrenches, while designing experiments involving heat transfer, distillation, and chemical reactions.
When and where was your first job, and what did you like and dislike about it? My first job was secured through Cornell’s Engineering Cooperative Program. I was selected by Exxon Chemical Company and worked one autumn and two summers for them as a process engineer (at the time, called “contact engineer” by Exxon) at the Bayway Chemical Plan in Linden, NJ, before I was permanently higher by them into the same role after I graduated with a B.S ChemE degree. I truly enjoyed my process engineering experience and the process optimisation work involved, which eventually led me to a management role as production supervisor. It was a great training ground for a 25-year old to be responsible for the daily production of over 100,000 MT/yr of chemicals. I can’t think of anything I didn’t like about the job, except that I began to feel somewhat “caged” by going to work at the same facility and working with the same people every day.
How has career mapping led to where you are now?
After six years in process engineering and chemical production, I realised that the plant was a “small world” and was asking my boss questions like “What happens to all these chemicals that we make after we
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