2022 Executive of the Year a leader for the times

ST. LOUIS PARK, Minn.—With a number of excellent choices in the candidate pool for the Rubber News' 2022 Executive of the Year, one rose to the top.

The choice of this year's top executive is groundbreaking in that Trelleborg A.B.'s Linda Muroski is just the second female to win the honor. Linda Katz won in 2015 when she was the top official at Molded Dimensions L.L.C.

Muroski maintains a quiet confidence in her approach to leadership.

"I would not be Executive of the Year if not for the team that I have, in health care, medical or industrial," Muroski said. "The professionals I work with are amazing people. I do love my team, and I tell them that often."

When Muroski joined Trelleborg Sealing Solutions in 2016, the Healthcare and Medical unit was in its nascence, a division with potential rather than an established presence.

Six years on, and the president of Trelleborg Marketing Americas and Global Healthcare and Medical has organized the segment into a streamlined, focused business, overseeing four major acquisitions, an increasingly adept work force in the manufacture of complex medical and biopharma components, and year-over-year increases in sales.

Muroski, who was born in the 10,000-resident, affluent New York City suburb of Hillsdale, N.J., took initial moral cues from her grandmother, born in 1889, about when to be patient and when to stand for fundamental rights.

Women's suffrage was a time for the latter, an indelible lesson for Muroski during her formative years.

"She would tell me stories about marching in the 1920s for women's right to vote," Muroski said. "When she was born, she did not have that right. Even her father said she wasn't allowed to work.

"Being an activist as she was way back in the 1920s? That amazes me. Now I look at 2022—and wonder what she is thinking."

As Muroski has rowed against the current in her life, she has helped others do the same—empowering women and minorities in and out of the workplace. Her accolades reflect this, in this most recent honor as well as her selection in Industry Era's 10 Most Inspiring Women Leaders of 2021.

"In her six years leading Trelleborg, Linda has championed diversity, fostered collaboration and empowered her team, resulting in greater accountability, increased employee satisfaction and improved business results," Muroski's nomination letter states. "Through these efforts, she nurtured the career paths of and promoted several exceptional women within the business, creating a more inclusive and diverse environment with a leadership team composed equally of women and men."

The New Jersey native's leadership has been called "transformational," as her ability to challenge her 770 employees (not including the 1,450 from the recently acquired Minnesota Rubber and Plastics) has helped the Trelleborg segment prosper, with organic sales up 10 percent year-over-year and the work force up 15 percent.

Her successes at Trelleborg have occurred against the backdrop of a pandemic, raw material pricing volatility, labor market challenges and supply chain nightmares.

And she continues to make regular visits to all seven of the manufacturing facilities within the health care and medical unit to learn names and faces.

Trelleborg Healthcare and Medical comprises about 12 percent of sales for Trelleborg Sealing Solutions, which is filled out by the aerospace, automotive and industrial subdivisions. TSS makes up about 53 percent of the $3.3 billion in overall 2021 sales for parent company Trelleborg A.B., while Trelleborg Industrial Solutions makes up about 47 percent.

Healthcare and Medical is one of the fastest growing segments for the Swedish company.

Having identified the health care market as a significant growth opportunity, Muroski integrated two bolt-on acquisitions, foundational purchases that essentially set the stage for the Trelleborg Sealing Solutions division to become a global industry leader in the medical arena.

The first was the 2016 purchase of Specialty Silicone Fabricators Inc. for $30.8 million. The acquisition brought sites in Tustin, Calif.; Paso Robles, Calif.; and Elk Rapids Mich.—all of which manufacture silicone components for the medical device market—into the fold for Trelleborg.

The second major bolt-on buy was finalized in 2019 with the purchase of Delano, Minn.-based Sil-Pro, also a silicone and TPE component producer for the medical and single-use markets. It was this purchase that finally allowed Healthcare and Medical to become a standalone business unit, Muroski said.

Trelleborg has about 300 employees between two facilities at the Delano campus, a footprint that comprises about 90,000 square feet of space, including a fairly recent 6,000-sq.-ft. expansion.

"The future is about Trelleborg leveraging our acquisitions to produce solutions for our customers, and our greatest challenge, like many companies, will be change management, of having the individual companies we acquire adapting to a larger organization with greater resources that is prepared for rapid growth," Muroski said.

The future for Trelleborg indeed has been bright, as the company has experienced perhaps its greatest structural transformation over the past year.