Trelleborg's 'transformational' leader: Linda Muroski is Rubber News' 2022 Executive of the Year

ST. LOUIS PARK, Minn.—When Linda 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 reorganized 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.

And Muroski's business acumen is only part of the reason she has been named the 2022 Rubber News Rubber Industry Executive of the Year.

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

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.

"It has been really tough—we've seen some suppliers run into raw material issues," she said. "But we have tried to be proactive with the certification of new materials. We are well aware that there is a patient on the other side of this, and we take care not to disrupt that."

Not one to put on airs, 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.

"Linda's a transformational leader who has driven big wins for our company year after year, from establishing a business unit to completing a major reorganization," Daniel Diffenderfer, director of strategic acquisitions for Healthcare and Medical, told Rubber News. "She's the type of person you want to work for because you know you'll win if you're on her team."

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 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.

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."

Muroski moved around during her younger years, living in Florida twice, Georgia once and New Jersey once, all before she was 10 years old.

With a grocer father and a mother who worked in retail, the posh Hillsdale put her family in the economic minority.

"This was probably the most affluent city in all of Bergen County," Muroski said. "When you have parents in retail (who are) not making a whole lot of money—and the neighbors have the McMansions—this is when I thought, 'one day I want to be a president of a company.' Well, here we are 30 years later."

Her time in a Georgia classroom—while segregation still was taking place, even during the Carter administration—put her in the racial minority.

"My class was predominantly African-American, with about one in every seven students who were white, and this was a class of 25 or more," Muroski said. "It was here where I learned what it feels like, and what happens, when you're in the minority."

Balancing humility and activism has been a learned trait for Muroski in the professional world, where women often find themselves in the minority—especially in the C-suite.

"One thing people don't understand is perspective—where they are coming from, where they are trying to go," Muroski said. "Someone had to take a risk on me, and sometimes we forget about that when we see an individual with the best intentions, but perhaps they are a bit entrepreneurial. We need to cut them some slack for them to shine."

After graduating from Ramapo College of New Jersey with a degree in business administration and a concentration in marketing, Muroski applied at an advertising firm—where she promptly was told she had to be a secretary.

"But I have a degree," she told them, to no avail.

Soon after that setback, she got a job with a small engineering company designing pharmaceutical material handling equipment.

She then transitioned to Erie, Pa., after she married (she now is a single mom), where she worked for Johnson Controls in quality control and documentation.

She had other stints with Engelhard Corp. and BASF, after BASF's hostile takeover of Engelhard in 2006.

Her time at BASF and Niagara Plastics, a small Erie injection molder, were particularly memorable as she honed her leadership skills, she said.

Shawn Rooney, owner of Niagara Plastics, once had an engineering manager who approved an incorrect tooling design, a $100,000 mistake that, unfortunately, came straight out of Rooney's pocket.

"The engineer left the room, and I said, 'You didn't even get mad. How is that possible?' And he told me that he considered it a $100,000 investment in (the engineer's) education, because he was not going to make the same mistake again," Muroski said.

"And this is a guiding principle that I have maintained, that we are a learning, growing organization. You have to understand mistakes are going to happen. You have to allow people to make them and learn from them."

She added she looks for teammates who are self-reflective and who seek continuous improvement in themselves.

"If any team members were talking about my leadership style," she said, "it is probably that I guide them directionally as to where we want to go with strategy—but how we get there should be up to them.

"People are not going to embark on their own journey or decide on the things needed to get there as I would decide them. We want to produce results—how we get there is really up them."

Upon joining Trelleborg, Muroski set her sights on a growth development strategy that placed the focus on key market segments, like health care and medical, among others.

She reorganized the segment to serve customers based on their unique needs, bringing both service and sales closer to the customer. And rather than relying so heavily on distributors, Muroski pushed frontline personnel to create value with customers directly.

"When I first came here in 2016, they were struggling a bit with year-over-year growth," she said. "We did not have a large market share in the Americas. We should have been able to capture market share from competitors, many of whom made their sales through distributors and not by selling direct to customers.

"When distribution is the only mode of sale, it is difficult to make customized products for OEMs from pictures in a catalogue. And that is where you can see growth coming in, which is very important to us."

One Trelleborg colleague said Muroski achieved her 2020 strategic goals "a year early," and that led Muroski to set lofty 2025 goals—based on talent, innovation and market direction.

"Linda does a great job of continuing to challenge us to raise the bar on our own performance. We have great examples of that in health care and medical where she's really inspired the team to think bigger by going after larger customers and larger opportunities," Heather Castleman, senior director of strategy and marketing for Marketing Americas, told Rubber News.

During the pandemic, Muroski took measures to mitigate the loss of topline sales, mainly in automotive, and she included "rapid response and swift expense control efforts that allowed Trelleborg to maintain the same level of profitability," according to her nomination letter.

"We separated sales and service during the pandemic, making each its own pillar within (Marketing Americas) and we duplicated the same model for Healthcare and Medical," Muroski said. "We wanted to get the decision-making much closer to the customer."

An investment in biopharma, which Trelleborg supported via a $9 million capital influx at its Center of Excellence in Northborough, Mass., was another response to the pandemic.

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.

Overall, Trelleborg executives have noted that there are "more than 200 possible companies in an active pipeline."

On April 25, 2022, Trelleborg announced the acquisition of EirMed L.L.C., based in Menomenie, Wis., a producer of medical devices through plastic injection molding.

And in late October, Trelleborg finalized the $860 million acquisition of Minnesota Rubber and Plastics L.L.C., which saw sales of about $262.2 million in 2021, according to Trelleborg.

MRP, which historically has grown organically (with some acquisitions) at between 8 and 10 percent per year, sees its largest sales in North America, followed by Asia and Europe.

"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.

Muroski spearheaded Trelleborg's Leadership Development Candidate role in the last year, which has helped individuals move up to management positions within the company.

She also encourages her direct reports to take on projects as developmental opportunities.

Muroski continues to support women at Trelleborg, networking and connecting individuals to help them grow and achieve goals. She participated this year in Trelleborg's Women Influencers program, which connects female leaders in the manufacturing industry, from the production floor to the C-Suite.

"Linda strives to network and connect individuals, including other women in our organization, to help them grow and achieve their goals," said Kate Bartelli, global quality assurance and regulatory director for Healthcare and Medical. "Out of her very busy schedule, she takes time to mentor employees, working with them to grow their confidence, support their ambitions and coach them to embrace challenges and changes as they become project or group leaders."

And if that particular female leader is not yet employed at Trelleborg, Muroski said the company strives to obtain a diverse candidate pool for any given position.

"A business is successful when it meets the demographics of the community it is in," Muroski said. "It is diversity of thought—not just about gender or just about race—but about different perspectives. Life would be pretty boring if everyone hired people who looked like me. Diversity of thought is critical, as it is built upon problem-solving."

First and foremost, Muroski said, a candidate needs to be qualified.

"And there is a full stop with that," she said. "But I do think what we have been doing moreso is going through different types of recruiting to get a diverse candidate pool."

While Muroski has established market balance with the Healthcare and Medical segment, imbalances in the workplace still remain.

And like the push for women's rights in the 1920s, they are worth standing up for.

"The fact that I am a parent with a career—a full-time mom and a full-time professional—I feel like women's careers can be limited not necessarily by the glass ceiling, but because we cannot take advantage of some of the career avenues as our male counterparts ... because I have obligations that go farther than theirs," Muroski said. "Home has the village that can help, but you still need to have a rudder on your career as a woman. And there are different things we can do in the workplace so women can balance obligations.

"This is one way to see gender (equality) take place. We have to be just as supportive of their lives."