Schunk: Cedric Glasper's journey a chapter of the 'American Dream'

To hear Cedric Glasper tell the story of his journey to Mechanical Rubber Co. Inc. is to experience a chapter of the American Dream.

It is the story of a young, ambitious mechanical engineer from the Heartland who took an incredibly big risk in purchasing a fledgling upstate New York seals and gaskets company in 1995, the same successful rubber and plastics firm he now leads as CEO.

But it is not a rags-to-riches story; rather, it is full of anomalies.

Cue Sinatra, because the way the 2021 Rubber News Executive of the Year got to where he was going was founded in hard work, but otherwise defied traditional tropes.

He is a business owner who appreciates and is appreciated, yet employs a "damn the torpedoes" leadership tack when necessary, a style that benefited a young Glasper when he purchased Mechanical Rubber, and a philosophy that aids him today amidst the chaos of the pandemic and supply chain nightmares.

"Does a comet look at its tail, at its own destruction? The comet is busy going where it's going," Glasper said. "If you have a plan to keep going ... to keep going ... to keep going ... to get to that end result, that is what matters."

While Glasper's father was hired through affirmative action by a then-small delivery firm known as UPS, Glasper does not employ any sort of quota or threshold when he does his own hiring, choosing instead to prioritize those applicants with diverse thought processes, regardless of color or creed.

He did not break out from the confines of the inner city or buck the small-town values of a rural community or rebuff the sameness of suburbia to reach his goals. Rather, he lived in all those places, and allowed them to shape him accordingly.

Glasper abides by a Jeffersonian philosophy in his drive to look over that next hill. However a Rumsfeldian outlook helped him get to those vantage points, realizing that he "didn't know what he didn't know," or as the former secretary of defense might have put it, "there were unknown unknowns."

His father was a Teamster and his mother was a member of the United Auto Workers—and while Glasper embraces union values, it is clear that Mechanical Rubber workers maintain an esprit de corps without being a union shop.

As Glasper embraces fear, the uncomfortable and the unknown in driving personal and professional growth, he does so with full and complete knowledge of his own identity.

"I don't spend a lot of time focusing on the fact I am Black," he told me earlier this year when we featured him in a story on diversity. "I know who I am. I'm fine with that. What I focus on is my competitor or my adversary, and they are the opportunity."

Thanks to Glasper, Mechanical Rubber employees embody many of the values of their CEO—hard work, independence, ownership and integrity.

With so much uncertainty in the manufactured rubber products industry, one empirical fact for the more than 30 workers at Mechanical Rubber is that their boss is deserving of the Executive of the Year honor.

"Cedric's determination (and) motivation ... inspire us all," said Nicole Cosimano, director of customer relations with Mechanical Rubber. "Cedric, I wish you continued success because you have earned it."