Four industry members received Industry Achievement Awards during the American Coatings Association’s (ACA) 125th Anniversary Reception & Dinner, which was held May 7, prior to the American Coatings Show May 8-10, 2012, in Indianapolis, Ind. These awards are presented to persons for their distinguished achievement in service to the industry.
The four award winners are as follows: Nelson Augé, president of Kelley Technical Coatings, Inc., and member of ACA’s Board of Directors, has been a longstanding, active member of the association’s Industrial Coatings Committee since 2002. Augé took over leadership of the committee as its chair in 2009, energizing it and devising two ongoing issues’ stewardship subcommittees on clean air and chemical use, which assisted major new endeavors by ACA as a whole. In that role, he also helped organize speakers and forums on a wide range of critical issues to this industry sector, boosting average attendance by manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors by 30 percent. Augé’s penchant for collaboration with ACA staff and members of industry is a mark of true leadership and achievement.Steve Dearborn, president and CEO of Miller Paint Company, Inc., has been a member of ACA’s Board of Directors since 2005, PaintPAC Steering Committee since 2004, and was a member of its Coatings Care® Committee in 2007. In 2008 he became chair of the PaintPAC Steering Committee, which directs ACA’s political action committee, PaintPAC, and continues in that post. Under Dearborn’s leadership, PaintPAC has grown significantly due to his willingness to discuss and encourage membership in the PAC at ACA’s Board of Director meetings, and help raise the profile of PaintPAC nationally. As chair, his accomplishments have been remarkable: establishing levels of giving for PAC-eligible ACA members; increasing participation and the number of auction items contributed for PaintPAC’s annual Silent Auction, and raising over $24,000 from these events alone; increasing the number of companies that have granted PaintPAC permission to solicit their senior staff; growing PaintPAC’s restricted class, and raising over $90,000 in contributions from that group; and approving over 105 contributions to candidates for federal and state offices all over the country. In this manner, Dearborn has developed PaintPAC, helping it evolve as a robust program and tool in the paint and coatings industry’s advocacy arsenal.Lewis Manring, vice president of Portfolio Optimization for DuPont Science & Technology, has been a member of ACA’s Science & Technology Committee since 2008. Manring became chair of the committee in 2010. During his tenure as chair, he has helped solidify this key leadership group and spurred it to greatly advance the association’s value to the industry’s innovation professionals. Under his leadership, the committee has established ACA’s American Coatings Conference as a premier technical event; expanded continuing education resources for industry professionals; initiated an ACA-sponsored research project to identify technical challenges for sustainability programs; and completed a comprehensive self-assessment of ACA’s science and technology platform to help identify and direct future undertakings. Robert Wendoll, director of Environmental Affairs for Dunn-Edwards Corporation, has been an extraordinarily active member of ACA’s committees, including its Caulks, Sealants and Adhesives Committee, Environmental Management Committee, and its Architectural and Industrial Maintenance (AIM) VOC (volatile organic compound) Committee for many years. Wendoll has been a leader in identifying vital AIM VOC issues for the association to work on, also providing critical data and support to staff so that ACA could successfully work through these matters. Chief among these is the Paints and Architectural Coatings Environmental Study (PACES) project, for which he provided key information and direction that helped the successful completion of this multi-year research project. With his guidance, the project oversaw among many things, a Life Cycle Analysis to assess impacts of stringent, low-VOC regulations and the relationship between coating performance and environmental impacts and work in “Atmospheric Availability” that should advance the science of the likely flawed, regulatory assumption that 100 percent of VOCs in coatings are available for ground-level ozone formation.ABOUT THE ACA The American Coatings Association (ACA), co-host of the American Coatings Conference and Show, is a voluntary, nonprofit trade association working to advance the needs of the paint and coatings industry and the professionals who work in it. The organization represents paint and coatings manufacturers, raw materials suppliers, distributors, and technical professionals. ACA serves as an advocate and ally for members on legislative, regulatory and judicial issues, and provides forums for the advancement and promotion of the industry through educational and professional development services.