Joe is the manager of mergers and acquisitions and business development for Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. After graduating with a chemical engineering degree from Villanova’s Navy-ROTC program, Joe spent six years active-duty in the Navy and then transitioned to his current company, maintaining a reserve role with the Navy. Joe speaks very bluntly and offer great advice on how college students can enter today’s workforce by storm!
Transcript
>> Joe LeMack [assumed spelling]. I'm an 87 chemical engineer, was involved in the Naval ROTC program here, and I currently work for a company called Air Products and Chemicals. And I'm the manager of mergers and acquisitions in business development for our particular division of the company. In my company, you know, we buy and we sell parts of business or entire business, and so my job is to work with the leadership of my particular division, which is the North American Gasses division to understand how the division wants to grow. Do they want to grow organically through things that are developed in house, or do they see particular technologies or companies that may be of interest and then explore whether or not there's a relationship that we can develop that could lead to us acquiring them or doing joint ventures or partnership arrangements. Days are always different. You know, in my particular role today, it really is deal dependent. And so, you know, for instance, we closed on an acquisition back in March of a part of a company that is headquartered in Quebec that has its technology center in Vancouver, British Columbia. And so from January to March, I was heavily involved in the negotiations of the deal with the business team, so I was out of the office a lot, up in Quebec working with our attorneys and our outside counsel to try to close the deal. So from my perspective, it's a very different environment. I'm used to more kind of day-to-day, a lot of the work being very similar, but in this particular role, it's all deal dependent. A lot of the things that you would do on a day-to-day basis get put to the side if a deal is imminent. And so that's kind of the role that I'm in, and the capacity that I'm in, is, you know, stay focused on important deals and then work with the finance team, the attorneys, the business leaders to try to make sure that we're moving the deal along. My role is essentially North America, and our definition of North America is just the US and Canada. But some of the roles that I've been in, I've had to travel more internationally. Actually, in the role I'm in now, I'm also involved in a couple of international deals, and so I was just out of the country in Latin America last week, as an example. But I would say that over my 19-year career with my company in the various commercial roles I've been in, my travel has probably varied between 20 and 30%. So a lot of domestic travel involved with the roles that I've had. The great thing about my company is I haven't had the same job for more than two or three years. I've really moved around a lot and done a lot of different things, and that has allowed me to stay excited and energized about the time that I spend with my company.
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