Jim Fitterling, chief executive officer of Dow Chemical.
Photographer: Ryan Pfluger for Bloomberg BusinessweekHow Dow Chemical Got Woke
The big conservative chemical company with a legacy of making napalm during the Vietnam War has a gay CEO.
On April 1, Dow Chemical will be spun off from DowDuPont Inc. to form an independent company. The move will be big for the corporate financiers behind it, and for the manufacturers around the world that put Dow’s chemicals in running shoes, mattresses, adult diapers, baby wipes, and many other products. But it will also be a bellwether for a great many other people. When the spinoff is complete, Dow, which was founded in 1897, will be the first large industrial company with an openly gay chief executive officer and only the second major public company with a gay CEO, after Apple Inc.’s Tim Cook.
“I hope the first thing that people think about me is not that I’m gay,” says the new boss, Jim Fitterling, during an interview at Dow’s headquarters in Midland, Mich. “I’ve put a lot of my life into the company, and I understand the company really well, and I know what it takes to deliver good financial results.”