Alumni Profile: Mark Gardner ’78
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USM Grad Top at Sappi
Mark Gardner’s news in October came as no real surprise to Andy Anderson. It made sense that Gardner, a 1978 graduate of USM with a B.S. in industrial technology education, should accept an offer to become president and chief executive officer of Sappi Fine Paper North America.
“Mark’s always been a pretty forward-thinking guy,” says Anderson, associate dean and professor in USM’s School of Applied Science, Engineering, and Technology. “Very early on he was trying to find ways to improve quality in the paper making process.”
Anderson has seen the trait in action. Twenty-four years ago Gardner was director of quality control at the S.D. Warren mill in Westbrook. He and Anderson developed a
program to show mill workers first-hand how customers used their paper products in magazines, catalogs, books, and high-end print advertising.
“He told me, ‘to remain competitive, we need to move paper making from an art to a science,’” Anderson says. “At the time, that was pretty forward thinking in a pretty traditional manufacturing world.”
And it would prove the cornerstone of a career. Gardner describes that as the combination of a simple knack for problem solving and what he’d learned at USM.
“My (teacher) training gave me the ability to convey ideas through writing and through presentations in a way that engaged people,” Gardner says. “It’s been a real complement to my knack for seeing problems and moving quickly on them. If I couldn’t engage people, I wouldn’t have been able to do what I do.”
Gardner, a Windham native, hit his stride academically when he recognized his interest in both people and understanding how things worked. “USM’s industrial technology program had a great reputation, even then,” he says. “I was intrigued.”
For nearly five years after graduation, Gardner worked as an industrial technology teacher, first in Brunswick, then Auburn. In 1981, he spent the summer as a consultant at the Westbrook plant, helping improve efficiency. When offered a full-time job, he took it.
The paper industry was entering a difficult period. Through the 1980s and most of the 1990s, Gardner says, the industry grew from a regional business to a global one. Competitors from Europe and Asia were bringing in products equal in quality and at a very low price.
It proved to be a good period for people with Gardner’s skills. In 1991, he was promoted and moved on to the plant in Skowhegan. There, several new products were developed, and the company increased its productivity by 30 percent. In 1994 S.D. Warren Company was sold to Sappi, based in South Africa. Gardner continued to rise, first at a plant in Michigan, then, in 2002, in the corporate headquarters for North American operations in Boston. With each new assignment, Gardner kept an eye on improving efficiency.
In some ways Gardner’s goals today aren’t much different than they were back in Westbrook, or, for that matter, in the classroom in Brunswick and Auburn.
“It’s really the same thing,” Gardner says, “I’m engaging people in their work, aligning their thoughts and energy, and in so doing, helping them to understand what barriers are ahead of them, how to go forward and take risks. Much like a good teacher would do.”
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