Jean-Marc Gilson has been appointed as Avantor Performance Materials’ new chief executive officer. Gilson will work alongside the company’s executive chairman, Raj Gupta, and core leadership team, and be responsible for managing the company’s strategic development and future global direction.
“Jean-Marc's strong and diverse background in engineering, technology and general management uniquely suits him for the chief executive officer role,” said Gupta. “In particular, he's been extraordinarily successful in driving silicon technology business initiatives on a global scale, and will be instrumental in leveraging our success into new business opportunities throughout the world.”
After being awarded a Masters degree in chemical engineering from the University of Liege in 1988, Gilson started his career as a process engineer with Dow Corning in 1989. Gilson rose rapidly through the ranks at Dow Corning, serving in a number of engineering, financial, manufacturing and management roles in Europe, Asia, and the U.S; in 2005 he relocated to Japan to take on the position of vice president and general manager, where he oversaw the company's Specialty Chemicals sector, and in 2009 he was appointed the company’s executive vice president.
“I'm excited with the opportunity to lead such an innovative and dynamic company during this time of accelerated growth,” said Gilson. “I embrace Raj's vision for Avantor to become a global leader in performance materials, and I hope to utilise my experience in the international specialty chemicals market to realise and achieve that goal.”
Avantor manufactures and markets high-performance chemicals and materials for microelectronics and photovoltaic manufacturing under the brand names, J.T.Baker and Macron Chemicals.
