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DuPont Performance Coatings Shifts Leadership Team

Thursday, January 6, 2011

DuPont Performance Coatings has made several key changes in its leadership recently, with the departure of two vice presidents and the arrival of one.

Chong, Olson Take New Roles

B.C. Chong, who had been vice president of DuPont’s Performance Coatings business in Asia Pacific since October 2009, has succeeded Richard C. Olson as president of Titanium Technologies. Chong will lead the global business from Asia, the world’s largest and fastest-growing market for titanium dioxide.

B.C. Chong		Richard C. Olson

Olson was named to lead the company’s productivity improvement and business process simplification programs across the company. Olson, 54, has served in a range of business and operations leadership roles worldwide since joining the company as a process engineer in 1978. He had led the Titanium Technologies business since 2005.

DuPont said Olson’s experience "will be beneficial as the company continues to drive and accelerate its productivity improvement program."

Both appointments became effective Jan. 1.

No successor has been named to Chong in Performance Coatings.

Vanlancker Takes Over EMEA

Thierry F.J. Vanlancker is now Vice President of Performance Coatings for the company’s Europe-Middle East-Africa (EMEA) region.

Vanlancker, 46, who had been global business and market director for DuPont Fluorochemicals, has held a range of business leadership roles in sales, marketing and technical capacities since joining the company in 1988.  His assignments include time in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and the United States.

Vanlancker graduated in 1987 from Ghent State University, Belgium, with a master’s degree in Chemical Engineering. In 1999, he earned an Executive Finance Training Certificate from Wharton Business School in Philadelphia.

Thierry Vanlancker		Jeffrey L. Keefer

Keefer Retires

Jeffrey L. Keefer, executive vice president, retired Dec. 31 after more than 34 years of service with DuPont. His most recent responsibilities included overall cost and working capital productivity programs, corporate strategy and DuPont Performance Coatings business.

DPC now reports to executive vice president Thomas M. Connelly. Corporate strategy reports to executive vice president and chief financial officer Nicholas C. Fanandakis.