Posted January 8, 2018

 

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – The AATCC Board of Directors met on November 16 and approved the hiring of Brian C. Francois as the new AATCC executive vice president to succeed Jack Daniels upon the latter’s retirement in March.

 

Francois is currently the CEO of the Pulcra Chemicals Group (formerly Cognis Corporation and Henkel Textile Technology). He has had a successful career in leadership positions for his current company, which he joined in 1992, as senior sales representative.

 

As technical manager, Francois teamed with chemists to set targets for developing new chemicals and received six patents for innovation in textile chemistry in a two-year period. From 2001 to 2005, Francois expertly managed global sales, marketing and product development teams in four countries as global business manager – Active Textiles. In this role, he grew sales by $5M in three years.

 

Francois was named business director, Textile Technology in 2005 and fostered relationships with affiliates and customers in Europe and Asia. He also led employees in U.S., Mexico, and distributors in Canada.

 

In 2009, Francois became president – U.S. Business and oversaw the relocation of U.S. business into new facilities with growth of 100 percent over five years. He became vice president – Americas in 2011 and global CEO in 2014. He was responsible for leading the reorganization of Brazilian operations and more recently a management team with new company core values and corporate vision. He established global integration and core management systems that improved employee satisfaction and increased productivity.

 

His knowledge of the consumer apparel end-use market, global textile industry and experience in expanding businesses into new geographical areas will be a great benefit to AATCC. Francois has been an active member of AATCC for more than 25 years, and served for several years as chair of the Committee on Conferences, and as chair of the Olney Awards Committee. He was a voting member of the Wet Processing Machinery Committee and currently is a non-voting member of the Preparation Test Methods Committee. He also served on the Awards Oversight Committee.

 

Francois and his wife, Julie, plan to attend the 2018 International Conference in Greenville, S.C., USA on March 6-8, to meet the AATCC members in attendance. Francois will start as the new AATCC executive vice president on April 2.

 

Source: AATCC

Pulcra CEO Francois to become AATCC executive vice president