EXECUTIVE EXCELLENCE - INDUSTRY

Eliezer Maldonado is the Senior Global Business Director for Functional Polymers, a business group within Packaging and Specialty Plastics.  It is the largest business unit of Dow with annual sales in excess of $20 billion and more than 8,700 employees. It is the culmination of a stellar 22-year career at Dow – and counting.

Born in New York City, Mr. Maldonado’s family moved back to Puerto Rico when he was just three, reuniting with his extensive extended family. He had an early interest in science inspired by his father’s 20-year career as an operator in Johnson & Johnson’s baby products production facility where he worked alongside the company’s scientists.

His interest eventually led him to the mechanical engineering program at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, where he graduated magna cum laude.  He then moved to the mainland to pursue an advanced degree in the same field at Texas A&M University.

After completing what was just his first master’s degree, he joined Union Carbide Corporation as a manufacturing and improvement engineer for steam and electrical generation facilities in the energy systems department.   

After Union Carbide was acquired by Dow, Mr. Maldonado moved to the business side of the company where he quickly rose through the ranks — all while pursuing his second master’s degree in Business Administration at the University of Houston.

His business acumen became obvious after he negotiated an agreement to sell some of company’s excess power output to a local utility company to offset input costs for the Seadrift, Texas site.

With advanced degrees in both engineering and business, Mr. Maldonado has had a tremendous impact at Dow. In his first year in a commercial role, he saved the company more than $8 million and is credited with empowering the company to grow and innovate across multiple industries, market segments and continents. 

After successful assignments as a product manager in Argentina, as a sales director in Brazil, and as Senior Vice President of EQUATE Petrochemical Company and President of EQUATE Marketing Company, a Dow Joint venture in Kuwait, Mr. Maldonado landed at corporate headquarters in Michigan as Global Business Director, responsible for a group of businesses with combined revenue of $5.2 billion and net profits of $2.1 billion. 

Today, as Senior Global Business Director of functional polymers, Mr. Maldonado reports directly to the president of the Packaging & Specialty Plastics business unit.  Fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, he’s also a member of Dow’s Global Leadership Team.

Mr. Maldonado is an active participant in Dow’s Employee Resource Groups for the Women’s Innovation Network, Hispanic Latin Network, Middle East and North Africa Network.  He and his wife Luz, also an engineer with Dow, have three children, each of whom was born in a different country due to their family’s extensive international assignments.