French Moroccan businesswoman Ilham Kadri recently earned her place in Fortune magazine’s honorable 2020 Most Powerful Women International list.
Esteemed CEO of Belgian chemical company Solvay, Kadri has a list of awards for her contributions. For example, she also earned a Stevie award for strong leadership and female empowerment. Always, Kadri devotes herself to changing and improving the worlds of business, innovation, and science.
Most recently, Kadri has turned her leadership at Solvay to face the extreme challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this capacity, she has helped manufacture essential supplies.
Ilham Kadri in the intersection of business, science, innovation
Even before her recent success as CEO of Solvay, Kadri has had an illustrious career.
Born in Casablanca, Morocco, Kadri took her chemical engineer background to her early positions as a Development and Technical Service Manager at Royal Dutch Shell and Marketing Director of the Huntsman Corporation.
In 2010, she took a position as Marketing Director for Dow Coating Materials, a division of the Dow Chemical Company. Managing the company’s divisions in the Middle East and Africa, Kadri helped facilitate commercial activities and build infrastructure projects throughout those regions.
Before being named President and CEO of Diversey Care in 2017 and CEO of Solvay in 2019, Kadri capitalized on her time at Dow to pursue water purification projects throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, and Northern Africa. Specifically, she launched the construction of the first reverse osmosis membrane manufacturing plant in Saudi Arabia.
Ilham Kadri finds the “third door”
Kadri gets much of her determination and creativity from her grandmother, who raised her throughout her childhood.
Of the many values and lessons her grandmother taught, one sticks out.
“In life there are two doors for a little girl to walk through: one leads to her husband’s house, the other to the grave,” her grandmother told her. She then went on to demand that Kadri “find a third door.”
Kadri took her grandmother’s words to heart as she dedicated herself to female empowerment around the world.
With her expertise in the Middle East in particular, she directs her charitable works to promoting female literacy and leadership in sciences, engineering, and business for young women throughout the region and the African continent.
In 2016, she earned four Stevie Awards for Women in Business, including Gold for Woman of the Year, Silver for Women Helping Women, Silver for Female Executive of the Year, and Bronze for Maverick of the Year.
Ilham Kadri transforms “floor cleaners to life savers”
When taking her position of CEO at Solvay, Kadri immediately dedicated herself to changing the image of the company. Where they once were “floor cleaners”, she changed the perception to “life savers”. That is, she made it clear how Solvay and their products combat harmful diseases due to lack of hygiene.
In addition to internal re-branding, Kadri emphasized diversity and inclusion in her company. She then improved company finances through cost-control policies. During her time there, Kadri has elevated Solvay to a company with 24,000 employees and $12.6 billion in sales.
Moreover, when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the company’s plants and forced furloughs among employees, Kadri kept Solvay afloat by involving it in manufacturing of antibacterial gels and PPE protections.
