Greg Koepel Joins Cortec® as Organizational Development Manager
July 4, 2024
Greg joined the team on May 13th and has been busy meeting people and learning about Cortec’s wide array of products and services. Greg joins us from the Sentry School of Business at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point (UWSP), where he was a lecturer for the last five years teaching upper level courses on Organizational Behavior, Human Resources Management, and Leadership.
“This is a new role for us,” according to Cliff Cracauer, Executive Vice President of Cortec®. Cliff added, “We wanted to add someone to the team that could bring a seasoned perspective to how we’re performing as an organization – we’re having great success as a company, yet any great team is going to lean into improvement – we don’t want to rest on our laurels. We’re looking forward to Greg’s insights to help us with that improvement effort.”
Prior to his role at UWSP, Greg spent 30 years in a variety of HR roles, primarily as an executive leader. In 2006, while working for a transportation and logistics company, he received the HR Professional of the Year Award from the American Trucking Associations, the trucking industry’s largest trade group with over 35,000 member companies. In addition to his career in HR, Greg spent 10 years in the military, first with the Michigan Army National Guard and then with the U.S. Army as an infantry officer. He left the service as a captain. Greg has a bachelor’s degree in business and a master’s degree in management, human relations, and organizational behavior. He is two classes away from, and currently working on, completing his bachelor’s degree in history. Greg has also received the prestigious Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) designation from the Society for Human Resources.
“We’re excited to have Greg join our organization,” commented Cortec® Chief Operations Officer, Caleb Pheneger. “Greg’s experience provides us the opportunity to gain insights and uncover areas for improvement. Additionally, he’ll support the extensive work Jill Carlson does in HR. I’m confident his leadership will foster further growth of our high performing team.”
“I see myself as a sort of assistant coach,” said Greg. “My role is to help the team and coaches – the executives, managers, supervisors, and team members – learn and understand how we can organize ourselves and play our positions to maximum effect.” He continued by saying, “In all the classes I taught at the university level – the core teaching was always that as leaders and team members we must respect one another. Respect is the ‘universal lubricant’ for effective relationships. I’m very pleased that we value respect here at Cortec® – so much so that we turned our value of respect into an action statement – ‘Respect and treat our colleagues, customers, and vendors as we would our own family members’ – a team that does that is exactly the type of team I want to belong to!”
Keywords: Cortec, Greg Koepel, Organizational Development Manager, corrosion inhibitors, Cortec culture, culture of respect, respectful workplace, Cortec values
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