Jessica Zirkelbach

2020 STEP Ahead Honoree

Senior Manager, Site EHSS Leader
SABIC

I love working in teams, collaborating with great people and learning from others.  I love that every day brings a new challenge, allowing me to use my competitive drive to make things the best they can be for others.  I love the satisfaction of accomplishment I feel when my team improves a process for others.

Jessica has earned a reputation as a team builder in her decade at SABIC. She sees her greatest achievement, thus far, as being the time she led a team in a successful $65 million facility refurbishment, a job that seemed almost overwhelming at the outset but that safely produced good products ahead of schedule. Not only did her team gain a huge sense of accomplishment, but their efforts paid off in SABIC’s improved manufacturing operational excellence, customer experience and business results. This is typical of Jessica’s work.  She is known for encouraging teams to study issues and welcoming out-of-the-box thinking that creates positive disruptions in SABIC’s operation. Recently promoted to a senior leadership position, Jessica is currently the EHSS Leader for SABIC’s largest manufacturing facility in the America’s region.  She is leading initiatives to improve EHSS culture with an overall goal of driving environmental and safety to best-in-class status.

Additionally, Jessica leads SABIC’s Early Career Engineering Development program (SEeD) for the America’s region, where she is responsible for cultivating the company’s talent pipeline for engineering capabilities. Jessica aims to increase diversity overall, including diversity of engineering disciplines and educational institutions, along with more traditional measures. She is continuing a SABIC track record of attracting female engineers to SEeD, sustaining more than 35 percent gender diversity year over year.  In a previous role as a hub leader for SABIC Women’s Network in Mt. Vernon, Indiana, she increased women in hourly team leadership positions by 20 percent.

Also active in her community, Jessica currently leads a Girl Scout troop where her focus is on teaching confidence and leadership.  Jessica enjoys putting on science demonstrations at local elementary schools as part of the SABIC Discover Science program which impacts approximately 2500 children annually in the Evansville area. She is a founding member of the Evansville Tristate Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (twiSTEM) network, whose mission is to provide professional development, networking and outreach opportunities for women already in STEM fields and to encourage others to pursue careers in STEM. By supporting women in STEM-based careers, she is not only helping individuals succeed—she is helping families and her community.  Jessica is a wife and proud mom of 2 beautiful little girls.