Kristen Farmer

Business Unit Quality Leader

One of the great benefits of working in manufacturing is the fact that you are often working on products that people use and consume every day. When shopping with friends or family, you get the very satisfying pleasure of saying ‘I made that.’”

Kristen’s knowledge base and leadership skills have helped Sealed Air reach new levels of customer satisfaction. Kristen led Sealed Air’s largest global manufacturing site to the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) certification, based on demand from top-tier customers for safer food packaging. Kristen’s cross-functional team was instrumental in renovating a 1.2M square foot facility to GFSI requirements while maintaining an implementation budget of $2 million. She then spent a year obtaining an additional site certification to the Safe Quality Foods Quality Code. These certifications have retained top customers and brought in over $50M in revenue.

Kristen believes communication is the key to a successful operation, and she helps mentees develop this skill. By transferring her essential knowledge to new employees while allowing the “fresh eyes” of those employees to identify improvement opportunities, Kristen and her team are able to accelerate buy-in and ownership to form productive relationships. Even outside Sealed Air, as a member of the United Way of Greenville County Women’s Leadership Network, Kristen invests time in women’s education, financial literacy, and job training initiatives.

Passionate about promoting the YMCA’s core values of respect, responsibility, honesty and caring, Kristen has supported the organization for years. Recently, she was instrumental in raising over $10K for the annual YMCA Open Doors fundraising campaign, which provides scholarships and programming for families experiencing financial challenges. Kristen also facilitates summer vacation bible school activities in community parks, making attendance possible for more children because the parks are within walking distance of their homes. In addition, through her work with Habitat for Humanity, Kristen has been inspired to begin a woodworking hobby and now builds furniture for family members.