<KBlanchard >

Based in her home office in London, Ontario, Kanina Blanchard stays on top of a plethora of international assignments for a U.S.-based multinational.

She’s director of global issues and industry affairs for the Dow Chemical Company and says she can tackle her wide-ranging job from here because of efficient technology and a supportive company culture.

Kanina is responsible for managing the 110-year old company’s approach to key corporate issues, including the manufacture of Agent Orange and the 1984 Bhopal, India, gas disaster (since Dow bought Union Carbide). “Many of these are challenges; some of these are opportunities for us to learn and improve how we illustrate ourselves as part of the solution to problems,” she says.

Since starting with Dow in Sarnia in 1989, Kanina worked in Michigan, Hong Kong, Texas and Switzerland. She expected her next move would be to Dow headquarters in Midland, Michigan. Instead, she and her husband Scott Blanchard, a former Dow employee now with 3M, settled in London in 2006. “We had some family priorities that took precedent,” she explains, and Dow was willing to accommodate that.

In addition to having an earpiece permanently affixed, Kanina relies critically on her TREO — providing 24/7 access to news, changing dynamics related to the issues she is involved in, client requests and the connectivity that is required in such a dynamic job.

Yet the virtual world isn’t always a substitute for being on site. Kanina still spends about 30 to 40 per cent of her workdays travelling.

“When you’re managing corporate issues, you have to spend time at headquarters and where the issues are a reality because a lot of what I achieve is based on networking and understanding the people involved and making decisions within the company and within the geographies and governments,” she says.

And those years being at different Dow locations have built her understanding of global issues to which a company must be attuned. “I think the virtual work is enhanced and enabled by the fundamental base I have in the company and the broad experience I have.”

One constant in Kanina’s workplaces has been IABC. “Organizations like IABC have been valuable because every one of the locations where I’ve operated in has had an IABC chapter.”

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