There’s a word for what Jennifer Piercy feels as she heads to work every day as the assistant dean for college advancement and president of the NC State Natural Resources Foundation. The word: Passion.
It’s not just the job she loves. It’s serving the university that launched her career. It’s working in an industry she treasures — she cut her teeth in paper mills in Kentucky, thanks to an alumnus with whom she still works today. Most of all, it’s the people: the alumni, students and hard-working board and committee members. Piercy uses the word “love” often when she speaks of those people, and her work.
“When Dean Floyd asked me to serve as the interim assistant dean for college advancement, he asked if I would be applying for the full-time position. I couldn’t imagine feeling the same love I felt for my work as executive director of the Paper and Pulp Advisory Board. That was my dream job,” Piercy said.
She added, “But after about six months in the interim role, I sat in a meeting of the advisory board as a bystander, not the director, and I was so proud of the work we had accomplished together. I had my ‘aha’ moment right then. There was more to be accomplished.”
Piercy’s career has taken a few unexpected turns, and that has made all the difference, she said. After graduating from NC State with degrees in pulp and paper technology and chemical engineering in 1994, Piercy joined Procter & Gamble in Georgia as a process engineer, machine manager and operations manager. She and her husband, Jerry, made a deal when he felt a call to get an MBA at the University of Virginia. After two years, it would be her turn to return to her work in paper operations and manufacturing.
Those plans changed when Piercy landed a job at the university’s Darden School of Business in the MBA Career Services Center. “All of this was totally out of my comfort zone, but it taught me a lot about higher education, working with corporations, working with alumni. So over the course of two years, I thought ‘I kind of like this!’ So when my husband graduated, I was willing to look beyond the paper industry,” she said.
When Piercy’s husband found a job in Raleigh, the duo relocated and began a new chapter of their lives. She focused on her two children, Gabrielle and Ryan, for a few years but always kept in touch with her old colleagues and school connections. Piercy eventually joined the Pulp and Paper Advisory Board and the Paper Science and Engineering program in the Department of Forest Biomaterials. She knew right away that she had found her dream job.
During her time in the Department of Forest Biomaterials, Piercy doubled the size of the Pulp and Paper Advisory Board and its committees, developed key industry partnerships resulting in an 85% increase in corporate giving, doubled annual giving and alumni participation, and managed the recruiting and scholarship program for paper science and engineering students.
Earlier this year, Piercy celebrated her successful career when she became one of two industry leaders to receive the 2023 Woman of the Year Award from the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry (TAPPI). TAPPI is the leading association for the worldwide pulp, paper, packaging, tissue and converting industries.
The award recognizes women who have demonstrated excellence in leading, motivating, and developing others within the pulp, paper, tissue, packaging and supporting industries. Piercy has done all of that and more – championing women in an industry where back in the day, a woman on the job was not quite as common.
At NC State, about 43% of students in the Paper Science and Engineering program are female, up from what once was only a quarter of the total enrollment. “There are great support systems in place now, though women still face some issues,” Piercy said. “Another thing that I find very positive is that the current generation of young men do a much better job at not seeing women as different or less than.”
Piercy added, “I tell students these days, hopefully in another generation we’re not talking about women in industry, right? Hopefully that goes away because our young women will experience way more equity in treatment than I did.”
Piercy’s work and love for the industry have earned her a large fanbase among her colleagues and friends in the industry. One of her longest friendships was born when Bart Nicholson, a 1981 NC State graduate, recruited Piercy to learn on the job at a paper mill near her hometown of Philpot, Kentucky. Nicholson, who currently serves as the vice president of the Pulp and Paper Advisory Board and will become president in the fall, calls Piercy “a special person.”
“She elevates everything she pursues and everyone she encounters with a caring and personal touch,” Nicholson said. ”Jennifer has shown remarkable dedication and passion for the members of the Natural Resources Foundation and the Pulp and Paper Advisory Board, the paper science and engineering program, and most importantly, the students and alumni. Her impact on the pulp and paper industry is deep and wide.”
This story was written by Beth Grace for College of Natural Resources News.
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