Solenis President and CEO John Panichella, left, accepts the Corporate Partnership Award from Miami Foundation Executive Director Jon Kerr.

John Panichella, President and CEO of Solenis, gave the keynote address at the annual Miami Paper Science and Engineering Foundation Student Recognition Banquet held this month on the Miami University campus in Oxford, Ohio.

Panichella was named chief executive officer and president of Solenis in August 2014. Prior to Solenis, Panichella served as president of Ashland Water Technologies and senior vice president of Ashland Inc. He previously held the role of president of Ashland Specialty Ingredients as well as group operating officer.

Panichella addressed the large crowd of attendees, saying that when it comes to employment, "choose the culture, not the company."

"It's pretty well known in the business community that culture eats strategy for lunch every day," he said. "The culture of a company is far more powerful than any strategy that the company has.

Panichella said that investing in people is important, but training and development often gets put off to the side when times get tough.

"Businesses are under tremendous pressure," he said. "Every day, there is pressure by investors and other people to perform better and better and better. And so what happens a lot of times is people make decisions because of that pressure that maybe aren't in the best interest of the culture. I don't think we were that unique in this area, but if you say 'I'm valued by the company and they invest in my professional development,' but every time that business gets tough you cut training, you cut development, you cut all those kind of things that really invest in people, the culture really says, 'You're not that interested in my professional development, you're really not interested in developing me.' So what we did is we decided to pull out several million dollars from the functional budgets and we put it in a training and development budget that says, 'We're going to invest in the people that make the company, regardless of the economic conditions.'

"Because people are what's going to differentiates us, whether they develop new technologies, whether they work with our customers in a unique way. So that's an example of changing the culture. The old culture would have said, 'Wow, it's a tough quarter, we need to restrict training and development because we can't afford to do that.' The new culture would say, 'We can't afford not to do that.'

In addition to all the paper science students who were recognized for their achievements, foundation executive director was honored for his years of service. Kerr, an industry veteran, will be retiring as the foundation's director at the end of the school year.

"I've observed the amazing transition that happens to students after spending four years with the chemical paper biomedical engineering department and its faculty," Kerr said. "I have no idea what the magic is that goes down the hall, but whatever it is, it turns timid high school kids into confident, capable engineers who are committed to lifelong learning."