AkzoNobel Adds Four to Its Technical and Marketing Teams

AkzoNobel Surface Chemistry has appointed Ewelina Pitusiak, Christl Kagiyama, Devon Cocuzza and Mulang Chen to the technical and marketing teams of its global personal care business.

As technical service skin care manager, Ewelina Pitusiak will lead the skin care technical team in its support of AkzoNobel Global Personal Care sales and strategic initiatives for leave-on skin care, rinse-off skin care and sun care products. Her responsibilities also include providing technical direction within the skin care team for all projects and inquiries as well as technical product management, working with the sales team to identify and prioritize customer opportunities, and supporting new product development with input on market needs and formulation and product requirements. Before joining AkzoNobel, Pitusiak served as group leader at Coty Inc. She began her professional career as a chemist at L’Oréal USA. She is a member of the Society of Cosmetic Chemists and holds a patent on a fiber-containing cosmetic composition.

Christl Kagiyama, a project Leader within the skin and sun care technical service team, will be responsible for interfacing internally with the global personal care sales, marketing, product development, and manufacturing groups and externally with customers to fulfill all product and formulation needs. Kagiyama came to AkzoNobel Global Personal Care from L’Oréal USA’s Maybelline Foundation Laboratory where, as a senior chemist, she was primarily responsible for development of new emulsion technologies for specific demographics. Prior to that, she was a chemist at the Maybelline Mascara Laboratory of Nihon L’Oréal; and at Maybelline Makeup Laboratory of L’Oréal China. Kagiyama holds a pending patent on mascara containing a sugar silicone surfactant.

As technical service chemist, Devon Cocuzza is responsible for the synthesis and evaluation of new polymeric ingredients in personal care applications. Cocuzza has experience in solid state chemistry with a focus on co-crystallization techniques and characterization. As an undergraduate, he discovered a new pyrazineamide co-crystal and presented his research findings at the National American Crystallography Association meeting in 2010. For his work, Cocuzza received the Howard Nechamkin Award for Excellence in Chemistry upon graduation.

Mulang Chen will join the team as a marketing specialist. She will be responsible for providing daily marketing support to the global launch of new personal care products, conducting customer analysis to help gauge potential business size and needs, and evaluating business opportunities for new technologies and coordinating initiation of potential partnerships among AkzoNobel business units. This marks his first assignment as a member of AkzoNobel’s Global Management Trainee Program, a rotational program for advanced degree graduates with the potential to reach senior leadership positions relatively early in their careers.

More in People