Preetica Kumar

National Consumer Products Business Leader
Global Facilities
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Preetica Kumar is always looking at the human side of the business, recognizing that behind every title is a person. In addition to demonstrating strong technical acumen and providing excellent client service, she’s always working to be a trusted partner.

She spent many nights as a child in India dreaming about her future, and now spends nights on a high-rise balcony in Chicago envisioning the future of infrastructure. As a chemical engineer, field engineer, project engineer and business development manager, she’s focused on facilitating complex capital engineer-procure-construct (EPC) project execution, ushering a project from the conceptual phase to turning over the keys after startup. She leads the national consumer products business, collaborating with clients and colleagues to construct world-class facilities for the products that people rely on every day.

How do you and your team make the world a better place?

We help our clients make incredible consumer products. These are the day-to-day products that we use from the day we are born to the day we die. They cater to our most basic human needs of health, hygiene and self-care, and are often a nostalgic part of our lifelong memories. Now take those memories and multiply them by the globe and then multiply that by forever — that is the impact of our consumer products clients in our lives, and we are honored to have the opportunity to be their designer and builder of choice.

What excites you most when you look at the future of infrastructure?

We’ve barely scratched the surface of the infrastructure industry. That untapped potential, combined with the incredible trail-blazing people we have, is an amazing combo for an incredible legacy 100 years from now.

What advice would you give your younger self?

No stress. A degree is just a starting point. Go with your gut. You will never guess the amazing surprises life has in store for you.

What superpower would you choose and why?

Seeing the future a thousand years out to back calculate what today needs to be.

If you were stranded on a desert island, what three things would you want with you?
  1. Internet
  2. Another stranded human
  3. Hair straightener (and some place to plug it in). I haven’t quite thought this through, have I?