Culture Talks is a podcast series that gives insight into the company culture at Ahlstrom-Munksjö, a global leader in fiber-based specialty materials. Follow along as Katrina Dachelet, Talent and DEI Manager, Americas, unpacks various topics together with interesting guests from our company. Learn more about our different aspects of our company culture and our journey to build Ahlstrom-Munksjö. 

Customer Centricity, even in its simplest form, is still something many companies struggle to get right. This can be down to a range of factors – but the most common, and perhaps the greatest, barrier to customer centricity is actually the lack of a customer-centric organizational culture.

At Ahlstrom-Munksjö, Customer Centricity constitutes not only one of our six Culture Cornerstones but it also forms the foundation of our company’s Leadership principles. We partner with our customers, provide and capture value with them, serve our customers as one company and also gather and act upon customer feedback – but, more importantly, we place the customer at the very heart of how we operate. 

To find out more about how we build a customer centric culture, we spoke with Robyn Buss, EVP - Food Packaging and Technical Solutions Business Area; Katja Hagström – VP for Talent and Development; Frederic Durand, Group Commercial Excellence manager; and Charlene Reverdy – R&D Scientist and a recent recruit to our JUMP Leadership Development program.

What does innovation mean to Ahlstrom-Munksjö and why is it important? How do we innovate and what does it look like? In episode two of the Culture Talks podcast, we tackle these questions and more with the help of Robin Guillaud, EVP for Innovation, Sustainability and Communication.

We also catch up with Emilie Picard and Patrice Blanc who work in Research and Development to find out more about the processes, products and people that exist behind the scenes when it comes to innovation at our company. 

Topics discussed include: 

• Knowledge sharing within our global company 
• The importance of finding the “sweet spot” between creativity and systematic ways of working 
• Sustainability when it comes to food and beverage products
• The challenge of achieving home compostable products without compromising other properties of the product
• The innovative approach to how we work in R&D and how that contributes significantly to our learning culture.

This episode of the Culture Talks podcast talks about sustainability and corporate social responsibility with Maria Ahlström-Bondestam of the Eva Ahlström Foundation and Nina Vähäpassi – UNICEF’s Corporate Partnerships Manager. We explore the origins of the Ahlström Collective Impact (a new initiative committed to creating change by investing in a better future for children) while also discussing why sustainability is now so central to how many companies operate.