Paul Blanchard joined Chemical Marketing Associates in 2007 as Senior Consultant in CMAI's Houston office. Paul adds to CMAI's growing expertise in the area of plastics and polymers with a specific focus in the area of engineering plastics.

Paul has over thirty years experience in the engineering plastics business, including twenty with GE Plastics (now Sabic Innovative Plastics), in a variety of roles including marketing management, product management, and financial management. He also worked with Clariant Performance Plastics as director of sales, marketing and technology, and with LNP Engineering Plastics as a product marketing manager. Most recently, he worked with Albis Plastics in custom formulation and compounding of engineering resins.

Paul received a BS in Finance from La Salle College in Philadelphia.

Kim McPhillips is Business Director, Polyethylene. She joined NOVA Chemicals in 2005, after working for the Dow Chemical Company for 16 years. She graduated from Ferris State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration and from Central Michigan University with an MBA.

Mrs. Shannon Schneider is a consultant at Nexant ChemSystems, responsible for petrochemical products in North America and Latin America. She has participated in a wide variety of single client projects and multi-client reports specifically focusing on activities related to the plastics industry. These reports include intermaterial competition, strategic assessments, polymer benchmarking and forecasting.

Before joining Nexant ChemSystems, Shannon Schneider worked for Chevron Phillips Chemical Company and performed the following tasks: Phillips Sumika Account Manager - Polypropylene, Polyolefins Sales Representative, and Polyethylene Business Analyst. She hold a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and a minor in Chemistry from Texas A&M University in College Station, TX.

Peter holds a Bachelor of Science and Masters of Science degree in chemical engineering from Northwestern University and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Houston. He has 22 years of experience in the chemical industry working first for Air Products and Chemicals and then for Sterling Chemicals. During this time he had assignments in Process Engineering, Process Technology, Information Systems Projects, Environment, Supply Chain and Commercial. In 1992 he joined Sterling Chemicals where he had varous supply chain and commercial responsibilities for styrenics and other products.

Peter joined CMAI as Director of Styrenics in March 2006. He contributes to a number of services and reports, including the Aromatics Market Report, the Monomers Market Report, and the Global Plastics and Polymers Report.

As Assistant Chief Economist, Paul is responsible for the analysis and forecasting of macroeconomic and financial market developments in Canada, the United States and key overseas economies and is a regular contributor to a number of RBC Financial Group publications.

A graduate of Queen’s University and the University of Manitoba, Paul recently joined the Economics Department of RBC Financial Group in 2007 after working for twenty years at another major financial institution where he was responsible for generating the macroeconomic outlook for the United States, Canada and Canadian regional economies. Paul started his professional career as an economist in the Research Department at the Bank of Canada.

Paul is a member of the Economic Policy Committee of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and is on the Editorial Board of Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de politiques. Paul is also Past President and Director of the Toronto Association of Business and Economics (TABE).

Gus has 36 years of experience in the plastics business with the Dow Chemical Company as well as 27 years in Dow's Polyethylene sales, distribution, and marketing management.

He holds a Bachelor of Science from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Mechanical Engineering.

John Moisson is the President and founder of JAMPLAST Inc. , a leader in the distribution of plastic resins, biopolymers, biocomposites and additives. The company is in its 15th year of business and sells a full line of thermoplastic resins to over 250 plastic processors across North America.

John has over 25 years of experience in the petrochemical industry. After completing a Bachelors Degree in Logistics and Marketing from the University of Tennessee, John began his career with Dow Chemical in Freeport Texas. While at Dow, he held positions in manufacturing, sales and marketing management. In 1994 John and his wife Carolyn started JAMPLAST Inc. and since then have grown the company in to a successful resin distribution business specializing in biopolymers.

Robert Sheldon BA (Hons) graduated from Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam University, UK and Kansai Foreign Languages University, Osaka, Japan in 1995, where he studied International Business with Japanese. Robert speaks Japanese and worked for over 8 years in the international trade arena handling speciality glass, rubber and plastics products as a trainee trader for Mitsubishi Corporation in Johannesburg and as a trader for Mitsui and Company in London.

Robert joined the LME in January 2004 to support the operational development of the LME’s plastics futures contracts for polypropylene and linear low density polyethylene, launched in May 2005. His role at the LME has been varied incorporating LME Physical Operations and project management responsibilities before becoming Plastics Development Manager in July 2007 and more recently Business Manager for Plastics in March 2008.

Robert has been Secretary of the LME’s Plastics Committee since its inception in 2004. Working closely with the plastics industry and LME membership to develop the contract design and contract specifications, he played a key role in the launch of the global contracts in May 2005 and project managed the launch of the regional contracts more recently in June 2007.

Robert continues to engage with industry on a one to one basis and through speaking opportunities at conferences and seminars to increase awareness and understanding of price risk management and the workings of the LME.

Mark Wasilenski as Product Marketing Specialist is responsible for the day-to-day business management of the compounded PA6 portfolio at BASF Corporation - North America.

Over the past 14 years, Mark has held several positions within the BASF organization with the last 2 years concentrating on the PA6 Product Marketing area. He has worked as Technical Manager overseeing multiple locations for new compounding technology for the production of PA6, PA66 & PBT engineering resins and customer color compounding of these grades. Additionally, Mark also served as Technical Service representative for the engineering plastics business in North America.

Mark graduated from Easter Michigan University with a bachelor’s degree in Plastics Technology.

Landon Feller joined ICIS in 2007 as a markets reporter for the Americas, based in Houston. He currently writes six weekly market reports covering commodity chemicals and products including glycol ethers, oxo-alcohols, PET, polyols and isocyanates. He also provides real-time news on issues affecting those markets. Before coming to ICIS, Landon earned a BA degree in journalism from the University of Georgia and served with the Peace Corps in Ecuador.

ICIS provides real-time news and pricing information on the petrochemical and oil markets with market reports published on more than 120 commodities. The pricing information is gathered by teams of experienced reporters in London, Houston, Singapore and Shanghai and other centres to offer the most complete, authoritative and up-to-the minute independent market information available. The company has a global staff of 170 and is part of Reed Business Information (RBI), a unit of Reed Elsevier plc - the world's leading publisher and business-to-business information provider, with 37,000 employees and annual turnover of more than $8 billion.

Kevin Allen joined Platts as an Associate Editor in March of 2007. Prior to joining Platts, Kevin received a B.A. in international relations from the University of South Florida and an M.A. in comparative politics from University of Houston. After completing his graduate education, Kevin received a Fulbright fellowship to study the effects of the free market economy and consumption in the context of support for the European Union. Additionally, he worked at the Institute of Market Economics in Sofia and has collaborated with several Bulgarian non-profit organizations including the Center for the Study of Democracy and the Next Page Foundation. His portfolio at Platts includes EDC, VCM, PVC, caustic soda, chlorine, chlorinated solvents, methanol, AA and VAM.