How Dow Got Woke

Dow Chemical Is Based In Trump Country, Loathed By Environmentalists, And Run By A Gay CEO

- Jeff Green

ON APRIL 1, DOW Chemical will be spun off from DowDuPont Inc. to form an independent company. The move will be big for the corporate financiers behind it, and for the manufacturers around the world that put Dow’s chemicals in running shoes, mattresses, adult diapers, baby wipes, and many other products. But it will also be a bellwether for a great many other people. When the spinoff is complete, Dow, which was founded in 1897, will be the first large industrial company with an openly gay chief executive officer and only the second major public company with a gay CEO, after Apple Inc.’s Tim Cook.

“I hope the first thing that people think about me is not that I’m gay,” says the new boss, Jim Fitterling, during an interview at Dow’s headquarters in Midland, Mich. “I’ve put a lot of my life into the company, and I understand the company really well, and I know what it takes to deliver good financial results.”

Unlike Cook’s identity—which he announced in a Bloomberg Businessweek essay that made international news when it was published in 2014— Fitterling’s sexuality went mostly unremarked on when he was appointed by Dow’s former CEO, Andrew Liveris, last year. “It’s just interesting when it comes up. People say, ‘How did you get there?’ ” says Liveris, referring to Dow’s having a gay CEO. “And I kind of look at them quizzically and say, ‘Get where?’ ”