Katie Distler, Chief Sustainability Officer at Technimark, Real Leadership

How does a lifelong conservationist and fly fisher end up leading sustainability for a global plastics manufacturing company?

Katie Distler didn’t stumble into the role. She swam upstream to get there.

Katie is Chief Sustainability Officer at Technimark, a global leader in injection molded plastics for healthcare, consumer, and industrial markets with close to 5,000 employees across the U.S., Mexico, Europe, and China.

For 25 years, she has turned purpose into action—from her earliest days catching snakes and surveying birds for a forest products company, to managing a global conservation portfolio at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, to spending eight years at the Turner Family Foundation where she ultimately served as Executive Director.

What’s remarkable isn’t the pivot from conservation to plastics. It’s the philosophy that connects every chapter: to make real change, you have to understand the business you’re trying to transform.

At Technimark, Katie drives the company’s sustainability strategy across three pillars—people, planet, and product—with ambitious 2030 targets including a 42% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, zero waste to landfill across manufacturing sites, and ensuring 75% of consumer solutions are recyclable, reusable, or made from recycled materials. The company’s vertically integrated recycling subsidiary, Wellmark, processes nearly 60 million pounds of plastic a year.

In this episode, we cover:

How a love of wild places led to a career in the heart of manufacturing

What Katie learned navigating Ted Turner’s multigenerational family boardroom—and why reading the room before you get to the room matters

The presenter who froze in front of Ted Turner and the leadership lesson that stuck

Why she chose a plastics company—and why the smartest environmentalists understand business

How she frames sustainability as a value driver, not a cost center, for private equity owners