Carol L. Roberts, ‘81, has used her degree in mechanical engineering to forge a lifelong leadership career at International Paper, a Fortune 100 company and the largest forest products company in the world. A two-sport star at Yale, she twice earned All-Ivy honors as a four-year starter in field hockey, and also started for three years in softball. Both of Roberts’ teams won the Ivy League championship in 1980.
After Yale, the Philadelphia native began her corporate climb as an associate engineer at a Mobile, Alabama paper mill in 1981. A decade later, she became the firm’s first female mill manager, overseeing the Oswego, New York facility.
Named a corporate officer in 1997, Roberts has successively served as a vice president in both human resources and manufacturing areas before being named a senior vice president. Throughout her 28-year career, Roberts has been a champion of leadership, diversity and developing people, believing this is what makes good companies great.
In 2008, Roberts led International Paper’s purchase of one of its largest competitors - Weyerhaeuser’s packaging business. In her capacity as senior vice president of industrial packaging, she oversees an organization of more than 24,000 employees that produces sales in excess of $9 billion annually.
