2013 Executive Eagle Award Winner

Gregory King
Senior Vice President & General Manager - Recycling, RockTenn

Greg leads all of RockTenn’s recycling plant, recycled fiber, and trading operations. He began his career with RockTenn in January of 1989 as a Safety Engineer and developed risk control processes for the company’s operating locations. During his career, he has served in a variety of leadership roles throughout the company including: Vice President, Supply Chain; Director and later Vice President, Risk Management; Treasurer; Director, Environmental, Health and Safety,; Senior Vice President, Safety & Health,; and Chief Procurement Officer .

 He has a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Safety from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, which is one of the top safety schools in the country, and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Georgia.

 Greg started his studies in pre-med with the goal of entering the medical field. If you ask what motivated him to pursue a degree in safety, he will tell you a very personal story about his best friend being killed in a work-related incident. That experience changed Greg forever, and regardless of what his “official title” has been over the years, he has never given up his responsibility for safety and his desire to improve safety systems at RockTenn.

 In 1989, when Greg was hired as the company’s first corporate Safety Engineer, RockTenn, like most companies at that time, did not have a lot of structure in place. Greg began laying the groundwork for a safety management system that would achieve tremendous results over the course of his career, during which, incident rates plummeted from double digits to 1.45.

 Throughout his 25 years at RockTenn, Greg has demonstrated an uncompromising attitude toward safety and health, and has worked tirelessly to improve the company’s safety management systems. This has been done primarily through implementation of robust and effective systems, which include the following core elements:

· Management leadership

· Total employee involvement

· Hazard recognition, assessment and control

· Effective training

· Safety systems assessment and continuous improvement