IP CEO leads with empathy born of desperate childhood
“Look, I’m a builder,” Andy Silvernail said. “I like to build things for the better. And I think there’s a chance to turn around what is an incredible historic company here in Memphis.” (Mark Weber/The Daily Memphian)
Andy Silvernail breezes into his office on the second-floor C-suite at International Paper with an air of complete, albeit casual, confidence. He is wearing jeans and a zip-down sweater open at the neck.
The formality of his inherited office will be changing to something less “imperial,” he says, blue eyes twinkling as he upends a hierarchical pyramid at IP that for years he said valued the idea of IP itself over customers and the thousands of IP employees whose work directly touches them.
Last October, barely five months into his role as CEO, Silvernail laid off more than 1,800 workers as he closed five plants and offices mostly in the Southeast, including 400 jobs from IP’s East Memphis headquarters. He is still getting anguished hand-written letters from the people whose lives were upended.
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Jane Roberts
Longtime journalist Jane Roberts is a Minnesotan by birth and a Memphian by choice. She's lived and reported in the city more than two decades. She covers business news and features for The Daily Memphian.
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