Mike Huff currently serves as President and CEO of Ascensus. Prior to joining the team, Mike was the COO of Citadel Plastics from 2008-2010 and CEO from 2010-2015, which included a successful Wind Point sale to HGGC/Charlesbank in 2012. During Mike's tenure with Citadel, the company completed eight strategic acquisitions, two of which added over $200MM revenue and significant new technologies to the Citadel portfolio. Huff also served as an Operating Partner with Arsenal Capital from 2015-16 and a Senior Consultant with Charlesbank from 2016-17.

Prior to Citadel, Mike spent 5 years at Johns Manville, a Berkshire Hathaway company. He led the Global Reinforcements business and the Insulation Group Operations. Huff also spent 21 years with GE Plastics, serving in such roles including GM of Polyester Products, GM of High Performance Products and several operational roles. Overall, Huff has spent over 35 years in the materials space bringing thoughtful innovation and strategic management to every situation.

In addition he’s served on several boards including Citadel, Accella Performance Materials, Elite Comfort Solutions, Haysite Reinforced Plastics and VPC. Huff has been a key driver in over 20 completed acquisitions and gained a passion for the materials business with the completion of a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

Craig Wien serves as Vice President and CFO of Ascensus Specialties. He joined the team in November 2016. He has over 25 years of chemical industry experience in both chemical manufacturing and distribution.

Craig was the CFO of Basic Chemical Solutions (“BCS”) in Redwood City, CA from 2003 to 2011. BCS sales tripled in his 8 years there until it was sold to Univar at a 10X trailing twelve month multiple. He then joined Univar at its headquarters in Redmond, WA as the VP of Finance for Global Supply Chain.

Craig also spent some time at Honeywell when Larry Bossidy came over from GE in 1991. He worked in the Fluorine division, which was navigating through a market transition from CFCs to more environmentally friendly alternatives. He was trained as a Total Quality Facilitator and gained experience in a variety of different functional assignments including new product commercialization, business development and marketing. Craig received a B.S. in Engineering from Lehigh University and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business.

Gene Shields currently serves as Chief Information Officer for Ascensus Specialties. Gene has over 30 years of progressive process engineering and IT leadership experience that started in the coal industry of western Pennsylvania. As a process engineer and plant manager, Gene became an expert in fine coal upgrading–particularly in the areas column flotation, heptane agglomeration and fine coal dewatering.

In the late 1990’s, Gene refocused his career on leveraging ERP capabilities and information technology to intelligently manage and improve supply chain business processes. With his global perspective, Gene has led large-scale business improvement projects in over 20 counties and 18 industries. Not only is Gene an expert in the areas of ERP selection and deployment, he is deeply experienced at standardizing and simplifying business processes to meet the needs of business users and their customers.

He is also experienced implementing full IT capabilities for divestitures. Most recently, Gene was CIO for a hospital linen / uniform services company in western Pennsylvania. Prior to that, he served as Vice President of Global Supply Chain systems for a $6 Billion building materials supplier. Gene holds a BS in Mining Engineering / Mineral Process Engineering from Pennsylvania State University as well as an MBA from Colorado State University. He is a Professional Engineer and Six Sigma Black Belt.

Mario Sandoval serves as Vice president of Operations and Supply Chain for Ascensus Specialties. He joined the predecessor VPC in November of 2017. Mario has over 30 years of experience in manufacturing and supply chain operations and has worked in the plastics, fiberglass, pulp/paper and chemical sectors. Prior to AS, Mario founded M&R Management LLC, a consulting company focused on improving supply chain efficiencies in acquisitions for process industry-based companies.

Mario has also worked in numerous capacities, primarily focused on global operations and supply chains for A. Schulman, Citadel Plastics, Hollingsworth and Vose, Johns Manville and General Electric. Sandoval received two Bachelor of Science degrees, one in Chemical Engineering and another in Computer Science from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Guy Windey received an MA in Theoretical Chemistry from the University of Ghent in Belgium. He subsequently obtained a Master-after-Master degree Multilingual Business Communication (Junior MBA) from the same university – during his time there he took one semester to study at the Katholische Universität Eichstätt (Germany).

After an assignment of three years at a local Belgian chemical distribution company, he started to work for the Sodium Borohydride business at Morton International as Technical Sales Representative UK/IRL. After having received additional territories, Guy became Technical Service Manager Europe in 1999. In this position, he promoted the use of Sodium Borohydride in Life Science applications in India and Europe through about 100 technical seminars. In 2003, Guy became increasingly involved in the development of new business in the Specialties area around the world as a Technical Marketing Specialist. He was promoted to Marketing Manager WW in 2009.

Guy has been guiding the Sodium Borohydride business throughout the acquisitions by Rohm & Haas and Dow, and streamlined the business in its conversion from Paper to Life Science & Specialties applications in the millennium years. In 2014, Guy was part of the team divesting Dow’s Sodium Borohydride, which led to the acquisition by Vertellus Specialties, Inc.

In 2017, Guy was promoted to Vice President of Sales & Marketing. In this role, he has been leading the commercial team towards the growth that the business has enjoyed for the past 12 months.

James D. Beerbower graduated with a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington and began working at the Elma Washington Sodium Borohydride site in 1979. James has been the Site Director of the Elma Sodium Borohydride facility since 2013. With 39 years of Sodium Borohydride manufacturing experience he’s been an invaluable asset to the team. His outstanding contributions have not gone unnoticed, earning the Rohm and Haas Vice President’s Award for saving over $1 million in capital and the Dow Chemical 2014 Reliability in Action Award.