The Ohio University Board of Trustees has selected College of Arts & Sciences alumna Peggy Viehweger ’71, who majored in English, to serve on the Board as a national trustee. A resolution announcing Viehweger’s appointment was approved at the Board’s June meeting and reported in Compass.
Viehweger is the former president and CEO of Supresta in New York, a private equity-owned global chemicals enterprise that was once part of Akzo Nobel. She was a general manager and business unit manager at Akzo Nobel Chemicals in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, for 15 years before that. At Akzo Nobel, Viehweger held positions of increasing responsibility, culminating in being the first American and the first woman promoted to the position of business unit manager. As functional chemicals business unit manager, she was responsible to the company’s board for a $1 billion business with 22 manufacturing locations worldwide. She began her career at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati in purchasing and trading; her last position there was as associate director of the corporation’s (then) bar soap and household cleaning products division.
“I am thrilled to welcome Peggy to the Board of Trustees,” said Ohio University President Roderick J. McDavis. “Peggy’s commitment to Ohio University coupled with her leadership skills and experience in strategic planning and management will be an asset to the Board and to this University, and I look forward to working with her.”
A native of Athens, Viehweger received a bachelor’s degree in English from Ohio University. Both her mother and one daughter also graduated from OHIO, and she is the granddaughter of Don C. Peden, a former OHIO coach and athletic director for whom the University’s football stadium is named. She is a member of Ohio University’s Women in Philanthropy and is currently the executive producer on a documentary film being produced by that organization. It consists of interviews with 16 OHIO women who attended the University between 1944 and 2012 and chronicles their experiences and the effect Ohio University has had on their lives.
Viehweger also has been involved in the University’s fundraising initiatives. She is a trustee for the Ohio University Foundation, the fundraising arm of the University, and represents the College of Arts and Sciences on The Promise Lives Campaign.
“I am thrilled and honored and look very forward to meeting the trustees and working with them,” Viehweger said of her appointment to the Board of Trustees. “I trust my background will mesh with others’ to bring additional value to the wonderful purpose of Ohio University, which for me is to create independent, thinking, confident people who contribute to the world their individual talents.”
Viehweger is one of two non-voting national trustees who serve on the Board. National trustees, who are distinguished out-of-state University alumni, are selected by a vote of the Board and serve three-year terms, with an option to extend the term for an additional three years. Viehweger replaces National Trustee Henry Heilbrunn whose term expired.
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