Alveda J. Williams, Ph.D.
Chief Inclusion and Social Impact Officer
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Alveda J. Williams, Ph.D.
Alveda Williams is Dow’s Chief Inclusion and Social Impact Officer, where she leads the Company’s global inclusion strategy and oversees corporate philanthropy and the Dow Company Foundation. In this role, she is responsible for a combined portfolio that intentionally connects culture, community engagement, and social impact investments to support long-term value creation.
In addition to her primary role, Williams serves as the Culture & Behaviors Workstream Director for Dow’s enterprise transformation, Transform to Outperform. In this capacity, she is leading the organizational culture shift designed to accelerate growth, enhance productivity, and enable sustained business outperformance.
Under Williams’ leadership, Dow has achieved meaningful progress on key inclusion and diversity performance indicators, rose to the top of the Fair360 Top 50 Companies list, and was named to World’s Best Workplaces™ by Great Place to Work® for three consecutive years, a distinction only awarded to 25 companies.
Williams joined Dow in 2002 and has had a variety of enterprise leadership roles across Research and Development, Human Resources and the Office of Inclusion over her 23-year career. She is the creator of Dow’s Building Engineering & Science Talent at Dow (BEST) Symposium which introduces under-represented minority Ph.D. talent to careers in industrial research. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Open Chemistry Collaborative in Diversity Equity (OXIDE), American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Corporate Council, and the Impact and Belonging Leaders Board for the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4CP). She joined the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Corporate Advisory Council in March 2024 and was appointed to the Catalyst Board of Advisors in January 2026.
Williams earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Norfolk State University and a Ph.D. in materials chemistry from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is credited with three patents and is the author of several internal and external publications, including a recent feature in Nature Chemistry magazine. She is the recipient of the NSBE Golden Torch Award for Corporate Diversity Leadership (2009), the prestigious Dow Transformation in Action Award (2012), the Council for Chemical Research Diversity Award (2013), Diversity Journal’s Women Worth Watching List (2014), i4CP’s Board Member of the Year Award (2021), and recognition as one of Houston’s Top 30 Influential Women (2024).