Senior Vice President, Corporate
Torsten Kraef is Senior Vice President of Corporate Development for Dow, a global material science company with 2022 sales of approximately $57 billion.
Kraef is a member of Dow’s Executive Committee and Leadership Team and supports the CEO and Chairman in all corporate development matters, including engagement with the Board of Directors.
Kraef joined Dow in Germany in 1991, and his career has spanned across most of Dow’s divisions from Performance Plastics to Performance Materials and Infrastructure and Consumer Solutions. In the last decade, he held a variety of business leadership roles as well as division level functional leadership roles.
In 1995, Kraef transferred from Germany to Dow’s European headquarters in Switzerland, and in 2002, he moved to Dow’s corporate headquarters in Midland, Michigan. In 2005/06 he worked with the Office of the Chief Executive to support the development of Dow’s strategy to drive higher margins and to become a more market focused portfolio.
From 2007 to 2012, Kraef led various businesses including a more than $8billion revenue business group consisting of Dow’s Polyurethanes, Epoxy, Formulated Systems and Dow Automotive Systems businesses. During this time, he was also a member of the leadership team responsible for delivering the integration of Dow’s acquisition of Rohm and Haas.
Since 2012, Kraef has led corporate strategy development and coordinated implementation. In 2013, he joined the Executive Committee and Leadership Team which in the last decade delivered numerous key milestones including a renewed operational focus that resulted into more than 20 consecutive quarters of earnings growth while also completing key portfolio moves including the Reverse Morris Trust transaction with Olin in 2015, the integration of Dow Corning in 2016, and the merge and spin transaction with DuPont from 2017-2019. Since 2019, Dow leadership delivered historical high earnings and significantly strengthened the balance sheet while navigating unprecedented market dynamics due to a global pandemic.
Kraef also has a decade of director experience. In 2012, he served as a member of the board of MEGlobal, a joint venture between Dow and Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC) of Kuwait. During 2014 to 2019, Kraef served on the Dow AgroSciences LLC Members Committee and Mycogen Board of Directors, both subsidiaries of Dow. From 2015 to 2022, he served on the Board of Directors of AgroFresh Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ: AGFS) where he also chaired the Governance and Nomination Committee from 2017-2022.
Kraef holds an associate degree in Banking Management from the Industry and Trade Chamber in Düsseldorf, Germany, and a masters/diploma in Business Administration from the University of Düsseldorf, specializing in Production Management and Environmental Economics, International Management and Marketing.