Profile Meagan Kochel

Meet Meagan Kochel!

Meagan is an R&D Chemist working in the Fragrance Encapsulation team at Milliken’s Chemical business. She joined Encapsys in 2020 and has been with Milliken since October 2021 when it became part of the Milliken family. She is based in Wisconsin in the United States.

Q&A Interview

Tell us a bit about your role at Milliken, what does it involve?

I encapsulate fragrances using various polymer chemistries, and these fragrance capsules go into various laundry products. As an R&D chemist, I help with both the front-end development of new chemistries and products, as well as troubleshooting issues with our current chemistries and products. Currently, I am working on our biodegradable capsule line, which I really enjoy because sustainability is very important to me.

What are the main ways you can help Milliken’s customers?

I use science and chemistry and apply knowledge of industrial procedures and market trends to anticipate how we can deliver the best quality products to our customers that not only meet, but exceed, their needs. When there are issues with current products, I help troubleshoot to find the root cause, as well as solutions that will prevent the same issues in the future.

How does your expert knowledge of Milliken’s products help customers when they need Milliken’s technical service?

My background is in medicine, so one of my skills is troubleshooting problems and investigating deviations within our processes. Medicine is essentially troubleshooting, so it was a natural transition for me. I started out in the quality department where I performed investigations, which helped me learn about all our product lines and their sensitivities, and I’ve been able to bring that knowledge to my current job and apply it to solving front-end and product launch problems for our customers.

What does a typical week look like for you?

I generally spend the majority of my time in the lab, making batches and trying new ideas. Often, I will work on several variations of a similar batch to see how different factors affect the outcome, which requires precision and consistency but also creativity! The rest of my time is spent in meetings with our team or our customers discussing results, documenting what was done, and analyzing data for trends. I also spend a portion of my time on investigations, which allows me to contribute my experience in the production environment to the team.

What is your favorite part of the job?

I love getting to solve problems! I like that my job is consistently challenging and requires me to continue learning and exploring new ideas. For example, when I’m thinking about new ways to do something, I’ll go to the literature and see what others have done and build from it – that way I’m not re-doing research that’s already been done, but I’m also learning in the process. I also like that there are theoretical components and physical components to my job. It’s not just about thinking through problems, but also seeing and responding to how it works or doesn’t, in the real world, which gets even more exciting when we scale up from the laboratory to the plant. We have a really collaborative team, so I enjoy learning from my colleagues. Do you have a particular customer success story or a highlight that you are proud of? Something I’m really proud of is that I recently was able to save the team over half a million dollars in capital by suggesting that we could use a current set of assets for a product that we are in the process of scaling up. I was able to perform some lab experiments for proof of concept that it would work, and we ran a set of trials based on my data, which were successful. Using these assets will also give us more flexibility in the future, should the chemistry change, so it also made sense from a business continuity perspective.

What is your favorite Milliken memory?

I have quite a few of them but recently, our location got to go see the Top Gun: Maverick movie as a group, which was pretty awesome. I’ve also made a lot of great friends at the company and that makes the workday enjoyable. What’s special about Milliken’s Chemical business? I really love the focus on sustainability. As I said, it is a value of mine, so I really love being part of a company that values sustainability and strives to do what is right for the planet and the future.

What’s one piece of advice you have for someone looking for a job or internship at Milliken?

Don’t be afraid to try something new or that you don’t know much about! Being an R&D Chemist was never on my radar, but I ended up here through a series of interesting twists. I love my job and have no regrets about the turns my life has taken to get here. And it’s possible that Milliken will grow to the point where I get to re-incorporate my medical knowledge into my job one day, but even if that doesn’t happen, the things I learned have given me an interesting perspective that I feel helps me creatively solve problems and generate new ideas – and that’s priceless.