by Phil Phillips, PhD
Contributing Editor
phillips@chemarkconsulting.net
In our travels through the coatings, ad- hesives, sealants and specialty chemi- cals industries over the past 40 years
we have met many interesting people and
we plan on bringing some of those interesting characters to you in the coming
months. One such person is Steve Kawaja
Owner, IFS Coatings
Coatings World: Great to meet you
Stephen, can you please tell me about
your background and where you went
to school?
Steve Kawaja: I grew up in Toronto,
Canada, though I am a proud American
citizen. My mother is ethnically English
and my father Lebanese, but both my
parents were raised in St. Kitts, a tiny island in the Caribbean before immigrating
to Canada. Growing up we had a mish
mash of cultures, enjoying Lebanese food
and West Indian vibes. I have 3 brothers
(1 younger, 2 older).
My father has a PhD in finance and
was a professor at UCLA, so as a kid he
taught us like he was a professor, giving me a life degree in business. By age
11, we would talk through inventory issues and by age 16, I was competing in
National Stock Market competitions in
Canada. My mother inspired a culture of
service and I completed over 1,000 hours
of community service in high school, winning a school award and ultimately featured on national radio. Our family has
always had a focus on performance, service and culture.
I went to Duke which at the time was
a real culture shock. I double majored in
Economics / Philosophy and graduated
cum laude, though at the time it seemed
my real major was drinking beer. After
I graduated, I joined Credit Suisse First
Boston, an Investment Bank in New York
City. On top of my father’s teachings,
these formative years shaped my thinking
and philosophy and provided the intel-
lectual backbone for the strategy we later
implemented at IFS.
CW: When talking with you over the
last couple of months, one of the several
very strong elements of your persona
is your ability to move simultaneously
on several fronts. Tell me about that
characteristic.
SK: I worked doing equity stock/com-
pany research with a mentor named
Michael Mauboussin (then Chief U.S.
Investment Strategist), and we did some
really cool work studying return on capi-
tal, what drives a company’s returns, and
comparing different businesses. Actually,
I just found one of my old papers on
Kellogg’s MBA site ( http://www.kellogg.
northwestern.edu/faculty/korajczy/htm/
mauboussin.feb2000.pdf). I completed
a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst)
while working, which further expanded
my financial and market understanding.
After four years of work, I returned to
Columbia an MB
I felt guilty from not working harder
at Duke, so I dorked out and was chair-
man of student government, president of
my cluster, co-president of the investment
management club, TA’d 3 classes and
worked one day a week at Viking Global
Investors, a hedge fund. I was lucky
enough to win the only award given to a
first year student for overall contribution
to academic and student life. I worked
as a hedge fund manager for a number
of years, ultimately managing a $250 mil-
lion portfolio before joining IFS in 2008.
CW: Tell me about IFS?
SK: We believe IFS Coatings is the larg-
est private U.S. manufacturer of formu-
lated powder coatings. We have sites in
Gainesville, TX and Ardmore, OK. My
father started the company in 1999,
and we shipped our first box of powder
in 2000. Since then we have grown or-
ganically to one of the largest private US
manufacturers of powder, and we grew
over 20 percent in 2016. My family owns
several related businesses, including one
of the largest industrial adhesives compa-
nies in the USA (IFS Industries), a large
polymer business and a refractories com-
pany, called RSS Dixie. We also own two
appliance brands - BlueStar and BigChill.
Outside of the business, I am an active investor, as well as an advisor at
SignalFire, one of the fastest growing
Venture Capital firms in history that is at
the cutting edge of employing artificial intelligence and machine learning to inform
their process. I tried to commercialize
some product development technology
for the Coatings industry, but unfortunately that was a swing and a miss.
CW: What is your personal business
philosophy?
SK: I believe you have to love your work;
it can’t feel like work. Otherwise, you
don’t want to do it and some other person
who does love it is obsessing around the
clock and will beat you. Leaders have to
inspire their team and show people they
are part of something bigger than themselves. Leaders have to clear the way to
allow each team member to do their job
and not waste their time on politics and
internal drama. I don’t believe there is
such thing as a “boss” – all a boss usually
can do is decide whether or not you work
at a company. The pressure to perform
falls on the employee or family member
as we call our team at IFS.
I also feel a lot of jobs in corporate
America end up being more about internal
politics and positioning than focusing on
the customer and the job. Given the ever
changing management and leadership
landscape in a big company, employees
have to constantly be angling for position
and credit. We really try at IFS to get rid
of the bureaucracy, reports, meetings and
politics and instead focus on the job and
Chemark Interviews Steve Kawaja of IFS Coatings
