How four powerful women are breaking down barriers and reshaping the future of Axel Johnson with larger roles and louder voices.
The fourth-generation member of her family — and the first woman to ever take the helm — Antonia Johnson was just 33 when she was tasked with ushering in a new era for the Axel Johnson Group. Nearly 40 years later, she has infused her unflappable morals and ethics into every part of the business — doing what’s right for everyone she works for and with — while championing innovation and diversity.
"What we do and the products and services that we sell, take a place in everyday lives of many, many people," says Antonia, who stepped down as Chairman of the Board in 2016, passing on the reins to her daughter Alexandra Morner, a role which she held until 2019 when her brother, Axel Morner took over as Chairman. "A family-run company is a very special entity and can be a force for change in society." Both Antonia and Alexandra currently sit on the Board of Directors of Axel Johnson Inc.
Here, the next generation of female leaders within the Axel Johnson family share their stories — the challenges they’ve overcome and the initiatives they’re launching to keep Antonia’s legacy of fearless determination and thoughtful leadership alive and well.
Aly Myszewski
Product Manager | HighRes Biosolutions
Aly Myszewski hopes more young girls will have fifth-grade yearbook profiles that mimic her own. “I always knew I wanted to be an engineer,” says the 26-year-old Product Manager at HighRes Biosolutions, a company that designs and builds robotic systems and lab devices for pharmaceutical and biotech companies.
While women make up less than 25% of the STEM workforce in the U.S., Myszewski never saw her career path as unusual. “I credit going to an all-girls high school and having a mom who was the head of the household with my becoming a confident, capable woman,” she says of her decision to pursue biomedical engineering at Boston University. But as a teaching assistant, she realized many of her female peers didn’t share her confidence. “With a majority male classroom, women often were less inclined to share,” she recalls. “I made sure as a TA I engaged and uplifted the quieter voices in the room.”
When HighRes showed up at the BU job fair with a robot, Myszewski was intrigued. She joined their product development team in June 2018 and quickly transitioned to the systems engineering team. For months, Myszewski was the only female engineer on the team. When a second female was hired, they quickly bonded.
Ilustración de Veronica Grech
“I realized other women could use our advice on how to navigate the ins and outs of working at a male-dominated company,” she says. “So I decided to do something about it.”
In the Spring of 2019, she launched the HighRes Women’s Network to help the 30 women within the company find a sense of community through networking events and mentorship programs.
Hannah Blakely, a fellow Product Manager & former Applications engineer at HighRes, says she was thrilled and relieved to learn about the women’s group shortly after she was hired. “Aly did a great job of encouraging everyone in the group to have open discussions, some purely informational, but others about how to advocate for ourselves,” she says. “The women’s group has been a source of advice and inspiration for my future.”
Allie Rishmany, a mechanical engineer at HighRes, says the Women’s Network has helped her realize her worth, personally and professionally. “Aly was one of the first female engineers that I met when I started, and at that point we were the only female engineers on our direct teams,” she says. “Since then, I’ve looked to her for advice – ranging from salary negotiation, career next-steps, and simply how to deal with the daily experiences of being a woman in STEM. Now with the Women’s Network, we can have these conversations and take action with the larger community of our female peers, which will ultimately lead to a culture of female success at all levels.”
Best Career Advice:
Actively seek out or create your own network of women in the workplace. I think it is crucial for women in male-dominated fields to have the support system and resources that come from building relationships with female colleagues both at their own companies and within the industry.
Suling Huang
VP and CFO of Parkson
Suling Huang still remembers her first meeting with Antonia Johnson. “I showed her my son’s photo and she asked what my plans were after work. I told her I had a dinner date with my husband,” she recalls. “Antonia said family is most important.”
In 1999, Huang left her job as an analyst at China’s first investment banking firm and moved to the U.S. with her husband, Weibin Cheng, who had taken an engineering job in the Boston-area. Not wanting to return to the banking world, she enrolled in an MBA program at Boston University and concentrated on corporate finance. She gave birth to her son, Sean Cheng, in 2004. Once he was walking and talking, she started to look for jobs and was hired by Sprague as a senior financial analyst.
Huang is not one to get comfortable in a position. “I didn’t want to sit in a back office,” she says. “I wanted to be on the front lines and understand how the business was run and how I could help the company grow the bottom line.” After four years she was transferred to Sprague’s natural gas group and played an integral role in three acquisitions. After seven years, she was ready for a new challenge. In 2017, Sprague acquired Coen Energy and Huang jumped at the opportunity to be their finance director, even though it meant relocating to Pittsburgh. “We quickly brought a small mom and pop business up to the public company standards,” she says. “It was very rewarding to see that transformation.”
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“I may speak softly, but I speak firmly and have all of the facts and data,” she says. “I may look different from the majority of the people in the room, but I also have the confidence that I know what I’m talking about.”
But the professional growth didn’t come without sacrifice. Huang’s husband and son, now a junior in high school, remained in New Hampshire. For the last three years, she has commuted back and forth every other weekend to see them. “My husband is a brilliant software engineer, and he chose to take a back seat in his career to focus more on our son so I could pursue my career,” she says. “He has been spending time teaching Sean how to cook Chinese food, do laundry and clean his room. They would even make dinner together and surprise me when I got home on weekends.”
After nearly 15 years with Sprague, Huang accepted the role of VP and CFO at Sprague’s (then) sister company, Parkson, a leading provider of equipment and advanced solutions in water and wastewater treatment in Florida. “My family and I came to the agreement that it was a great opportunity, so we made the move together,” she says. “I’ve always aspired to be a CFO and to have the opportunity to do it within the AJI family was a no brainer.” Huang credits her career trajectory from financial analyst and finance manager to director of finance and now CFO to a management team willing to listen to her goals and challenge her to achieve them. “I always had leaders who were open to communication and willing to give me a chance,” she says.
“If you do a good job, people will see and then push you a bit,” she says. “Trust is everything and Frank Easton, the former Sprague HR VP, and his successor, Gillian Tierney, have been huge supporters always encouraging me to overcome barriers.” Huang admits, working in a male-dominated environment can be intimidating, but she’s learned to trust her knowledge and experience. “I may speak softly, but I speak firmly and have all of the facts and data,” she says. “I may look different from the majority of the people in the room, but I also have the confidence that I know what I’m talking about.”
Best Career Advice:
As a wife and mother trying to advance in your career, you need to make decisions jointly as a team; always plan ahead, keep your promises and communicate, communicate, communicate. And remember, your success depends on the success of everyone on your team. Our job as a manager is to provide the resources, support and tools for everyone to be successful.
Luz Carter
Director of Continuous Improvement & Sustainability | Brazeway
It’s not every day you meet someone with a “Director of Continuous Improvement & Sustainability” title. Yet for Brazeway’s Luz Carter, continuous improvement has been her personal mantra since she was an engineering student at the university in Mexico, where she grew up. Carter traveled the world early in her career — often the only young woman in a board room of global male executives initially hired to lead a team of cost improvements for the automotive industry.
“I was 24 years old, and we were working with a team in China — a very male-dominated field, with little respect for a female in the workforce. I was giving a presentation, and one of the managers stood up, interrupted me, and took over. I shut down my computer, grabbed my notebook, and said, ‘I don't think you need me here,’ and walked out the door. I don't think I could do that today, yet that questioning forced me to stop being fearful. At the time, I thought, ‘If I lose my job, I'm not going to lose myself.’”
After being recruited for an aerospace role and working as an engineer in the U.S. corporate world, she further honed her skills as a no-nonsense, effective female talent.
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“I’m an engineer by degree, and engineering is very male-dominated,” she says. “So, I had to quickly learn how to interact and adapt to situations.”
One of her most impactful learnings? Not thinking of herself as a woman in the workplace. “Everywhere I went in an engineering position, I was either the only woman or one of two women on a team. One of the key learnings was making sure the topic was not even talked about. As an example, I’m now the Director of CI & Sustainability at Brazeway, I’m not the female Director of CI & Sustainability at Brazeway.”
As part of her Continuous Improvement role, she has female colleagues reporting to her, and Carter reminds them of the same ideology. “Because you're a woman, you should not be treated differently, positively or negatively. It's about equality. And even though it must be talked about because of the inequality in the current world, it should not be a topic of conversation when it comes to somebody’s success.”
One of her most impactful continuous improvement strategies is simple: Ask questions. “When I thought I was stuck and I went to mentors, I realized it was about reflecting: Am I really stuck? There are already things happening to help progress my career, even if it's not a big shift.”
Additionally, she finds growth is often simply getting out of your own way. “At Brazeway, we are a small organization. We run lean. Growth is what you want to make of it. When I interview, I ask prospective talent: ‘Where do you want to grow, because I can design that for you.’ And then we lay out a plan.”
One of her biggest achievements? Not being afraid to speak up. “I come to a team, and I ask the hard questions,” she says. “I push to think outside the box and not get stuck into the mindset of, ‘This is what we've always done.’”
“I’m also not afraid of being a disruptor,” she adds, “and Brazeway has been the first company I’ve worked for where that is encouraged. The Brazeway culture has allowed me to unleash talents I already knew I had but wasn't able to bring out in previous jobs.”
Best Career Advice:
Don’t think you’re different because you’re a woman. You have the same potential. You must find out how to bring it to the table.
Sara Greenstein
President & CEO, Axel Johnson Inc
When Sara Greenstein was just 10 years old, she accepted her first paying job doing field work at a farm next door to her own. “I say this a lot,” she explains of her childhood in central Illinois. “I learned how to work before I knew what work was. We raised everything we ate — before it was cool. Our quality of life ebbed and flowed with mother nature. At a very young age I understood we weren’t in control. That there were other forces at play. And I think that was a valuable lesson.”
As the new President and CEO of Axel Johnson Inc., Greenstein is undeniably in control, while also practicing what she learned as a child — success requires hard work and a willingness to welcome and navigate the unexpected. Her first task? Progressing Antonia Johnson’s legacy, one defined by a remarkable approachability and commitment to making a lasting — and meaningful — impact on the world. “I always say words matter, but actions matter more,” says Greenstein. “AJI’s desire to make an impact is what drew me to this role. The belief that we can make a difference in the world with our businesses. It’s not just about what we do, but how we do it.”
Illustrations by Veronica Grech
“AJI’s desire to make an impact is what drew me to this role. The belief that we can make a difference in the world with our businesses. It’s not just about what we do, but how we do it.”
And like Antonia, making a difference takes grace and grit, both of which Sara learned early in her career. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 2001, she landed her first job at Arthur Anderson Business Consulting, where she was the only woman in her starting class. She recalls the first hour in her new role — everyone seated around a table. “Every introduction was increasingly impressive. Finally, it was my turn. ‘I just graduated,’ I said, ‘And I’m the only one here with a skirt on.’ It was brutally honest and unexpected. But it was the truth. And our global head of Arthur Anderson has never forgotten it.”
As her career has progressed, that brutal honesty has only been further honed. The result? A leadership style that is direct, transparent and authentic. “I want the most diverse set of inputs into every big and major decision,” she says. “And that includes different backgrounds, different life experiences, different geographies, and different genders. In business, the more unique inputs you get, the better the decisions and outcome. This ultimately enables you to outcompete any competitor while also helping each individual learn and grow in the process. That’s when trust occurs.”
Best Career Advice:
Greenstein recalls some advice from her favorite mentor when she was the only woman — and new mom — on the executive team at Underwriters Laboratories. “He told me to be less critical of myself. That he didn’t want me to change who I was at work,” she says. “You’ll never realize your full potential or have any impact if you’re trying to be someone you’re not. Give yourself that permission. That grace. Remember, you’re here for a reason.”
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