As the regional quality manager at Altium Packaging LLC, Sherry R. Rice is proud to be the first-ever female plant manager at the plastics, bottle, and container manufacturing company where she has worked for nearly four decades. She started in various administrative jobs and steadily advanced as a plant manager, supervisor, and quality manager before being promoted to her current role. Ascending to positions of greater accountability has been a significant source of fulfillment and continual learning for Ms. Rice and has allowed her to become a well-rounded professional in her industry and at the company that has awarded her for outstanding performance and operations excellence.
At Altium Packaging LLC, Ms. Rice oversees standard test conditions control and the Global Food Safety Initiative program for 14 facilities. She also has oversight of nine locations across Pennsylvania and in Atlanta, Georgia, ensures good manufacturing practices, manages third-party food safety audits for 42 locations, handles interstate milk shipping, provides coaching, discerns qualifications, and travels to view new plants. She has certifications in the areas of safe quality food, hazard analysis and critical control points, and advanced hazard analysis and critical control points. Looking to the future, Ms. Rice aspires to be the company’s senior director of quality management.
Ms. Rice attributes her success to her work ethic, being a people person, willingness to learn, and loyalty to Altium Packaging LLC. She has remained in the field because she continues to be fascinated with the manufacturing process. Self-described as a strong and independent woman, she was a maverick working in a field that had few women when she started. For this reason, she makes herself available to mentor and encourage other women regardless of their chosen profession. Ms. Rice’s most sage advice to them is to stay strong, know what they believe, stay true to themselves, and let no one take advantage of them.
Crediting her work ethic to her own fortitude and her upbringing as modeled by her father and paternal grandmother, Ms. Rice always considered herself a go-getter, being the first in her family to graduate from high school and attend college. Today, she is looking into taking a course to get a Six Sigma Green Belt and then a Black Belt. The matriarch of her close family, Ms. Rice is married with two sons and four grandchildren. She calls herself a daredevil and an adventure junkie, having jumped out of an airplane, snorkeled, and traveled extensively.