The world is full of constant motion machines powering cities, systems automating industries, and technologies connecting people in ways once unimaginable. At the center of this transformation is not just innovation, but the people who guide it with purpose. For Pia Oelze, Head of EMEA Key Account Management for Power & Industrial Automation at Henkel, leadership is about more than strategy. It’s about empowering people, creating trust, and driving sustainable change.
Her journey reflects a balance between complexity and clarity. Early on she saw the importance of focusing on shaping the broader strategic direction and relying on subject matter experts when required. Inspired by a mentor who showed her how to augment her strengths while embracing growth areas, Pia has learned that leadership flourishes through authenticity, curiosity, and the courage to build on others’ core competencies.
Today, she leads a regional sales team with a vision that goes beyond business outcomes. To Pia, success lies in fostering a culture where diverse backgrounds and ideas spark creativity and champion sustainability, not as an afterthought, but as a true competitive advantage. Her focus is on customers that innovate power and automation solutions, and her story is a reminder that the most enduring energy is found in integrity, collaboration, and the shared commitment to a better tomorrow.
Journey in Power & Industrial Automation
The Key Account Management team at Henkel is responsible for creating long-term value for both customers and the company. Pia leads, coaches, and mentors her team while developing and executing strategies that align with business unit objectives. She also provides high-level oversight in navigating complex supply or customer challenges. Her role spans all levels of customer relationships from boardroom discussions to R&D meetings and conversations on the production line.
Amid the ongoing challenging economic climate, Pia has focused on steering through tough market conditions with persistence and creative solutions. The Power & Industrial Automation business supports customers who are powering, automating, and connecting the world. Its work is closely tied to megatrends such as Sustainability (Renewable Energy and Efficient Energy Management), Global Connectivity & Automation (Industry 4.0/Smart Factories, Internet of Things, E-Mobility), and a Diverse & Growing Global Population (Upgrading Infrastructure). Through adhesives, sealants, coatings, and thermal management materials, Henkel enables customers to build and maintain the reliable systems that drive these advances.
Pia’s career began in marketing, and while her master’s degree included sales management, the idea of transitioning into technical sales was not an obvious choice at first. With a non-engineering background and a field traditionally underrepresented by women, she felt cautious about her fit and therefore declined her first sales position at Henkel. When offered a Global Key Account Manager role on a second occasion, however, the encouragement of her manager at that time convinced her to embrace the opportunity. With guidance and mentorship, Pia leveraged her strengths to build on her previous experience and develop in new areas. Reflecting on her journey, Pia acknowledges her initial hesitations were unfounded and she hopes to inspire other women in the organization to tackle similar roles.
Transforming Sustainability into Shared Success
In addition to expectations of overall business growth, sustainable outcomes are a significant success factor for Pia, her team, and Henkel. Enabling sustainable transformation in Henkel’s Power & Industrial Automation business begins with organizational commitment. “First and foremost, the company must be dedicated to these objectives,” Pia often emphasizes, and Henkel undoubtedly is. As Head of EMEA Key Account Management, her role is to ensure that Key Account Managers leverage Henkel’s pioneering position with customer-specific solutions, translating corporate strategy into tangible relevance for customers in the Power & Industrial Automation market segment. With this commitment, Pia and her team have helped Henkel earn sustainability awards from Fortune 500 customers, further elevating the company’s sustainability achievements.
The greatest successes – like the ones that led to prestigious awards — come when Pia and her team dive into customers’ sustainability challenges and help chart a path forward. Sustainability and innovation go hand in hand, often requiring customized approaches to tap into Henkel’s evolving portfolio, selecting the appropriate products to balance performance and sustainability objectives. By committing to net-zero emissions across its entire value chain (Scope 1, 2, and 3) by 2045, Henkel’s products and solutions not only meet customers’ technical requirements but also help reduce their environmental footprint. Often, Scope 3 emissions are the most significant portions of a company’s carbon footprint and the most difficult to manage since they are outside direct organizational control. Pia acknowledges the complexity of this challenge but emphasizes the critical role her sales team plays in enabling emission reductions through solutions that extend product lifecycles, facilitate circularity, and reduce energy consumption. In doing so, Henkel helps lower both its own indirect emissions and its customers’ direct emissions.
Pia notes that this collaboration hinges on customer readiness and trust. Without trust, customers will not embark on the sustainability journey. Trust is earned by demonstrating expertise, presenting transparent and measurable data, and being honest about what is and is not possible. For Pia, this trust becomes the bridge to collaboration, which is the key to building innovative, sustainable portfolio solutions.
At Henkel, sustainable innovation is imperative to remain competitive in the mid- to long-term. Balancing customers’ expectations for performance, cost-efficiency, and sustainability is challenging but essential. Pia outlines four core elements to success:
- Mutual Understanding of Needs and Capabilities: Sustainability is a shared responsibility, requiring both Henkel and customers to align on objectives, strategies, and challenges to create practical, customized solutions.
- Teamwork: The complexity of modern challenges demands broad ecosystems of expertise rather than siloed efforts. In Henkel’s Power & Industrial Automation business, innovation workstreams bring together account managers, engineers, product developers, strategists, business development leads, and sustainability experts. Together, they analyze portfolios, competitive landscapes, regulatory developments, and customer roadmaps to build actionable innovation plans –always in close collaboration with customers.
- Early Engagement: With approximately 80 percent of a product’s carbon footprint determined during the design phase, Henkel prioritizes early-stage co-innovation. Through initiatives like the company’s RE-CREATE program, sustainability experts examine the full value chain – from sourcing to end-of-life – and identify opportunities to enable circularity and reduce emissions. This approach has delivered measurable success across industries, from packaging to automotive to power and automation.
- One Step at a Time: Sustainable transformation requires patience, persistence, and long-term commitment. Every element from raw materials and logistics to packaging, energy, and end-of-life must be rethought. For Pia, progress depends on trust, transparency, data-sharing, and continuous collaboration across the value chain.
Building Strategic Partnerships and Future-Proof Solutions
Sustainability is not just part of Henkel’s growth strategy; it is a mindset deeply embedded across the organization. The company champions an approach that prioritizes proactive adaptation over reactive compliance. This willingness to do things differently has become a strategic strength, enabling Henkel to foster deep customer engagement that goes far beyond operational discussions. It allows Pia and the team to engage across multiple levels of customer organizations – from design teams to C-suite decision-makers – and be viewed as strategic partners. This trust opens doors to meaningful exchanges about industry trends, evolving expectations, and shared challenges, ultimately leading to co-created solutions that are both resilient and future-oriented, an especially critical advantage in times of change.
Today’s global environment is shaped by supply chain disruptions, economic volatility, and geopolitical uncertainty, putting companies under mounting pressure to stay agile, well-informed, and closely connected. At the same time, sustainability regulations are becoming increasingly stringent, complex, and fast-moving. Henkel has set a strategic ambition to move beyond anticipated future regulations, pioneering advanced solutions that are ahead of their time. This includes offering products with no intentionally added PFAS, isocyanate-free adhesives, and chromium-free formulations for metal treatment, reflecting Henkel’s commitment to future-proof innovation.
In many cases, sustainable products also deliver lower total costs of ownership over the mid- to long-term. Demonstrating this connection between sustainability and tangible business outcomes helps build a compelling case for implementation. Pia’s and her team’s deep understanding of current market benchmarks and their ability to clearly articulate the performance and sustainability advantages of Henkel’s alternatives have led to many successful projects.
Henkel equips its teams with a range of tools to quantify these benefits and present transparent data, such as CO₂ and energy savings, waste reduction, or water recycling. Analyzing broader market forces, such as regulatory and legal drivers, further clarifies the customer’s readiness to adopt new sustainable technologies. And, as Pia emphasizes, the most significant sustainability achievement can only be realized when Henkel engages early in the design phase – where the foundation for long-term business relevance and environmental impact is set.
Leading with Authenticity and Supporting Diversity
Pia’s message to future leaders is simple yet powerful: be brave and go for it. She believes that motivation, curiosity, and an insatiable appetite to learn enable anyone to build competence through experience. “You don’t need to meet every single requirement before saying yes to a job,” she advises, noting that skills can be developed along the way. For her, this is the very essence of growth and development.
Authenticity is at the heart of Pia’s leadership philosophy. She encourages individuals to leverage their unique strengths whether empathy, active listening, or strategic thinking without feeling pressured to conform to a particular way of working. Key Account Management, she explains, extends far beyond technical sales; it is about building and sustaining long-term strategic partnerships, a role that requires strong relationship-building skills as much as technical expertise.
Pia emphasizes the importance of humility and openness. She believes that acknowledging what one doesn’t know and being willing to learn from others is not a weakness, but a true strength. It demonstrates emotional intelligence, strong leadership and builds deeper trust in professional relationships.
Forging these types of bonds also requires an embrace of diverse perspectives. As a global company with 47,000 employees representing more than 120 nationalities and four generations, diversity is not just a corporate value at Henkel, it is a lived reality. “Different people bring different strengths, and that is what helps Henkel thrive as a leading global player,” Pia explains. The company’s culture celebrates unique backgrounds, experiences, and ideas, creating an environment where creativity drives success and provides the foundation for all business interactions.
When it comes to women in technical sales roles, Pia is proud of Henkel’s progress. The company has committed to increasing the share of women in management, and tangible strides are being made. Today, women represent 42 percent of management at Henkel. “I used to be the only woman on my team,” Pia recalls. “Now, 30 percent of the team are women, each selected because of their ability to meet the role’s expectations.” Henkel’s focus, she stresses, is on equal opportunities, encouraging and mentoring women who might otherwise hesitate to apply for technical sales positions and ensuring they have the support to thrive.
Passion and Mission Drive Customer-Centric Solutions
In addition to fostering a ‘can do’ example for other women, Pia’s passion for sustainable solutions is inspiring. Sustainability is both a personal commitment and a professional mission. While she remains conscientious about her individual environmental footprint, she recognizes that her greatest impact comes through her role at Henkel by leveraging her influence and collaborating with customers, suppliers, and partners to accelerate sustainability at scale. This ability to drive environmental progress while simultaneously contributing to business growth is one of the most rewarding aspects of her work and one of the reasons she values Henkel’s prioritization of sustainability.
Looking to the future, Pia hopes more companies will embrace sustainability not as an optional add-on but as a core competitive advantage, collaborating across industries to accelerate sustainable transformation. She stresses that such progress cannot be achieved in isolation. Proactive collaboration is essential to building a more balanced, resilient, and equitable world.
She also notes that customer expectations over the next five years will be shaped – among others – by three powerful forces:
- Sustainable Innovation: Organizations must balance performance, cost-efficiency, and sustainability while leveraging new tools such as AI to accelerate development and productivity. Pia sees sustainable innovation, co-created with customers, as critical for long-term competitiveness.
- Digitalization: Customers increasingly demand smarter, multifunctional solutions—adhesives that support miniaturization, thermal management, or EMI protection. Henkel is responding with advanced materials enabled by digital services and data-driven management, underscoring the role of digitalization in shaping next-generation solutions.
- Supply Chain Agility: With geopolitical uncertainty, economic volatility, and ongoing supply chain disruptions, agility and resilience are essential. Customers expect faster development cycles, local technical support, and close collaboration. Henkel’s “in the region – for the region” production model, combined with regional R&D and in-market engineering expertise, is designed to meet these evolving needs.
Sustainability enablement, team empowerment, and authentic leadership are the core of Pia’s successful professional journey thus far. She is committed to helping Henkel customers navigate dynamic market conditions, while driving positive, future-oriented transformation.
