Auguste Willems

Auguste Willems was born on February 26, 1956 in Tongeren, Belgium. He studied Natural Sciences, Economics and Engineering at the University of Leuven in Belgium before going on to complete a master’s degree in Bioscience Engineering.

In 1986, he took over a range of responsibilities in marketing and sales at Henkel Benelux, before being appointed as Industry Vice President in 1994. HENKEL then sent him on various international assignments, such as Jakarta, Indonesia (as President of Henkel Indonesia) and the USA (as Vice President of Organic Specialties for Henkel North America). After Henkel split off its specialty-chemicals business, he transferred to Cognis as Group Vice President of Functional Products and member of the Corporate Executive Committee in 2002. He has been an Executive Board member of Wacker Chemie AG since 2006.