The company’s new chief executive officer and president also knows a lot about the 150 employees, many of whom have been there longer than she has. Some of them even trained her. “We’ve seen each other grow up and grow older,” says Butler. “I feel as the CEO of the company, I’m more vested in the stakeholders of Neville Chemical for having that long-term tenure here.”

Butler joined the company, which produces hydrocarbon resins used in adhesives, concrete cure, inks, and rubber, as an accounts payable clerk in 1997. Although she had excelled at science while a student at Moon Area High School, for college Butler decided accounting and finance were her stronger calling. Her career has been at a place that combines both her business knowledge and science interest. On the job, she has worked to understand the company’s processes and still enjoys walking through the plant. “There’s something tangible there,” she says. “You can see what you are doing and selling every day, and that really is gratifying.”

In 2002, Butler left the company to pursue a management opportunity, joining ServiceLink, a Beaver County mortgage services company, as director of accounting. While there, she returned to her alma mater to earn her M.B.A. “I think I grew exponentially during that period of time,” Butler says. Then a call came from Neville Chemical about an assistant controller position in 2005, and she returned. After that, it was a swift and steady climb through the ranks.

Butler was named chief financial officer at Neville Chemical in 2008 at the age of 35. With nearly half her career still ahead, she began conversations with the top officers about someday running the company. Her role expanded more deeply into leadership as she was named to the boards of Neville Chemical and of a European subsidiary, and put in charge of the subsidiary’s financial department. She participated in contract negotiations with the plant’s labor union, the United Steelworkers, four times. She worked closely on joint ventures and became the company’s risk manager, helping Neville Chemical weather the movement to Asia of supplies of the raw feed materials needed for its products, as well as rising competition from foreign imports. In 2017, chief operating officer was added to her title. This January, she became CEO and president.

Throughout her career, Butler says her RMU studies have benefited her in many ways, including one aspect that she didn’t especially like at the time — the group project. “I hated having to compromise and rely on someone else and set your schedule around other people,” she admits. “But my career has been one group project. They really were setting me up for what the next 20 years would be like.”

Butler, a member of the Delta Zeta sorority as an undergrad, was at RMU working on her graduate degree when she started dating her future husband, Matt Williams ‘03. With her encouragement, he enrolled in night classes and completed his logistics degree. After they got engaged, they held their rehearsal dinner in a room at the old Sewall Center. “We thought it was a beautiful room and great place to have our friends and family,” she says, “and get to show them the campus too.” They enjoy traveling, skiing, and boating, and this year the couple attended their 15th Indianapolis 500.