Over her 25-year career in Human Resources, Susan Kelliher has supported a wide variety of
industries and companies, including The Mobil Oil Corporation, Pizza Hut, Raytheon Company,
The Home Depot, Hewlett-Packard, and (immediately prior to coming to Chemours) Albemarle
Corporation, a Baton Rouge, Louisiana–based specialty chemicals company.
Within Human Resources, Susan has pretty much done it all—cultural transformation oversight,
compensation philosophy, talent development, succession planning, and more. She
emphasizes hiring the right people: “If you bring in people who are good at what they do—and
then trust them to do it—driving positive results becomes easy.” Paraphrasing the philosopher
Goethe, she adds, “Treat people as if they already are what you want them to be, and they will
become that.”
Between her husband’s military service and her own career path, Susan has lived in many
places: Texas, the East Coast, the West Coast, the Deep South, and now Wilmington,
Delaware. As for which she prefers, her response is unequivocal: “All of them. Each has been
an adventure.”
Susan has some measure of fluency in Spanish, French, and Mandarin Chinese. Spanish
because she grew up in Texas. French because she studied it in high school and college. And
Chinese because as a student at Rice University she became interested in Chinese culture. She
began studying Mandarin and spent a semester studying abroad in China. Since then, she has
found ways to keep it fresh.
Susan holds a Bachelor of Arts in Asian studies and political science from Rice and an MBA
with a concentration in international business from the University of Texas.