Brij Mohal

Brij Mohal General Manager, Colorant Business Division in Shanghai, China

The China Connection

Dr. Brij Mohal (Rutgers EMBA) has been appointed  General Manager of its Colorant Business division in Shanghai, China. In connection with the business responsibilities is also help in setting up a brand new plant that starts operation in January 2006.

Brij informs us that his duties involve increasing sales in China to help fill up the plant and help in setting up the products to be produced at the plant. "My EMBA notes are with me all the time", he tells us, "conjoin analysis from the Marketing course, organizational structure from the Organizational Behavior course, how to retain key workers from the Strategy class, the $-yuan peg from macro, the role of elasticities in pricing and bundling from the Micro course--this is information that I use every day as the business is being increased."

Brij was previously the Technical Director for Architectural Colorants - Americas at Degussa in Piscataway NJ. After obtaining his undergraduate degree in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, Brij obtained his Ph.D. in Mineral Processing from the Pennsylvania State University.

The China Connection was initiated by Brij’s boss, Doug Harless, himself a Rutgers EMBA. Doug is the Senior Vice President and General Manger of the plant in Parsipanny, NJ, and to this day, EMBA professors’ voices drop by an octave at the mere mention of his name—the man was brilliant.

Doug writes, “For five years I was involved in a wide range of activities including: M&A activities in Asia-Pacific, labor negotiations in the US, strategic purchasing negotiations in Europe and supporting the growth of the global business.

In 2002, the opportunity came to move closer to the customer when I became the Sr. VP / GM accountable for the global activities of Degussa's Colorants business. One of my early challenges was to begin preparations for an asset presence in China as part of the globalization strategy for the business included a manufacturing location in China. After two years of intensive sales and marketing activities across Asia-Pacific, it became clear that in order to really appreciate the dynamic fragmented market in China we had to invest further in the organization in China by creating a self sufficient team in China.”

Doug then picked Brij to run the new Shanghai operation, and what makes Brij Mohal's job even more interesting is that working with him will be current graduates from the Rutgers-Shanghai Executive Program!

With virtually all the key players here and in China from the REMBA program, the story has a nice circular feel to it.