Paul Blanchard joined Chemical Marketing Associates in 2007 as Senior Consultant in CMAI's Houston office. Paul adds to CMAI's growing expertise in the area of plastics and polymers with a specific focus in the area of engineering plastics.

Paul has over thirty years experience in the engineering plastics business, including twenty with GE Plastics (now Sabic Innovative Plastics), in a variety of roles including marketing management, product management, and financial management. He also worked with Clariant Performance Plastics as director of sales, marketing and technology, and with LNP Engineering Plastics as a product marketing manager. Most recently, he worked with Albis Plastics in custom formulation and compounding of engineering resins.

Paul received a BS in Finance from La Salle College in Philadelphia.

Kim McPhillips is Business Director, Polyethylene. She joined NOVA Chemicals in 2005, after working for the Dow Chemical Company for 16 years. She graduated from Ferris State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration and from Central Michigan University with an MBA.

Mrs. Shannon Schneider is a consultant at Nexant ChemSystems, responsible for petrochemical products in North America and Latin America. She has participated in a wide variety of single client projects and multi-client reports specifically focusing on activities related to the plastics industry. These reports include intermaterial competition, strategic assessments, polymer benchmarking and forecasting.

Before joining Nexant ChemSystems, Shannon Schneider worked for Chevron Phillips Chemical Company and performed the following tasks: Phillips Sumika Account Manager - Polypropylene, Polyolefins Sales Representative, and Polyethylene Business Analyst. She hold a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and a minor in Chemistry from Texas A&M University in College Station, TX.

Peter holds a Bachelor of Science and Masters of Science degree in chemical engineering from Northwestern University and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Houston. He has 22 years of experience in the chemical industry working first for Air Products and Chemicals and then for Sterling Chemicals. During this time he had assignments in Process Engineering, Process Technology, Information Systems Projects, Environment, Supply Chain and Commercial. In 1992 he joined Sterling Chemicals where he had varous supply chain and commercial responsibilities for styrenics and other products.

Peter joined CMAI as Director of Styrenics in March 2006. He contributes to a number of services and reports, including the Aromatics Market Report, the Monomers Market Report, and the Global Plastics and Polymers Report.

As Assistant Chief Economist, Paul is responsible for the analysis and forecasting of macroeconomic and financial market developments in Canada, the United States and key overseas economies and is a regular contributor to a number of RBC Financial Group publications.

A graduate of Queen’s University and the University of Manitoba, Paul recently joined the Economics Department of RBC Financial Group in 2007 after working for twenty years at another major financial institution where he was responsible for generating the macroeconomic outlook for the United States, Canada and Canadian regional economies. Paul started his professional career as an economist in the Research Department at the Bank of Canada.

Paul is a member of the Economic Policy Committee of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and is on the Editorial Board of Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de politiques. Paul is also Past President and Director of the Toronto Association of Business and Economics (TABE).