Leading with lessons from the past
What can asphalt pavement professionals learn from someone who’s led across industries? In this week’s episode of Pave It Black, Maure Creager, Circular Economy Manager at CertainTeed, shares how her unconventional path has shaped her leadership style and vision for the future of sustainable construction.
Maure unpacks how embracing diverse experiences and perspectives leads to stronger teams and smarter decision-making. Her message to emerging leaders in the asphalt pavement industry is clear: stay curious, reflect on the past, and don’t be afraid to lead with humility and intention. Tune in to learn how to lead with purpose while promoting sustainability and innovation.
Here’s a peek into our conversation with Maure. Listen to the full episode to explore how you can enhance your leadership. Listen now.
Can you talk about how your background in engineering and sustainability have helped shape how you lead your team?
I think leadership qualities, personalities, what makes a good leader translates to whatever industry you’re working in. A great leader is a great leader. It doesn’t necessarily matter what industry they’re in. It’s really about the qualities that person has. Perhaps there are some qualities that are more relatable to some of the team members as you enter that industry, but otherwise, I think a good leader is a good leader. In my current role, what’s been really interesting to see as we talk about this word sustainability. The word sustainability means a lot of things to a lot of different people, and it usually doesn’t mean the same thing to me as it would to you all, right? It could mean very different things depending upon our life experiences and our education and our background, but usually there is always something that we can agree on that we are trying to do at the end of the day when we think of sustainability. We usually all can come to agreement that we want our business to be successful and be able to keep moving forward today, but we also want to make sure that we’re setting our business up for success in the future and being able to continue to move that forward, which is essentially what sustainability is. We’re trying to make sure that future generations are able to do what they need to do with the resources available to them.
How can principles of the circular economy be applied to leadership or even business strategy?
When we think about circularity, it’s a broad term and it can be interpreted a couple of different ways, similar to sustainability, but the way that I simplify it to myself is, my role is really to figure out how we can, within the CertainTeed roofing business, take shingles back into themselves. So it’s a composite product that would then be somehow deconstructed and made into a new product, a new roofing product. Or if we cannot do that, or we cannot do that with all our product, how do we then find other solutions that are themselves circular?
When we look at paving and the use of RAP, we know that is a circular product. We hear it all the time that asphalt pavement is the number one recycled product in the world. Being able to find other materials that then continue that cycle of being recycled is really critical. What circularity is, it’s not just a one reuse or a two reuse that would be recycling, but really perpetual. I think when we think about business strategy, it’s usually our leaders that are putting those strategies in place, right? Whoever is creating that strategy or looking forward to that long range plan is key. We need to make sure that we’re able to continue to move the business forward and hopefully grow it.
Why did you think it was important for your company to be a part of The Road Forward program and the vision for where the industry could be?
The reason why is because I feel very strongly that it’s important for us to support the initiatives that we believe in and The Road Forward and the goals and the mission of The Road Forward very much align with the mission of Saint Gobain and CertainTeed. We’re all moving forward and it aligns well with our waste diversion and circular economy goals. But from a personal standpoint, I think it’s really important for us to come to the industry. We are new in the industry, nobody knows who we are and I want everyone to recognize that we’re coming to them. Not as like this drop in manufacturer, that’s just trying to sell a new technology. I’m really looking to partner with people and figure out solutions.
