Amber Hinkle wins Award for Volunteer Service to the ACS

Amber Hinkle is the recipient of the 2022 Award for Volunteer Service to the American Chemical Society (ACS publishes C&EN). Created in 2001, the award recognizes individuals who exemplify the spirit of volunteerism and have contributed significantly to ACS’s goals and objectives.

Hinkle has been a vice president for Covestro since 2013. In her current role, she manages Covestro’s plant in Channelview, Texas, and she is responsible for the operations of Covestro’s US-based joint venture with LyondellBasell. She is being honored for displaying leadership in professional development, empowering women in the chemical enterprise, and passionately pursuing excellence across ACS.

“I’m very humble and gratified to be recognized,” Hinkle says. “Volunteering for the ACS is a hobby of mine, and to be recognized for the value of that is really great.”

Hinkle got an early start volunteering at the regional level. A group of students from her high school attended a Northwest Regional Meeting as part of a collaboration with the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. The students provided security by setting up sleeping bags and staying overnight in the expo hall.

Since her first official position as chair-elect of the St. Joseph Valley Section, Hinkle has volunteered in multiple roles, primarily at the national level. She has been cochair of the Leadership and Advisory Board, chair of the Women Chemists Committee (WCC), and most recently, chair of the Committee on Nominations and Elections. In 2005, she expanded a series of articles about successful women chemists that had appeared in the WCC newsletter into a book, Successful Women in Chemistry: Corporate America’s Contribution to Science.

“It’s been my honor to work with Amber and learn from her leadership,” Mamie Moy, emerita professor of chemistry at the University of Houston, writes in her nomination letter. “She personifies the ACS core values and has led the charge to achieve ACS goals at the national and local levels throughout her career.”

In 2012, Hinkle developed the ACS Strategic Planning Retreat, which is based on the ACS Leadership Development System Strategic Planning course for which she is the lead facilitator. She has cofacilitated 36 of the retreats, which allow local sections, divisions, and committees to develop and act upon a strategic plan for their group.

As a facilitator, “Dr. Hinkle has compassion and kindness as she challenges people to give new perspective to their own leadership, their organization as a whole, and their personal contributions to that organization,” Amber Charlebois, a chemistry professor at Nazareth College, writes in her nomination letter. She “has a gift of interpreting a defensive or confrontational comment into an insightful and productive contribution to the discussion.”

Hinkle says that mentorship has been the greatest benefit of her time with ACS. “I have received a lot of mentoring through the different opportunities that volunteering allows, and I have been able to also mentor a lot of people,” she says. “That’s not the official role. But to me, that’s a great benefit of being involved in this way.”

Hinkle will deliver the keynote address at the ChemLuminary Awards ceremony during the ACS Fall 2022 meeting in Chicago.