Boards: ACCO Brands, The Securian Financial Group.

Beth Simermeyer is a visionary independent board member and C-suite leader. She is distinguished by her impressive track record of accelerating growth and delivering transformational top- and bottom-line results leading large profit and loss statements in the consumer goods, industrial, and health-care sectors. She is an experienced governance leader, currently serving as an independent board director for Securian Financial Group, a Fortune 500 ($7 billion) financial services company, and ACCO Brands (New York Stock Exchange: ACCO), where she serves on the finance and the nominating, governance, and sustainability committees. 

Beth is best known for her success at changing the growth trajectory of billion-dollar brands and her future-focused development of exceptional leadership talent. Throughout her career, she has advanced corporate value through unlocking creative solutions, executing notable business transformations, and successfully integrating strategic acquisitions. As a marketer at heart, Beth has been at the helm of marketing and innovations that build brands and delight customers. Her experience encompasses large-scale profit and loss leadership at Fortune 250 companies in the consumer goods, health care, and life sciences sectors. Her global experience spans Asia, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa as well as expatriate leadership roles in China and Canada. 

Most recently, at Ecolab (NYSE: ECL), a Fortune 250 company, she was executive vice president and global group president, health care and life sciences, with a $2 billion global portfolio. Beth saw an opportunity to leverage the company’s core competencies by successfully launching the life sciences division, Ecolab’s first new division in 20 years, which has realized 14 percent growth annually to more than $800 million and integrated a $4 billion strategic acquisition. She rapidly evolved the business into a more differentiated, on-trend, higher-value product portfolio. Simultaneously, as leader of the health-care business, she launched innovative digital solutions that increased customer efficiency and profitability while decreasing hospital-acquired infections. 

Previously, as chief marketing officer, she built the Ecolab brand and launched a unified corporate internet site and social media program that generated four million digital interactions and five million website visits, reaching more than 300,000 customers. Additionally, she codeveloped Ecolab’s employment brand proposition and created a robust marketing training program. 

Prior to that, Beth spent 19 years at S. C. Johnson, a $12 billion privately held global consumer goods company. As senior vice president for the $2 billion home cleaning portfolio of businesses, she reversed a five-year market share decline and led successful acquisition integration of Dow cleaning brands, Sara Lee’s Kiwi shoe care brand, and Mrs. Meyers and Caldrea businesses. 

Foundational to her success is her authentic and collaborative style and skill at fostering engagement to address complex issues in a highly constructive and inclusive manner. Her colleagues value her multicultural global competency, her ability to drive growth in unprecedented ways, and her keen intuition for developing next-generation talent. 

Beth’s service at Securian Financial Group includes being a member of the audit and nominating and governance committees. Her experience includes merger and acquisition plans and leadership succession, and her committee work focuses on board recruiting and effectiveness and risk management, including assessing regulatory and cybersecurity challenges. 

She also lends her expertise and leadership to support organizations that are dedicated to providing equal access to underserved populations. She is a board member for the Greater Twin Cities United Way and the PACER Center. 

Beth holds a master of business administration, marketing and strategy from the University of Michigan and a bachelor of arts in political science from Bates College. She recently completed the NACD Directorship Certification®