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Inspiring people through inclusive leadership and creating value through innovative thinking—those are two important behaviors that transformational leaders at Owens Corning demonstrate. A firm belief in both of those standards is the foundation for Johanna Sierra’s success at Owens Corning, a global leader in manufacturing building and construction materials.
The senior director of logistics and real estate joined Owens Corning in 2023 with an opportunity to develop a long-term vision for logistics strategy and lead an inclusive, high-performing team.
“Success for us means developing our talent, and enhancing our processes and digital capabilities,” Sierra says. “We want to be recognized as the best in-class, a standard that aligns with so many of our other functions and business segments.”
She knew that being new to a company, especially one with thousands of employees across the world, meant she must put her inclusive leadership skills into immediate practice.
“To be a high-performing team, we are investing in people with different experiences and backgrounds,” she says. “Data proves that diverse teams deliver better outcomes. I’ve been a champion for change and an advocate for diversity in every form. That’s how true transformation begins, and it’s the platform that sustains it.”
For Sierra, the beginning was in her native country of Colombia. She began her journey there with DHL Express and Phillips helping customers achieve successful sales forecasts with logistics solutions before taking on logistic projects from beginning to end.
Her move to the Clorox Company provided an even larger opportunity to manage the full spectrum of logistics operations throughout Colombia and Ecuador, where she also led continuous improvement initiatives that increased service levels and vertical integration.
Sierra’s career then took her to the United States, where she continued to grow and evolve her broad expertise with Clorox. She led global strategic sourcing efforts, oversaw customer operations, ran a supply chain function, and expanded her business acumen through marketing, forecasting, and research and development initiatives.
While a willingness to change and adapt was a catalyst for her professional growth, she also credits much of her success to her commitment to authenticity.
“No matter what your role is on a team, being clear, transparent, and respectful to your stakeholders and customers is what earns you credibility,” Sierra says. “You can be focused on results and genuinely care about people—it doesn’t have to be one or the other.”
Both caring and collaboration are core values at Owens Corning. As a transformational leader, Sierra’s professional path to date included the challenges of earning buy-in from teams amid change. She successfully navigates the process with a collaborative approach.
“When you show others how their work is important to achieving the change, or a better outcome, it reduces uncertainty and adds empowerment,” she says. “It’s also important to give them a safe space to communicate their concerns. If there’s a valid risk that they’re seeing in a change, invite them to work with you to mitigate it. Influencing others is about being open to listening to different perspectives.”
Sierra has both empowered her own teams and experienced that herself since joining Owens Corning—especially from the point of view of a wife and mother of two children. The job allows her the flexibility she needs to balance her work and her time with family.
“The ability for me to prioritize my home and professional schedules is one way that companies can motivate people to give that discretionary effort,” Sierra says. “And when you have a team of those individuals, and a company full of those teams, that’s when you can transform from very good into something great.”
Additional writing by Matt Schroder, corporate communications leader at Owens Corning.
