Sally Sutton Williard
The Sally Sutton Williard Paper Science and Engineering Scholarship Endowment was established in 2023 to provide merit- and need-based scholarships for students pursing an undergraduate degree in Paper Science and Engineering.
Sally graduated from North Carolina State in 1984 with a Pulp and Paper Technology degree. She had been steadfastly encouraged by her parents, who both worked in a papermill in Western North Carolina, to attend a major university, obtain a degree, and pursue a career she enjoyed. Her degree, combining science, technology, chemistry, and processes, thrilled her as it provided a lifelong love of learning; ability to think and reason; and creating with ingenuity, machinery, and materials.
After graduation, Sally worked in various papermills in the southern United States. When presented with a job opportunity at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in Winston-Salem to use her pulp and paper knowledge to create new technology tobacco products, she moved there for a productive, enjoyable 34-year career. Starting as a Materials Quality Liaison between Research & Development scientists, Manufacturing specialists and Paper vendors, she traveled the world creating novel applications with papers for new-to-the-world tobacco products and packaging.
As Director, New Technologies, she moved to Tokyo, Japan for a two-year secondment working for a global tobacco company leading an Implementation Team for a cutting-edge Innovations Group. Following the US government’s regulation of the tobacco industry, she returned to Winston-Salem and led Regulatory Compliance teams through the complexities of ever-developing tobacco regulations. Her greatest career achievements were developing new, efficient processes (with skills obtained in her long-ago Pulp and Paper classes) and enabling personnel to achieve their professional and personal goals.
Being able to endow a scholarship so others can benefit from this exciting program was Sally’s personal goal that is now able to be realized with the hope that it encourages and enables students to pursue degrees that lead to professionally and personally fulfilling careers.