Marie Ffolkes '01

Marie Ffolkes is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Axxelist LLC, a technology real estate company, where she leads the company in executing its mission and strategy. She recently served as Chief Executive Officer and Board Member of TriMark USA, LLC, a $2.1B private equity company, which provides design services, equipment, and supplies to the food services industry. She serves on the Boards of two publicly traded companies - Valero Energy Corporation (NYSE: VLO ~$176B) and Masco Corporation (NYSE: MAS ~$8.4B), and one private equity company Colson Group Holdings, LLC. She chairs the Nominating & Corporate Governance Committee and serves on the Compensation Committee, the Sustainability Committee and has served on the Audit Committee for 4+ years.

Previously, Marie spent five years as President Americas, Air Products & Chemicals (NYSE: APD $12.7B) where she was responsible for the largest and most profitable P&L ($4B) growing EBITDA by +1700bps. She rose through roles in P&L, operations, pricing, and finance holding executive and senior management positions at Tenneco (4+ yrs), Johnson Controls International plc (~9 yrs), and GE Healthcare / GE Capital (8 ½ yrs). Marie has global and cultural experiences through working and living in China, South Korea, Brazil, Japan, Europe and the U.S.

Ms. Ffolkes has extensive experience in building, scaling and driving revenue and profit growth as well as restructuring in multi-billion operations and international markets across engineering, production and operations in various sectors such as energy, industrial gases, automotive, electronics, power solutions, and JIT manufacturing.

She earned an MBA from Columbia Business School with distinction and a B.S. from City University of New York, graduating magna cum laude. She graduated GE’s Financial Management Program and is a certified Master Black Belt.

Ms. Ffolkes is recognized by Fortune Magazine, Black Enterprise Magazine, WomenInc. and Savoy Magazines as one of the Most Powerful Women in Corporate America and as one of the Most Powerful Board Members in Fortune 500 for the past 5 years.