James B. Porter, Jr.

Founder/President, Sustainable Operations Solutions, LLC

Chief Engineer and Vice President, Engineering and Operations, DuPont (retired)

Education

• B.S. 1965, Chemical Engineering, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville

James B. Porter, Jr., graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1965. In 1966, Mr. Porter joined DuPont and remained with the company, aside from a stint in the US Army, until retiring in 2008 as the company’s Vice President for Engineering and Operations.

In addition to his work with DuPont, Porter served on the college’s Board of Advisors—including as its president—as the chairperson for the Construction Industry Institute and the of United Negro College Fund of Delaware, and on the boards of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, FIATECH, the Mascaro Sustainability Initiative, the Argonne National Laboratory and the Fieldbus Foundation, as well as the advisory board of AIChE’s Center for Chemical Process Safety.

He received FIATECH’s inaugural award for technology leadership in 2008, which was named in his honor, as well as the 2007 Society of Women Engineers Rodney D. Chipp Memorial Award, the 2005 Engineering and Construction Contracting Association Achievement Award, and CII’s 2004 Carroll H. Dunn Award of Excellence.

Porter currently serves as founder and president of Sustainable Operations Solutions, which helps promote safer, more efficient, more productive work environments.

A native of Knoxville, he and his wife, Deborah Grubbe, have one daughter, Alyson.