Kerry Gannaway
After graduating in 1981 with a BS in IEM, Kerry worked for US Gypsum Corporation in Southard Oklahoma and El Centro California, starting as a project engineer and progressing up to engineering and production manager positions.
He later moved to American Gypsum Company in Albuquerque, NM and then eventually to Dallas, TX, progressing up to Executive Vice President of Manufacturing and Engineering. He was a key executive in a management team that executed a strategy that pushed the company growth from a small single location regional manufacturer into a multi-location national provider, becoming one of North America's largest producers of wallboard.
During his gypsum career, Kerry designed and built a $150 million synthetic gypsum
manufacturing facility utilizing flu gas byproduct waste from a utility power plant.
This was the company’s first facility to utilize synthetic gypsum and it became the
most efficient. He also spearheaded process improvement programs at all American Gypsum
company locations which improved productivity and decreased manufacturing cost inputs
over 20% saving millions annually and leading to the company being well recognized
by competitors and the investment community as being the lowest cost producer in the
wallboard industry. He was also lead inventor on two patents – method and system for
generating foam for the manufacture of gypsum products, patent numbers 7654807 and
7404917.
In 2012 he became the President of a new company called Northern White Sand which processed and sold sand to oil and gas companies for fracking wells. He built this company from the ground up hiring all employees, building processes, storage facilities, implementing business systems, and building a customer base from scratch. He is proud of starting up a sand company and building it from the ground up into a multi-million-dollar revenue company.
He recently retired in Frisco, TX and enjoys traveling, fishing, golfing, and attending all OSU home football games! Kerry has been married to his college sweetheart Donna for 37 years with a daughter (Keri) and son and 3 granddaughters. His son Bradley graduated OSU in 2014, his father graduated OSU in 1954 (and a MS in1955), and his grandfather attended OSU.