When Paul Castellano was working at a large public accounting firm before he joined Barry-Wehmiller, his fiancée asked him a question that would change the course of his career:
“How come your company hates families?”
The question sounded ridiculous on the surface, but it forced Paul to confront something he’d been feeling for a long time.
“It really made me think about where I wanted to be in my career,” Paul said. “And I knew that there was nothing specifically wrong with the company that I worked for. It was that this industry I was in treated their people like inventory. Like a resource to be managed to generate revenue. And I didn't want to be in that industry anymore."
Paul looked for a new opportunity that fit both his professional and personal goals and joined Barry-Wehmiller as a Senior Accountant in 2015. He was soon promoted to the Director of Finance for BW Papersystems North America. Now, Paul serves as Vice President Global Finance Leader for BW Papersystems.
BW Papersystems is a division of Barry-Wehmiller that serves the sheeting and packaging, stationery, security documents, and corrugating and finishing industries. Whether you’re pulling out your passport, opening a pizza box or getting a package from an e-commerce vendor, there’s a good chance you're touching something that was produced on a BW Papersystems machine.
In his role, Paul serves as a bridge between the senior leadership, corporate and operational teams. He has 50 people in his span of care. And the most fulfilling part of his job isn’t hitting a short-term financial metric; it’s about ensuring long-term security so team members can feel comfortable that their professional life will support their personal lives.
“Financial performance is basically the job, but what's great about Barry-Wehmiller is it's not just about achieving a financial result,” Paul said. “It's about securing the jobs for our team members for the next 20 to 30 years by being a better, stronger company financially. It enriches our ability to allow our team members to exist in these careers for decades.”
Over the years, BW Papersystems has grown through acquisitions — or adoptions, as we like to say. By harnessing Barry-Wehmiller's power of scale, integrating other companies and combining their strengths, BW Papersystems has become one of the strongest operational platforms within the greater organization.
“One of the beauties of Barry-Wehmiller, and it's one of the things that have allowed us to help these — what were financially distressed — companies become so successful in the long term, is the access to Barry-Wehmiller's resources,” Paul said. “You could take these companies that are in financial distress, bring them together, deploy Barry-Wehmiller’s operational playbook and turn them into one of the most profitable divisions within Barry-Wehmiller.”
Paul explains that smaller companies don’t have the wiggle room to make mistakes. If they try something and fail more than once, they can’t recover without a buyout, financial intervention or serious ownership change. Barry-Wehmiller’s portfolio is highly diversified, so if one division faces challenges, the others can help fill the gaps.
This allows BW Papersystems to pursue innovations that other companies might consider too risky, like investing in new products and strategies that can create future value.
“Failure in our company is actually seen as a learning opportunity and not something that you'll lose your career over, which is one of the unique things about Barry-Wehmiller that I appreciate the most,” Paul said.
Barry-Wehmiller’s secure business model was shaped by the challenges late CEO Bob Chapman faced in the 1980s. Through his learnings, Bob transformed a once-struggling company into a diverse $4 billion organization with more than 12,000 team members in over 200 global locations, not dependent on any one industry for success.
When a company is thriving, it allows its people to thrive. While caring for your people is certainly possible in any organization, it’s a lot easier when you feel secure in your position.
“Taking the experiences of how my leaders have shown their care for me, I really take that to heart in how I interact with my team on a daily basis,” Paul said. “Every interaction is an opportunity to connect with somebody beyond the job — beyond the discussion topic at hand. It's an opportunity to connect on the personal level and understand how people are doing and what's going on in their lives. It makes it human.”
When Paul first joined Barry-Wehmiller, he was two weeks away from getting married. Throughout the past decade, his leaders have supported him through marriage and the arrival of four daughters. Paul never forgot his wife’s question, but found that it is possible to build a workplace where people are cared for as a family and feel empowered to care for their own families in return.
Perhaps one day, his daughters will grow up to ask a much more positive question about work than the one that changed the course of his career all those years ago.
“Dad, how can I get a job at Barry-Wehmiller?”
Hear more from Paul through the video in the header above.