Golden Artist Colors new board members Carl Minchew and Jonathon Karelse. (Submitted photos)

COLUMBUS — As Golden Artist Colors celebrates that it is now 100 percent employee owned, the company also announced an introduction of two new board members, Jonathon Karelse and Carl Minchew.

They join current board memebrs, CEO & Co-Founder Mark Golden, President & COO Barbara Schindler, and Board of Directors Treasurer Jim Henderson.

Jonathon Karelse has worked with Golden Artist Colors since 2013 as a consultant to help develop a greater understanding of planning across all departments with his consulting company, NorthFind Management.

Under his guidance the company has been able to predict its capacity requirements and the constraints on the ability to deliver to its customers. According to Schindler, “Nothing could have been more important during the crisis created by COVID than to understand all the various market conditions that combined to create quite a storm in all our supply chains.”

Jonathon Karelse is a graduate of the MIT Sloan School of Management, a member of the 2019 Management Excellence cohort at Harvard Business School, and is a member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council. As the CEO of NorthFind, he is a global leader in demand planning, operational excellence and integrated business planning. Jonathon is a Director of the Eagle Ridge Hospital Foundation where he is Chair of the Governance and Strategic Action Planning Committees.

He is a frequent contributor to the Institute of Business Forecasting (IBF) and APICS, the Association for Supply Chain Management. Amongst his most recent awards was the recognition of his firm NorthFind in 2020 by Supply Chain Brain as one of the top 100 supply chain partners worldwide. In 2021 he was a featured winner of CEO Todays Management Consulting Award.

Carl Minchew will also join the board of directors.

Carl has just recently retired from a 44-year career with Benjamin Moore & Co.

When Carl met Golden's management six years ago, he was the Vice President of Color Innovation and Design, leading the development of the entire organizations’ new color and design initiatives. He began his career as a chemist for the firm and for over 39 years worked and led in many positions including quality assurance, operations management, environment, health and safety, as well as color technology. During that time, he participated in the development of the American Coatings Association’s Coatings Care program and served at the national level on the Regulatory Negotiation for Architectural Coatings VOC. Carl is also a collaborative inventor of over 20 different patents in the paint and coatings industry.

Carl’s industry experience and depth of knowledge in product development, safety and compliance as well as marketing adds a wealth of knowledge and expertise to our continued success and strategic planning. Carl will be starting in 2022 as the Executive Director of the Color Guild, a consortium of over 50 paint manufacturers from 16 different countries, dedicated to the marketing, promotion and selling of paint products.

“As Golden Artist Colors moves into this new chapter, we are thrilled to have built a leadership team that will assure that we will continue to succeed for all our customers and all our Employee Owners,” said Golden.

For more information about the full Board of Directors, visit: goldenpaints.com/esop_bod.

Golden Artist Colors, Inc. is a manufacturer of artist quality materials including colors and mediums for painting in acrylics, oils and most recently, watercolor. With two locations, a 100,000-square-foot facility in rural Columbus, N.Y., and a 45,000-square-foot commercial warehouse and distribution center in Norwich, N.Y., the company’s over 200 employees are committed to producing materials that encourage exploration of form and concept, while assuring archival integrity.

In April 2010, Golden employees became the majority owners of the company and in 2021, the company became 100 percent employee owned.

For information about Golden Artist Colors and its comprehensive product offering, call 1-800-959-6543 or visit goldenpaints.com, williamsburgoils.com or qorcolors.com.