True Colors: Profile on Heidi Petz, MBA ’08

While in Loyola’s MBA program nearly 20 years ago, Heidi Petz, MBA ’08, and her teammates faced a high-pressure simulation: manage a manufacturing business in real time, make pricing and production decisions, and compete against other teams—all under tight deadlines.

“You were constantly making decisions with incomplete or imperfect information,” Petz recalled, “but you had to rely on each other to talk through strategy, scenario planning, and ruling things out.”

Team members needed to be in alignment “so that when we hit the button, which is making a decision in the real world of spending capital, we weren’t going to look back.”

Today, as chair, president, and CEO of The Sherwin-Williams Company, Petz makes those same kinds of decisions on a regular basis—but now the stakes impact 65,000 employees globally.

The Ohio native is the first woman to lead the global paint and coatings company, overseeing operations in more than 120 countries from the corporate headquarters in Cleveland. She credits Loyola’s team-based approach with helping to shape how she leads.

“Learning how to lean on each other’s strengths was on full display because you had to know what your strengths were to contribute to the team, but maybe even more importantly, what you were not good at—where you could lean on other people so the team could have the best possible impact,” said Petz, who was a junior executive at Newell Rubbermaid while enrolled at Loyola.

On an MBA immersion trip to China, Petz toured factories in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Beijing, meeting business leaders and learning cross-cultural practices. Inside a jeans factory, she watched workers operate at a scale and speed she had only read about in textbooks.

“You go from textbook to real world in nanoseconds,” said Petz, who earned a bachelor’s degree in leadership and business from the University of Richmond.

Petz joined the paint industry at Valspar in 2013, then came to Sherwin-Williams through its 2017 acquisition of Valspar. She became CEO in 2024 and chair in 2025, having previously served as president of the company’s Consumer Brands Group, president of the Paint Stores Group, and then president and COO of the company.

Prior to her tenure at Valspar and Sherwin-Williams, Petz served in leadership roles at varying levels at Newell Rubbermaid, Target Corporation, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Sherwin-Williams will celebrate its 160-year anniversary this year, and Petz is the company’s 10th CEO, leading an organization that is most known for its 4,800 paint stores, but also produces premium industrial coatings protecting appliances, furniture, flooring, airports, and stadiums worldwide, among many other surfaces that consumers see and use every single day.

On the day of her interview for Loyola magazine, Petz happened to be wearing universal khaki, the earthy, neutral shade the company named its 2026 color of the year. Choosing the right colors matters deeply to customers, she said, and the company dedicates trend teams to tracking what shades and textures will be popular years in advance.

“Color needs to be precise and consistent,” she said. “Color signals so many different emotions for customers. So, getting that right is a very important part of how we stay current.”

While she is the first woman to lead Sherwin-Williams, that’s not something she thinks much about. “My worldview is that of an athlete,” explained Petz. “I expect challenges that have no bearing on gender. I expect business challenges, market challenges, and competitive challenges.”

Reflecting on her time as a student, Petz encouraged current Loyola students to “bet on themselves,” know they “don’t have to have it all figured out on day one,” and consider a career at Sherwin-Williams.

Surround yourself with people who will be willing to be part of your journey,” she said, “and be willing to be part of their journey and help them in return.