Chad Ovel

Chad has always felt compelled to step in and provide leadership from a young age.

At age 10, he stepped in to be the Senior Patrol Leader of his Boy Scout Troop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (USA) where he led his friends to recite the Scout Oath and Motto each Thursday night at the Patrol meetings.

At age 16, he stepped into being the Captain of his High School Cross Country Running Team where he helped the coach give the team pep talks before races and to ensure his teammates stayed true to their commitments during the longest and most painful practices of 20km or more (not taking shortcuts or hitching rides from generous friends).

At age 18, he felt compelled to run for Student Government at Carleton College and become an active Senator, where he caused time-efficient decision making in the student Senate by becoming masterful at Robert’s Rules of Order.

But not until he joined the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Indochina Program in Hanoi, at the age of 22, did he discover that all this previous “leadership” was done implementing the design of others. Baden Powell had written the Boy Scout Handbook. The Iowa High School Athletic Association had fixed the calendar of cross-country running meets.  Henry Robert had written Robert’s Rules of Order.

While at WWF, he learned that a true act of leadership requires declaring a possibility in the face of great uncertainty and resistance. For instance, in 1997, Chad took a stand for the future of the highly biodiverse Phong Nha Ke Bang karst limestone forest ecosystem in Quang Binh Province of central Vietnam.

In 2000, Chad wanted to leverage his leadership at a larger scale and joined ScanCom, the world’s largest hardwood garden furniture company which worked in partnership with over 50 Vietnamese factories in Binh Duong, Quy Nhon, Da Nang, and Pleiku.  With the support ScanCom’s visionary Danish Founder, Mr. Boje Bendzten, Chad declared the possibility to convert ScanCom’s wood supply chain to 100% sustainably sourced FSC-certified wood material with no increase in price to the customers.

At the time, this occurred as an impossible task to everyone in the industry including ScanCom’s clients, ScanCom’s partner factories in central Vietnam, and even ScanCom’s employees.

But after having achieved this audacious goal with just 24 months of relentless belief in the goal, customers from around the world acknowledged the feat and rewarded the company with a skyrocketing order book.  ScanCom’s revenues grew over 10x in the years that followed, not only due to the great product design and competitive prices but also from this act of leadership to reinvent the garden furniture industry by delivering an environmentally and socially responsible product to the market.