Profiles in Packaging: Aaron Stewart

How a box of LEGOs, a History degree, and Abe Lincoln’s hat led to a career in corrugated packaging.

As a young boy, Aaron Stewart was vaguely aware that his dad’s job had something to do with making boxes. And while it would be several years before he fully grasped the magnitude of the corrugated packaging industry, he was at least able to appreciate the apparently inexhaustible supply of building materials (boxes!) at his disposal — materials he spent countless hours assembling into forts, intricate tunnel systems, and other grand structures that sprang from his youthful imagination. 

Architectural possibilities notwithstanding, it was an altogether different experience with packaging that really drove home the point to Aaron that his dad was involved in something pretty special. “I remember opening up a LEGO box one day, and right there on the inside flap of the box was the Rock Tenn logo! What could be cooler than finding out your dad’s company makes the boxes LEGOs come in?” 

Pretty much nothing. 

Flash forward a dozen or so years and Aaron was off to college at Georgia Southern University. Despite his early triumphs with corrugated, he had chosen a different course for his future; a course that he hoped would include a History degree, a tour of duty in the Coast Guard, a stint with Homeland Security, and a career with the FBI.

During his summers off from GSU, Aaron worked for Chief Container in the packout division. His zeal for history was unchanged. “Histories are everything we are,” he explains. “My senior thesis was on textile mills, and how the textile industry in the Piedmont area of SC became the life source, and ultimate drain, on the area. They had company stores, company doctors — everything in town — which led to employees eventually being taken advantage of in many ways; and once those companies left or were sold off, the people were stuck with skills and knowledge they couldn’t use anywhere else.” 

Aaron completed his degree and graduated, at which time, as it often does, life intervened.  With the Coast Guard no longer a possibility, Aaron jumped at the chance to trade his packout position at Chief for a job in the office. Over the next few years, he worked in various departments within the company, including sales, customer service, digital printing, art & design, and even accounting. 

True to his nature, while working and learning the ins-and-outs at Chief, Aaron also learned about the history of the industry, which he found fascinating; particularly the first-ever use of corrugated material as a liner for tall hats — including those worn by President Abraham Lincoln! 

Aaron’s dream of being a special agent didn’t go away overnight. Rather, he gradually realized what a great career opportunity he had right in front of him. “After two to three years working in the office at Chief,” he explains, “getting to know the company and people, and the industry … I just kind of found a home here. And honestly, I felt like I was good at what I did, so I stuck with it.” 

In 2018, Aaron assumed the role of IT Specialist and immediately took the lead on a critical project to upgrade Chief to Amtech’s EnCore ERP. 

“At which point,” Aaron says with a smile, “I got to sit in a very dark office for the next three years!” 

But, to be fair, pricing, cost matrices, estimating, and data conversions weren't the only things he did. He was also integral in working with department stakeholders on doing needs assessments and evaluating their current processes and procedures to ensure the new system would improve efficiency without increasing their work burden. 

Aaron’s years of experience working within many of those same departments paid dividends, and it is easy to see why he was the perfect person for the job.

Today, with the  ERP integration behind him, Aaron is excited for the future, both personally and professionally. He and his wife Maggie make their home in New England with their two-year-old son Liam, and a Bichon Frisé/Standard Poodle mix named Blu.

A typical workday for Aaron consists of responding to help-desk calls and emails, working on reports, hardware and software upgrades, and a lot of spec building. His home-office workspace is a modest folding desk and a laptop with multiple external monitors set up near his kitchen. The plan is to move into a more official office space once they have the basement finished.

Outside of work, Aaron has quite a few interests. “I have too many hobbies, is what I tell people. I like comics, books, movies…mostly SciFi/Fantasy-type things, including painting and building Warhammer models and constructing battlefields.” Not surprisingly, corrugated is his material of choice for fabricating buildings and other structures within his dioramas.

As to what comes next in Aaron’s career arc, it’s hard to say. But his participation in the Amtech Users Group shows he is serious about having a voice in preserving the viability and sustainability of the industry that has given him so much. He’s also become something of an advocate for the vocational potential in corrugated packaging, saying, 

“We need to let people know ‘we are here,’ and we have things to offer them career-wise. So one of the challenges for hiring the next generation of workers in the industry is educating them about our industry.”

Sage advice. Because not everyone is going to know who makes LEGO boxes, or that corrugated was slotted and cut to make the first boxes in 1894, after all.