Davis Mortensen's road leads from Moss Point to VP of Georgia-Pacific

By Bill Wagnon

On a clear day from the top floor of Atlanta's second tallest building, you can see from Stone Mountain to Kennesaw Mountain, from downtown to the perimeter. The view is breathtaking.

For Davis Mortensen, it's a vision as stunning as his journey from Moss Point, Miss., to the 51st floor of the Georgia-Pacific Building rising above the towering skyscrapers on Peachtree Street.

When he departed Starkville and Mississippi State University in 1956 with degree in hand, he admits he had no career plan, no clear agenda. He just knew he wanted to succeed. But, he never dreamed where his journey would take him.

Certainly he never imagined himself as executive vice president of a Fortune 500 company.

"I never ever visualized myself in this position," Mortensen reflects during a recent interview in his office. "I just grew into it; it was never a goal. Once I joined Georgia-Pacific Corp. I wanted to be an officer in the company, but I never thought about this level.

"Once you reach a level, though, you automatically want to go to the next level. But looking back, never in my dreams, even 10 years ago, did I imagine myself in this position."

Since 1989, Mortensen has been executive vice president of building products for the world's largest forest products company. In 32 years with Georgia-Pacific, Mortensen has gone from a young industrial engineer in Crossett, Ark., to responsibility for almost half of G-P's 52,000 employees, the company's six million acres of timber holdings, manufacturing facilities, and the sales and distribution of products the company manufactures.

Georgia-Pacific was founded in 1927 as a small Augusta, Ga., lumberyard. Today, the company has more than 500 facilities, annual sales of $11.8 billion, and manages assets valued at approximately $10.9 billion, including gypsum resources and millions of acres of timberland in North America.

Kenneth C. Stewart Jr., a 1972 Mississippi State graduate and director of state/local taxes for Georgia-Pacific, discusses a project with Davis Mortensen in the conference room on the top floor of the Georgia-Pacific Building.

When Davis Mortensen enrolled at Mississippi State in 1954 with the aid of the GI Bill and after two years at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in Perkinston, he wanted to study industrial engineering, but settled on industrial management since the university didn't offer industrial engineering at the time. His industrial engineering training would come later, however.

After receiving his degree, he began his career with Alcoa Aluminum in East Tennessee as an industrial engineer. A six-week industrial engineering training program prepared him for the next five to six years of his professional life, and ultimately led to his opportunity with G-P. He left Alcoa for Orlando, Fla., two years later and worked for Radiation Inc., a defense contractor specializing in electronics components for missiles. Three years later, in Arkansas, Mortensen was introduced to his future. He was hired to set up an industrial engineering program for the Crossett Company, an operation acquired in 1962 by Georgia-Pacific.

"I continued with G-P in Crossett until 1966, when I was promoted to chief engineer of the Southern Division in Augusta," recalls Mortensen. "And even though I didn't have a mechanical engineering degree, I was hired to develop an engineering department for the division."

He remained as chief engineer until 1977 when he moved into operations management and became a plywood plant manager. Two years later, Mortensen was given responsibility for all softwood lumber operations, serving as group manager over a dozen sawmills and lumber mills, many of which he had helped engineer.

"I managed in the lumber business for another year or so before I was made an assistant manager for the Southern Division in Augusta," explains Mortensen. "The vice president of the division was approaching retirement, and I realized at this time that I was being groomed to take over the division when he retired."

In 1982, the same year G-P moved its headquarters from Portland, Ore., to Atlanta, Mortensen became vice president for the Southern Division. A year later, the Eastern Wood Products Manufacturing Division was added. In 1985, Mortensen became senior vice president for Wood Products Manufacturing, followed by executive vice president of Building Products Manufacturing in 1987, and his current position two years later.

"It's luck," laughs Mortensen at his rise to head of building products for G-P, which has operations in 46 states and soon will expand into Canada. "It was being in the right place at the right time. Most of the credit is due to the people I work with. I've been very fortunate to have had a lot of good people to work with."

The 62-year-old Mortensen is nearing retirement now. He says he has no plans for moving higher in Georgia-Pacific. He does, however, say he believes the company has a bright future, one which he helped orchestrate.

"I see the building products division expanding fairly significantly over the next several years," he notes. "We have a $1.6 billion capital building program planned, with a large portion going into new building products facilities."

He said new facilities are planned for Ontario, Canada, and for Coos Bay, Ore., the first new lumber mill out West in many years.

The success and expansion in the Building Products Division can, in part, be traced back to 1990, when Mortensen initiated the GP/GO Project, which stands for Generating Profitable Growth Opportunity. Now in its fourth year, GP/GO is a strategic business review process that has resulted in the reorganization of the division along product lines, as opposed to along the geographical lines of the past.

"As a result of the early phase of the GP/GO effort, we completely reorganized and set up operating divisions for each of the major products, including, among others, chemicals, forest resources, structural panels, softwood lumber, and distribution," he explains. "In addition, we determined that there were a lot of growth opportunities and that has resulted in the corporate commitment to go out and build new plants, expand some, and acquire others.

"Prior to this effort, we didn't have a very good picture of where we were going. What GP/GO did was give us a road map for the future. I'm very proud of this project."

In 1989, he received Georgia-Pacific's coveted Distinguished Service Award for the "important role he has played in helping our company grow and prosper."

Mortensen also is proud of his safety record. In 1993, Georgia-Pacific led the forest products industry with the lowest Occupational Safety and Health Administration incident rate in the U.S.

"I try to focus on a lot of employee issues, such as safety," he says. "Safety is a manager's first responsibility and that comes before profits, production, or anything else.

"We can now say we are No. 1 in safety also."

School of Forest Resources Dean Warren S. Thompson points out some of the details of the new School of forest Resources Building to Davis Mortensen. The Davis and Ann Mortensen Laboratory is located in the facility.

"It is one of the largest states in terms of investment," notes Mortensen. "We (Georgia-Pacific) own about 6 million acres of timberland, and about 800,000 of these acres are in Mississippi."

As G-P is important to the economic development of Mississippi, so are Davis Mortensen and his wife, Ann, important to the future of Mississippi State University and its current and prospective students.

Last fall, the Fayetteville, Ga., couple made a significant contribution to The Campaign for Mississippi State to support the School of Forest Resources, the College of Business and Industry, the university's endowment, and the Davis and Ann Mortensen Scholarship Fund. A laboratory in the new School of Forest Resources Building is named in honor of the Mortensens.

"Ann and I know there are a lot of high school students who may not have the opportunity to go to college without a scholarship," explains Mortensen. "Looking back, I wouldn't have been able to go to college without the GI Bill. My parents wouldn't have been able to afford to send me, and I was married so it would have been difficult for me to pay for it.

"We hope we are helping some worthy students who might not be able to attend Mississippi State otherwise."

Davis Mortensen has learned many lessons throughout his 32 years with Georgia-Pacific. It's a long way from South Mississippi in the 1950s to the top of Atlanta, Ga., in the 90s. As he relives his career at each stop along the way—from Starkville to Alcoa to Orlando to Crossett to Augusta to Atlanta and to sawmills and plywood plants all across the country—he stresses one point over and over and that's the importance of dealing with people.

"My philosophy has been one of trying to involve people, of teamwork," Mortensen says of his G-P career. "I delegate. I believe in delegating and giving my subordinates their responsibilities with a free hand to run their business within the guidelines that we set. I try to treat everybody fair. No partiality. That's important.

"After today's graduates gain employment, it's important that they learn all they can about the job and the employer if they want to become successful. Then learn the interpersonal skills. These are important also, maybe the most important aspect of any job they will take. How to interact with people is crucial. It takes a while to learn this lesson. But they have to learn it."