中文Industry associations run on volunteer fuel, and the Paperboard Packaging Council has just recognized one of the people who has supplied the most of it. At the association’s fall meeting in Orlando, Florida, the PPC presented its 2026 Volunteer Leader Award of Excellence to Eric Frank, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Koenig & Bauer (US/CA), honoring decades of volunteer service, industry leadership and contribution to the folding carton and broader printing community.
The numbers behind the citation are striking. Frank’s printing industry career spans 52 years, and it began the way many of the industry’s best careers do — with a high school printing class that caught fire. That early spark led him to pursue a printing degree at Rochester Institute of Technology, one of the graphic arts’ foundational institutions, and from there into a professional life that has touched nearly every corner of print manufacturing: sheetfed and web printing, digital production, postpress, flexography and corrugated packaging.
That breadth is not incidental to the award. Associations like the PPC depend on volunteers who can translate across segments — who understand why a folding carton converter’s economics differ from a commercial printer’s, and can speak credibly to equipment makers, converters and students in the same afternoon. Frank’s professional responsibilities have included senior marketing leadership, product introductions, trade show activities, advertising, industry communications and association representation, a portfolio that maps almost exactly onto the skill set effective industry service requires.
His support of the PPC has run through board leadership, educational programs, industry presentations and mentoring. PPC President Emily Leonczyk praised his commitment to bringing industry professionals together, sharing knowledge and supporting the development of future leaders — the three functions, it might be argued, on which every trade association’s long-term survival depends. Gerrit Zwergel, President and CEO of Koenig & Bauer (US/CA), added the employer’s perspective, recognizing Frank’s longstanding dedication to industry education and his ability to communicate the value of evolving graphic arts technologies to customers and colleagues.
The timing of the recognition carries its own message. The printing and packaging industries are navigating continued technological and market change — automation, AI-assisted workflows, workforce demographics that see experienced professionals retiring faster than new ones arrive. In that environment, knowledge transfer is not a ceremonial value; it is operational infrastructure. Veteran professionals who volunteer as educators and mentors are, in a very real sense, the industry’s informal training system, and formalizing appreciation for that work is one of the few levers associations have to sustain it.
Frank has been active in educational boot camps, leadership initiatives and professional organizations, sharing practical industry knowledge and strengthening connections among equipment manufacturers, converters and the wider graphic arts community. He has also represented Koenig & Bauer across industry associations and international events, supporting the introduction and understanding of new products and technologies. The pattern across 52 years is consistent: a career spent at the intersection of technology and communication, where the value created is not just machines sold but understanding spread.
For younger professionals, the arc offers a template worth studying. Frank’s path — from a high school print class, through RIT, through every major print technology cycle from phototypesetting to AI-assisted production — illustrates how a durable career in this industry is built: by staying curious across technologies, showing up for the industry’s institutions, and treating education as a two-way obligation. Trade shows and award dinners come and go, but the relationships built through sustained volunteer service compound over decades and, as the PPC’s recognition demonstrates, eventually get noticed.
For Koenig & Bauer, having a 52-year veteran of the industry leading marketing in its North American organization is itself a strategic asset in a market where customers buy expertise as much as equipment. And for the Paperboard Packaging Council, the 2026 Volunteer Leader Award does double duty: it honors an individual’s service while quietly making the case to every member company that supporting the association’s educational mission is a career-enhancing investment, not a distraction from the day job.
Congratulations are due to Eric Frank — and, frankly, to the industry that gave a high school print class graduate five decades of interesting problems to solve.
There is a recruiting angle here that association leaders and print business owners alike should not miss. In a labor market where young people rarely stumble into printing careers, visible recognition of industry service is itself a marketing tool for the profession. A student reading that a high school print class turned into a 52-year career spanning technologies from phototypesetting to AI-assisted production receives a message no careers leaflet can match: this industry rewards curiosity for half a century. Associations that publicize these stories are, in effect, running the industry’s only sustainable recruitment campaign.
For equipment makers, the Koenig & Bauer side of the story is equally instructive. Encouraging senior staff to serve associations costs the company almost nothing and returns access, credibility and insight into converter priorities that no market research report provides. Competitors should ask themselves which of their own people are known, trusted and invited into the industry’s committee rooms — because procurement decisions in this business are made by people who remember who taught them something useful a decade ago. Congratulations, then, to Eric Frank on fifty-two years and counting — and a quiet challenge to every printing company leader: your next great hire is sitting in a high school print class right now, wondering if anyone out there will notice. Show them they would.
Source: inkish.news / Paperboard Packaging Council / Koenig & Bauer, “Koenig & Bauer’s Eric Frank Honored for 52 Years of Leadership in Printing and Packaging”.
