FEATURE
er University when P&G transferred him to Europe to
run its diapers business in Italy.
When asked how his engineering mind bleeds into
his daily life, he doesn’t list things he can or can’t
do but rather things he says he cannot not do. When
driving, “I’m constantly mapping the next mile ahead of
me, and I predict where cars are going to go and what
holes are going to be created in traffic for me to sneak
in or get ahead.” It’s inherent in everything he does.
At work, “when I arrive at an assignment, and for the
first three months, I just keep doing whatever was done
before, but within three to five months, all of a sudden
something hits me like a 2x4 in the face, and I know
exactly what needs to be done. And then—boom—I go
do it. And I think that’s engineering.”
TOILET TISSUE TO DIAPERS TO PERFUME
“So I was five years in school, and my mother
thought I was going to be assigned to the space
station, space shuttle, cure cancer, and there I
was making toilet tissue.”
Growing up in the era of cheap gasoline and ever-
present petrochemical companies on campus, Miguel
was convinced he’d eventually end up working at Exx-
on or another leading petrochemical company. Instead,
he began his career at P&G, where he was tasked with
making toilet tissue (or toilet paper). That wasn’t the
aspirational goal he—or his hardworking single moth-
er—had in mind after spending five years at the Uni-
versity. “How do you tell your mom, who helped you
get through engineering school… that you’re making
toilet tissue?” he says. “She thought that I was going
to be assigned to the space station, or to cure cancer,
and there I was making toilet tissue... I remember her
saying to me, ‘So what do I tell my friends when they
ask me what you do—that you make Charmin?’ I said,
‘No, mom, tell them I’m in high-speed manufactur-
ing processes!’” He recalls he was frequently asking
himself what he was doing there and promised himself
he’d be moving on to the next job within two years.
Having celebrated 40 years at P&G this year,
Miguel laughs saying he simply “forgot to leave.”
But he’s made great use of his time there, saying
he’s “done everything under the sun… every possi-
ble assignment already. I’ve changed the world three
times, and I continue to be amazed that I did work that
We need to help the general
public understand what these
ingredients really are, and the role
fragrance plays in our lives.
10 | FRAGRANCENOTES.ORG | Issue 1, 2019
changed the lives of 5 billion people.” When asked
why he’s stayed so long, he notes “when you invent
something, when you develop something, when you
take something to market, you’re actually changing so-
ciety, improving society. Of course, P&G is a business
engaged in the sale of products but, in the process, we
make the world better. I can’t find many other jobs in
the world that will give you that satisfaction.”
He’s proud of his accomplishments overall but two
things in particular stick out. He points to his work
with Pampers diapers, something he says he “bet his
career on.” He began working in diapers in the late
1980s, noting that, historically, diapers were bulky and
“made out of fluff.” Innovating in the space, P&G cre-
ated a diaper that was thinner and, by keeping babies
drier, helped avoid diaper rash. Still, it was an uphill
battle for Miguel and his team because it challenged
conventional wisdom and thinking that thicker meant
better. “When you think about it, any baby born after
1987 has had a better infancy, better development,
more restful sleep, all as a result of our innovation
with diapers.”
Later, after taking over the company’s perfume
business, Miguel significantly cut costs and improved
productivity. “That’s how engineers work,” he says.
“People ask me, ‘What do you do or make on a daily
basis?’ Really it’s about optimization; we’ve taken
this organization to the next level in performance and
delivered meaningful savings in the process.”
FRAGRANCE & OUR LIVES
“Scent is unique versus everything else in the
body... It’s wired directly to your pleasure centers,
to your pain centers, to your love centers.”
Entering the world of perfumery and fragrance was a
natural fit for Miguel, especially because he under-
stands that scent is a major part of our everyday lives.
“Scent is our most primordial sense,” he says. “And
it’s not processed in our cerebral cortex like the other
senses. For example, you can hear voices; you can see
visions; you can feel something touch you—even if
that ‘something’ isn’t really there—because your brain
can conjure those feelings. Scent goes from the nose
to the amygdala to the memory centers, the emotion
centers—you can’t remember scent. You can’t dream
scent. You can’t imagine it. For example, if I ask you
to remember the smell of a rose, you actually remem-
ber the rose itself.”
Our sense of smell is also extremely unique
compared to everything else in the body. “It is wired
directly to your three or five survival instincts,” he
says. “It’s wired directly to your pleasure centers, to
your pain centers, to your love centers. It is a needed,
critical part of bonding of parent to child, friend to
friend, partner to partner, pet to human, human to pet.
The example I give people is that when you hug your
child, your partner, 99 percent of the time you’ll smell