Focus on Leadership: Debarati Sen brings decades of leadership in product innovation to HMTX – February 2025

Interview by Kemp Harr

Debarati Sen was appointed group president of HMTX Industries in May 2024, one of only two female top leaders on the supply side of the flooring business (the other being Interface’s Laurel Hurd). Deba has spent most of her professional career, spanning three decades, with 3M, most recently as president of the organization’s largest consumer division.

In addition to her work, Deba is an advocate for women’s rights, gender and racial equity, and poverty alleviation and has a long history of board service in the non-profit sector in the U.S. and India. She is currently serving as the treasurer and trustee of the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota, leading the financial leadership committee, and also serves on the senior advisory board of the Global Women’s Network University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. She has also served on the Advisory Committee for 3M Gives and the board of 3M’s Pride Network.

Deba, who moved from Minnesota to Connecticut for her position with HMTX, is mother to one son.

Q: Give us a brief synopsis of your development years prior to joining 3M corporation.
A: I hold a BS/BE in electronics engineering, as well as an MBA in marketing and finance from XLRI, located in Jamshedpur, India.

My career with 3M started in 1996 in Bengaluru, India. My early roles included director, corporate sales; director, global oil and gas; and chief marketing officer for 3M’s personal safety division. I then served as the division president of 3M’s heritage business of industrial abrasives, leading the charge for robotics and automation.

Directly prior to joining HMTX, since April 2022, I was president of 3M’s home improvement and consumer wellbeing.

Q: Tell us about a few of your proudest accomplishments in your 26-year tenure at 3M.
A: As I said, my last role at 3M was as leader of its largest consumer division, with brands such as Filtrete Home Filtration, Command Home organization products, Nexcare bandages and ScotchBlue Painters Tape, to name a few. During my tenure, we brought to market end-to-end innovation for nail-less hanging solutions from 3M’s Command Brand, expanding to higher-weight products and augmenting with the 3M Claw heavy-weight hanging solutions, covering all the way from one pound to 65 pounds.

In addition, while leading 3M abrasive solutions, I had the opportunity to transform the automotive industry with 3M’s expertise in abrasives and surface conditioning by digitizing application engineering knowledge and helping automate some of the toughest last-mile processes in automotive paint finishing. This launched the first industry-wide collaboration in innovation with the world’s leading robot companies, end-of-arm tooling companies, software and control equipment companies, and material and application expertise companies like 3M. Today, many of the world’s automotive companies have automated their entire paint shop, including the last step of defect monitoring, classification and repair, through 3M’s Finesse-it Paint Repair System.

While in India, I led 3M India Ltd., 3M’s only other public entity and a top 100 public company. As a public company CEO and non-executive director, I led growth at four times GDP, with over 650 basis point improvement in the bottom line and an 80% improvement in stock price. In 2018, I was inducted into the Fortune India’s Most Powerful Women list and won the Business Standard Star MNC of the year award in 2017.

Q: What roles at 3M helped prepare you for your new role as group president of HMTX?
A: As a global business leader in roles of increasing responsibilities over the years, I have had the privilege of learning and testing myself in not just different product businesses, geographies and end markets but also in different go-to-market models and external dynamics geopolitically.

Over the last nine years, my roles were in leading large multi-billion-dollar marquee divisions in 3M as well as leading the only public entity outside of 3M Co. as the CEO.

The signature of my leadership is consistent delivery of sustainable value, futurizing and humanizing businesses globally while navigating complex regulatory landscapes coming from a blend of strategic leadership, purpose-led business building, financial acumen and a human-centric approach.

Q: How did you and Harlan Stone meet, and what led to you being offered this role?
A: HMTX worked with a recruitment firm for a nationwide search and identified me as a top candidate for their leadership strategy. I met Harlan in December of 2023 and had the opportunity of meeting the board and the leadership team throughout early 2024. The conversations, purpose and exciting possible growth trajectory drew me to leave a successful, tenured career, and I am excited to help ignite HMTX’s next phase of growth.

Q: What attracted you the most to HMTX?
A: After a career spanning two continents and multiple businesses over 26 years with 3M, I was looking for a place I could call home-one where the culture and values distinguished the company from all others, where doing good while being good was not just expected but a given.

When I first met Harlan and the team at HMTX, I saw the culture in real life, and I saw that the reputation of the company was guarded and protected by the entire HMTX organization, in the same manner that a family protects each other.

I loved that the company felt like a family, while still being immensely ambitious, progressive and steadfast in its commitment to being an industry leader in innovation, quality, performance and design.

Q: Having worked for a publicly traded company, did the fact that HMTX is a family-owned company have an influence on your decision to join the company?
A: Having grown up throughout my entire career in large public companies, I was looking for something different to enhance my learnings, whether they be in organizational learnings or financial learnings in the middle markets. I was excited about testing and enhancing my tool kit, which helped me drive transformational performance at scale from public companies to the private arena.

Q: What challenges is the flooring industry facing that HMTX is poised to influence?
A: This is a unique and exciting time for the industry. Whether it is finding innovative economic solutions that truly help the homeowners, contractors, the architect and design community, and builders in the face of continuing housing challenges or embracing the geopolitical turbulence that has become the sign of the current times, HMTX intends to be at the leading edge of the resilient flooring industry and the flooring industry overall.

Our commitment to being a responsible and ethical company ensures that we deliver our promise. To our consumers, we want to bring beauty and joy in your everyday life with our flooring and peace of mind with our commitment to quality. To our customers, we strive to be the best partner you have. And to our team members, we work hard to earn your loyalty and to support you on your journey of becoming the best version of yourself.

Q: At 3M, you ran a division that stood out due to its innovative products. How can you encourage more focus on developing innovative flooring products that command high margins because there is no better option on the market?
A: Innovation has never been a lack of focus for HMTX. Our teams are consistently innovating and pushing the boundaries on sustainability, design and construction. This is something Harlan is passionate about and a commitment and value that I will continue to foster as group president.

Q: In the residential segment, how can one company adequately service the demands of national accounts, distributors and family-owned retailers?
A: With decades of experience and commitment to our partners, HMTX has built an extensive and impressive network of supply chain partners and resources for our customers. We continue to provide best-in-class supply chain resources and invest in people, processes and technology.

Q: In the commercial segment, designers want authentic interior finishes that wow their clients, outperform alternative options and have minimal negative impact on the environment. How will HMTX satisfy this need?
A: Sustainability and design are two main pillars of our organization and foundations that we will never waver from. We have exciting plans to bolster the Teknoflor line of commercial hard surface products and look forward to wowing our clients and sales partners with renewed energy.

Q: Who were your mentors, and what did they teach you?
A: I have had several mentors across the 33 years of my career and have had the privilege of being mentored by incredible leaders both inside 3M and outside. I have truly seen the impact leaders can create on their teams, associates and in the industry when they lead with the right purpose.

My mentors have also helped shape my personal leadership mantra or my 3Hs-hunger, humility and heart-leading to drive outsized and transformational business impact, leading with humility and unleashing human potential and with the right purpose delivering sustained and quantifiable values for all stakeholders.

Q: What character traits do you look for in people when you are building your team?
A: Connected to my personal leadership mantra of the 3Hs, I look for hungry and humble leaders, who are excited about learning from each other and their teams. The greatest measure of future success for me lies not in what a person knows but what their appetite for learning and risk taking is.

We want to work with leaders who are hungry for success, knowledge and innovation with the humility to understand that building a team means hiring talent that have expertise in areas you’re not, or leaders that are eager to stretch and grow into areas they may not be experts in (yet). And finally, heart: we want to work with good people who embrace the values that HMTX holds in “doing good while being good.”

Q: What do you do to sharpen your saw to make sure you are physically and intellectually on top of your game?
A: I am a huge believer in mentorship and reverse-mentorship. I surround myself with people I can learn from-tenured and new. I also serve on several boards both for public and philanthropic enterprises.

I am also a keen reader and try to read one new book per month. My recent favorite is “The Heart of Business” by Hubert Joly, as he encapsulates what a lifetime of leading businesses across the globe has taught me: lead for the right reasons and care about the people who are impacted by you, whether they be your team, your customers and shareholders or your community.

Immersing myself in diverse leadership and expertise keeps me on my toes and ignites my appetite for learning more. I expect my team to test me every day, and I love learning together.

Q: Tell us a little about your life outside of your career. What are your hobbies?
A: My first love is working out and being physically active. I love to hike and lift weights, no matter where I am. Connecticut has introduced me to many new trails and a very different landscape from Minnesota, where I lived for over 23 years.

I also love to cook and entertain and with my rather large circle of friends-this keeps me busy on weekends.

But what I am most proud of is the fact that I have been blessed to be a single mother for over 20 years and am very proud of the capable, caring and competent young man I have raised, who recently got married to the love of his life. My son, Rishi, and his wife, Nan, live in Chicago with their poodle puppy, Barkley, and are both successful professionals in cyber insurance.

Q: What’s Harlan going to focus on now that you’re taking the day-to-day?
A: Innovation! I am excited to watch Harlan dedicate his time to the next generation of flooring products and the future of the industry. This has been his passion from the very beginning and a place where he has true talent.

He is enjoying the bandwidth I have created for him and getting to see the parts of the world he hasn’t seen yet. In fact, he is visiting the Antarctic this coming month!

Copyright 2025 Floor Focus 

Related Topics:HMTX, Interface, The International Surface Event (TISE)