Leona Chua brings 26 years of global ExxonMobil experience to Mont Belvieu

Leona Chua’s first day as a process engineer at ExxonMobil Singapore was in 2000.

Her first day as a plant manager was in February 2026, when she arrived in Chambers County, Texas, to take over one of the largest polyethylene facilities in the world. In between, she worked in Singapore, the U.S. and Australia, moved through technical, optimization and operational roles, and built the kind of resume that tends to land people in exactly this situation: standing at the front of a new room with a lot to learn and a great team already waiting.

"It is my first role as a plant manager and in the polymers business," she says. "I have plenty to learn, and I already see that I have a great team. I am excited to build relationships with the people in Mont Belvieu, the broader Baytown Area, and contribute to the long-term success of this site."

From Singapore to the world

Chua graduated from the National University of Singapore with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and joined ExxonMobil Singapore shortly after. Her early years at the Singapore Refinery gave her a broad technical foundation, working through business analysis, crude optimization and base stocks operations.

In 2013, she made her first move to the U.S., shifting into strategy, supply chain and logistics. The move from technical work to optimization roles was intentional. ExxonMobil builds its leaders from multiple angles, and Chua was collecting angles. In 2018, she became Technical Manager at ExxonMobil’s Altona Refinery in Australia, leading a facility in a different regulatory environment and workforce culture than anything she had worked in before. She returned to Singapore at the end of 2020 and held senior leadership roles at the Singapore Manufacturing Complex before the call came to move back to Texas.

"ExxonMobil has continuously pushed me outside my comfort zone while developing my strengths," she says. "I have found manufacturing to be a place where, especially when times are tough, people come together to deliver amazing things. What we do requires a lot of discipline and calls for innovation to remain competitive and meet society’s needs. I think manufacturing is one of the most interesting career paths in our company."

One of the world’s largest polyethylene plants

The Mont Belvieu Plastics Plant (MBPP) has been operating since 1982, when it started with a single low-density polyethylene unit on a 500-acre site in Chambers County. Over the next four decades, it grew steadily. In 1990, the plant added a unit for high-density polyethylene (HDPE) production. In 2017, as part of ExxonMobil’s Growing the Gulf initiative, two new 650,000-ton-per-year high-performance polyethylene lines were completed, processing ethylene feedstock from the Baytown Olefins Plant and effectively doubling capacity. By the time those lines were running, MBPP had established itself as one of the largest polyethylene plants in the world.

Today, the plant produces approximately 5 billion pounds of linear low-density and HDPE products per year, shipped via rail hopper cars or packaged for overseas transport through the Port of Houston. The plant manufactures ExxonMobil’s Exceed, Enable and Exceed XP performance polyethylene resins using proprietary technology. These resins go into high-performance film solutions for food packaging, liquid packaging, heavy-duty sacks, stretch and shrink films, hygiene films, trash bags, industrial liners and agricultural films. The HDPE product line is used in high-performance packaging films, grocery bags, can liners, pipe and blow-molded rigid containers.

MBPP is part of ExxonMobil’s broader Baytown Area facilities, which include a Refinery, a Chemical Plant, an Olefins Plant and a global technology center.

In Mont Belvieu, Chua oversees approximately 230 employees and 500 contractors across the site.

Stretch, because that’s the only way to grow

Ask Chua about leadership and she is specific about what she is actually trying to do.

"The collective power of people who stretch themselves to do more than they believed possible, and harnessing the diversity of our experiences, skills and perspectives to deliver fantastic results, has always brought me joy," she says. "In my role, I have to set a compelling vision we can all look towards, and work through my leaders. I strive to stretch every person I work with to be better versions of themselves."

It is not a philosophy she arrived at through reading. It came through experience, including the experiences that did not go well.

"Be brave and take the opportunities that come your way," she says when asked what she would tell someone earlier in their career. "There were times when I fell and found my leaders helping me pick myself up. We’re never alone, in success or in failure. So have courage, and stretch. That’s the only way to grow."

The people who helped her along the way Three people get named specifically when Chua talks about her career. Gloria Moncada, she says, encouraged her when she made her first U.S. assignment. Kim MacMillan "taught me to be myself and to work on things within my control" when Chua took on her first manufacturing site leadership team assignment. Fabio Garagiola "is still in my ear" as she takes on her first plant manager role. "I’ve been very fortunate to have encountered many role models in my career," she says. "They have shaped my leadership style and given me the push and encouragement when things were challenging."

Each name corresponds to a specific transition. That specificity matters. Chua is not describing mentorship as a concept. She is describing the people who showed up at the moments that required more than competence to get through.

Investing in Mont Belvieu

ExxonMobil has been part of the Chambers County community for more than four decades and contributes more than $1 million annually to local nonprofit organizations in the Baytown and Chambers County area, with employee volunteers putting in thousands of hours at schools, nature centers, nursing homes and food banks. The company participates in the Barbers Hill Fall Fest, Partners in Education, Relay for Life, Be Well Baytown and United Way of Greater Baytown Area and Chambers County.

Chua is already involved. She serves on the boards of directors for the Barbers Hill Education Foundation and the Baytown-West Chambers Economic Development Foundation. "Education opens the door to success," she says simply.

Her read on the community itself is warm and specific. "It is a lovely, clearly well-planned area, with many residents who have been there for a long time and are proud of the city," she says. "A very strong school system, one that produces high-quality talent for our industry. I look forward to getting to know the area and community more."

The same sun, a different horizon

The polyethylene market is in a growth cycle, particularly in developing countries where a rising middle class is driving demand for packaging, medical products and consumer goods. At the same time, customers want packaging that does more with less material, which puts performance resins like the ones manufactured at MBPP in a strong competitive position.

Chua does not frame any of this as disruption. She frames it as the job.

"Our industry has been evolving to meet society’s needs for over 140 years," she says. "We exist because our products touch many aspects of everyday life, from medical applications and car parts to food packaging and clothing. Where it gets interesting for our people is how we use technology to meet customers’ evolving needs and develop new products that push the boundaries of what we think is possible."

Chua has lived and worked on three continents. She has managed operations in Singapore, led a refinery team in Australia and now oversees one of the largest polyethylene plants in the world in Texas. Each move brought a new time zone, a new team and a new set of challenges to work through. She has also, somewhere in the middle of all of it, made a point of seeing the national parks.

"This is not my first assignment in the U.S.," she says. "The last time we were here with my then 10-year-old daughter, we loved the national parks. While we’ve covered most of the famous parks, some twice, there are a few more we haven’t seen."

It is a small habit that says something larger about how she approaches the world. Whether she is standing at the rim of a canyon or walking into a plant she has never run before, the instinct is the same: show up, pay attention and take in what is in front of you.

"While I know I see the same sun wherever I am," she says, "the sunrises and sunsets are especially gorgeous in national parks. They are always a highlight."

For someone who has spent 26 years moving toward the next challenge, the national parks are a reminder that the view is worth stopping for. Mont Belvieu is the latest stop on a long and still-unfinished journey, and Chua seems genuinely glad to be here.

For more information, visit exxonmobil.com.

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