Joel Moskowitz, founder and CEO of the Ceradyne Inc., is well respected as a successful entrepreneur and someone with great instincts about the business of advanced ceramic products. Moskowitz, who on Monday was given The American Ceramics Society’s highest honor (a Distinguished Life Member award), and Ceradyne have been hot topics in business news in recent weeks because of 3M’s friendly offer to purchase Ceradyne.

My experience is that Moskowitz is an extremely smart strategist and genuinely humble guy who understands most of the engineering concepts behind the products in Ceradyne’s portfolio. Despite his incredible success, he doesn’t have the pretentions, aloofness or entourages that many successful business people surround themselves with.

I ran into Moskowitz at a reception held just before the ACerS Annual Awards Banquet and decided to take a chance to see if he was willing to go on camera for a few minutes to discuss 3M’s offer to by Ceradyne and his DLM award. I shouldn’t have been surprised when he readily agreed. In particular, I was interested what his role might be 3M, assuming the purchase offer is approved by shareholders. Moskowitz has always had a talent for identifying opportunities, leveraging assets, mitigating risks and identifying value in acquirable businesses, and the good news is that it sounds like Moskowitz intends to continue to work with 3M under the new management proposal.

Also, below is a video of the speech Moskowitz gave at the banquet after receiving the award.

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