40 Under 40 The Class of 2011

Elizabeth Gosselin: 30

Human Resource Manager, Commonwealth Packaging Corp.

Elizabeth Gosselin

Elizabeth Gosselin

Elizabeth Gosselin laughed when asked what her title is.
“Everything — as anyone who works in a family business knows,” said the human resource manager at Chicopee-based Commonwealth Packaging Corp., who adds bookkeeping, customer service, and a host of other duties to her official title. “There’s almost nothing here that isn’t my job. The only thing I haven’t done is run the machines.”
Gosselin, who manages 35 people, has been with Commonwealth full-time for eight years, but before that, she was no stranger to the company. “We’ve been in business 27 years, and I think I’ve been here all 27,” she said. “Growing up, I always had a summer job here.
“Working with my brother and learning from my father has been a real privilege,” she added. “And working with the people who have been here since day one makes it really special. There’s one forklift driver who’d give us rides around the factory when we were kids. He’s still here. He doesn’t give us rides anymore, though.”
Gosselin supplements her career with a heavy dose of civic involvement, from the Holyoke St. Patrick’s Parade Committee and the Junior League of Greater Springfield (JLGS) to Count Me In, a community-service group in South Hadley.
“Much of the community work I do is really work I’ve taken over from my mother,” Gosselin said, citing as an example her participation in the Junior League; as part of that organization in the 1990s, her mother was involved in developing of the Holyoke Children’s Museum. “I sit on the board there now, as well as working on new exhibits.”
Gosselin has also served as a project manager for other JLGS efforts, including projects benefiting Gray House in Springfield and Kids in the Kitchen.
For the latter, “we bring in a chef for a cooking lesson and show kids how to create healthy meals, things they can do to put together healthy snacks. That’s one of the coolest things I do, and one of the most rewarding.”
In other words, she’s packaging plenty of good works into her schedule.
— Joseph Bednar