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When a company breaks away from its parent, its systems are put to the test. Processes built for a large organization rarely fit a smaller, more-focused, independent business with new mandates, new reporting lines, and unique risk profiles. Legal teams step up during this transition, ensuring compliance, supporting growth, and directly contributing to business agility and risk mitigation. At Solstice Advanced Materials Inc. (Solstice), this shift started in October 2025, when the company officially separated from Honeywell International Inc. Eben Krim took on a multifaceted role, building the legal infrastructure from the ground up in several key functions to align with Solstice’s business goals.
Eben serves as Vice President and General Counsel for Global Litigation and Employment and as Chief Privacy Officer at Solstice, overseeing litigation, labor and employment, privacy, investigations, and sustainability. His broad responsibilities reflect Solstice’s wide scope and the realities of being a new public company. “It’s a smaller company, but a much wider remit for me,” Eben explains.
The intersection of structure and change is where Eben’s work operates. As the company supports customers across more than 120 countries, it must develop systems that align with its new scale. That combination demands both discipline and adjustment.
The in-house shift
Eben launched his career in private practice at Proskauer, focusing on labor and employment law before joining Honeywell in-house. Over the next 15 years, he worked across business units and corporate functions, primarily in labor and employment. When needed, he took on investigations and litigation matters as well. “At Honeywell, most of the lawyers were quite specialized,” Eben recalls. That environment helped him deepen his expertise inside a global organization.
Moving to Solstice meant stepping away from that specialty. “I moved from being primarily a labor and employment lawyer to being a global litigator,” Eben points out. Now, he oversees commercial disputes and collaborates with senior leadership, keeping the board informed on financial exposure issues.
Transitioning Solstice to an independent company took time. Eben spent months laying the groundwork for the legal functions that would run after the spin. “I spent almost a year preparing for the spin and doing all the work in my areas to allow us to spin off into a stand-alone public company,” Eben remembers. That preparation now shapes how he builds systems that stand on their own.
The bigger picture
Solstice operates at the crossroads of product development and regulation. Its portfolio includes low global warming potential refrigerants and Spectra® fiber, among other areas. Each product brings regulatory and compliance challenges, so legal joins the project from the start. “Our low global warming refrigerant is the product for which the company is named. It is easy to feel good about selling many of these products, especially those that help customers lower their carbon footprint and improve energy efficiency without sacrificing performance,” Eben adds.
He points to Spectra® fiber – used in helmets and body armor for military and law enforcement – as another example of real-world impact. “We had a retired Navy SEAL come and speak to us about how our products help keep him and his colleagues safe,” Eben shares. That connection, along with regulatory and government contracting requirements, shows why legal needs to be involved from day one. Privacy, regulatory alignment, and risk management need to go hand in hand with product development.
Global operations
Working across jurisdictions shapes almost every legal decision. Employment and privacy laws vary from place to place, and those differences can affect business strategy. “The answer is going to be different by country. The key is understanding what the business is trying to accomplish and helping them solution it,” Eben notes.
He sees legal’s role as navigating constraints while staying focused on results. “If you cannot get from A to B in a straight line because the law in Europe is more onerous than the law in the US on a certain issue, you still help the business get to B, but you take a different route,” Eben explains.
Collaboration drives the process. Eben teams up with R&D, manufacturing, and executive leadership to proactively identify and solve business challenges, ensuring legal is part of how the company meets its business objectives. He feels effective collaboration starts with understanding the business. “If the lawyer understands what they are trying to achieve, how they make money, what their goals are, that helps unlock a lot of doors,” he observes.
That approach also shifts how legal interacts with the rest of the organization. Rather than acting as a checkpoint or bottleneck, the function becomes a business enabler, embedding legal insight into planning and execution to drive business performance.
The legal blueprint
Much of Eben’s work now involves building and fine-tuning core functions. Investigations, privacy, and sustainability all need systems tailored to Solstice’s new scope, structure, and risk profile. “One of the things we had to do as part of the spin was to set up each of the sub-functions within legal. Investigations were one that went especially well in my view,” Eben notes.
The transition gave the team a rare opportunity. “You do not usually get a blank slate,” Eben remarks. Instead of simply copying over established systems, he and his team helped design tools and processes to work independently from day one.
Solstice adopted processes from Honeywell, then shifted into an adjustment phase. “Those processes worked well over time for a Fortune 100 company, but we needed to right-size them,” Eben explains. The goal is to cut out steps that do not add value but keep everything needed for compliance, and to right-size the processes for our new company.
The business keeps running into first-time events as a public company. “There are a lot of firsts for us right now. We just had earnings for our first standalone public quarter,” Eben shares. Every milestone teaches what works and what needs tweaking.
Over the next year, Eben plans to fine-tune those systems under his remit. “Part of what we are doing is really looking at those processes and deciding if they are right for Solstice in the long term,” Eben observes. His goal is to build structures that not only support operations but allow the business to operate efficiently and capitalize on opportunities, demonstrating the legal function’s essential value creation.
Taking the lead
At Solstice, Eben leads a legal team. The move from individual contributor to team leader changed how he measures his impact and how he makes decisions. “I try to tailor my approach to the situation. Sometimes that means being in the weeds and grappling with the details, and sometimes it means stepping back,” Eben admits. For him, leadership is about knowing when to dive in and when to delegate and trust your team.
He values input from his team. “I like to hear from everybody on my team and build consensus if we can. We cannot do that every time of course, but when we can, I try to,” Eben notes. He hires people who take ownership and face problems head-on. “I want people to think like an owner of the company. If there is a problem, I want you to run toward it and be part of the solution, that is one of our values at Solstice” Eben stresses.
His leadership style matches the company’s approach. Solstice blends the experience of an established business with the energy of a startup. “It has a startup vibe. People are open to change and are very excited about what we are building,” Eben points out. The environment shapes the way work gets done.
Today, success is more than litigation results. “I really enjoy when the business comes to me proactively – before things go wrong – and asks for strategic advice. That is based on establishing trust, and it matters because then you can avoid the problem in the first place,” Eben reflects.
Outside of work, Eben looks for ways to keep perspective. “I have two teenage kids at home. They keep me busy and grounded,” Eben admits. Time outdoors helps, too. “Getting out into nature, sometimes with my dogs, really helps me recharge.”
As Solstice grows, Eben stays committed to strengthening its legal foundation for the future. “I want my work to set Solstice on firm ground and ensure it is built the right way,” Eben concludes, highlighting his focus on leaving a lasting, positive mark.
