Jason Ringblom and the case for staying put

Jason Ringblom joined LP Building Solutions in 2004 as an account manager. The company had a satellite office in Chicago, and his place in the organization was a considerable distance from the chief executive’s chair. By February 19, 2026, that chair was his. The employer on the résumé had stayed the same. Almost everything about his responsibilities had changed.

Twenty-two years with one company can look uneventful when compressed into a single line. Ringblom’s version contains sales, marketing, structural panels, siding, manufacturing and a reorganization that brought previously separate operations under one leader. His career rewards a closer look at the space between the job titles. Staying put can involve quite a lot of moving around.

He arrived with an unusually relevant education: a bachelor of science in Forest Products Marketing and Business Management from the University of Minnesota. His public education history runs from 2000 to 2004. Wood products and the business of selling them were already joined in his studies before they became the recurring subjects of his working life.

There is a pleasing lack of mystery in that combination. The material matters. So does persuading somebody to buy it. Ringblom’s later assignments would keep enlarging the territory between those two obligations. A customer-facing start eventually became responsibility for the factories that supplied the customer, and then for the company around them.

Learning the business from both sides of the wall

In February 2015, Ringblom became vice president of OSB sales and marketing. OSB is oriented strand board, the structural panel business that would become his next substantial assignment. On January 1, 2017, he moved into the executive vice president and general manager role for that business. Brad Southern, who had led OSB, had recently become chief operating officer.

Southern’s explanation of the changes emphasized bringing market-facing experience into senior leadership and spreading useful practices across LP. Ringblom’s sales background was directly relevant to the operating job. The person who had helped sell the panels would now lead the business making them. The customer’s view had acquired a seat closer to the machinery.

His next major change came in February 2022, when he took charge of Siding as executive vice president and general manager. He also held responsibility for Engineered Wood Products until LP sold that business’s assets in August of that year. These were distinct assignments, with distinct products and economics. They gave him experience across the businesses he would later be asked to bring together.

A panel hidden within a building and siding visible from the street occupy different places in a customer’s imagination. For Ringblom, both became operating responsibilities. That breadth helps explain the logic of his eventual promotion: he had already worked inside the parts of LP that the board wanted managed more closely together. Familiarity, in this case, had practical uses.

The promotion that changed the organization chart

On April 7, 2025, Ringblom became president, a newly created position overseeing all manufacturing and commercial operations. The change reached beyond his business card. LP integrated Siding and OSB manufacturing and consolidated its market-facing activities, while eliminating the North American business general manager positions. Ringblom would continue reporting to Southern.

The assignment put organizational design on his desk: selecting leaders, aligning processes and making the combined structure work. South America’s general manager would also report to him. A career built through successive portions of the company had become a job spanning its global manufacturing and commercial operations. He was being asked to make connections across boundaries he had previously worked within.

For a customer, the intended benefit was straightforward: an easier company to do business with. Inside LP, it meant coordinating products and decisions across the portfolio. An organization chart can be a remarkably expensive piece of stationery when its boxes fail to talk. Ringblom’s new role was an attempt to make the conversations more useful.

The changes also brought Craig Sichling into the newly created chief commercial officer role, with appointments covering national accounts, field sales, and supply chain and customer experience. Ringblom’s broader remit came with a supporting structure. Bringing operations together required people with defined responsibilities, as well as a president with an enlarged title.

A familiar face, a different seat

LP announced his selection as the next CEO on November 3, 2025. The appointment followed a board-led succession process conducted with Southern, who had run the company since 2017. Ringblom took over on February 19, 2026. At the time of the announcement, he had spent 21 years at LP, including eight on its executive team.

The transition also changed the boardroom. Ringblom became a director on the day he became chief executive. F. Nicholas Grasberger III became independent chairperson, separating the chair and CEO roles as Southern retired from both. Ringblom inherited the operating leadership of a familiar company within a newly divided governance structure.

This is an insider succession with a specific rationale. The board had watched him lead different businesses and then integrate key functions. His preparation was visible in the sequence of assignments. A long tenure supplied context; the jobs within that tenure supplied evidence. Those are useful distinctions when a company is choosing who should make its next decisions.

The scope is considerable for someone whose first LP title was account manager. By the time of his succession announcement, the company described a workforce of 4,300 people. Ringblom’s assignments had grown alongside the number of relationships for which he was responsible.

Back to Minnesota, with shovels

Four months into the CEO job, Ringblom delivered remarks at a June 23 groundbreaking in North Branch, Minnesota. His university was in the same state; now his employer was preparing another manufacturing investment there. The project called for an approximately 350,000-square-foot SmartSide ExpertFinish facility on a 120-acre site, with production planned for the first quarter of 2028.

At full capacity, the facility was expected to create 125 jobs. Ringblom described it as an expansion of the manufacturing network and a reinforcement of LP’s commitment to Minnesota. At the ceremony, he also linked North Branch to serving growth in the central United States. The location was part of a commercial plan, with a community on the receiving end of the investment.

The work planned for the site makes his strategy tangible. Siding manufactured and primed at other LP mills would arrive in North Branch for prefinished colors, producing exterior siding ready for installation without painting afterward. The sequence connects manufacturing, finishing and the builder’s schedule. It is the sort of connection his combined operating role was designed to encompass.

In a first-quarter earnings discussion, Ringblom explained the appeal of prefinished products in practical terms: labor was tight and expensive, and builders were focused on jobsite cycle times. His argument concerned the work a customer could avoid doing later. Paint applied before delivery becomes part of a larger proposition about time. Even a finished wall has a schedule behind it.

The other half of the first year

The early CEO months also brought weaker results. In the second quarter of 2026, LP reported net sales of $664 million, down $90 million from a year earlier. Siding sales were $441 million, while OSB sales were $182 million. Net income fell to $26 million. Ringblom’s first year was giving him ample reason to know both sides of the portfolio.

He said Siding revenue had landed within the company’s guided range despite raw-material inflation, and anticipated a return to Siding volume and revenue growth in the third quarter. That was an expectation, with results still to come. The distinction matters in a career story: taking charge of a company supplies accountability considerably faster than it supplies a completed verdict.

On September 1, LP announced it would indefinitely curtail OSB production at Jasper, Texas, beginning in October because of soft demand. The facility’s annual capacity was approximately 475 million square feet on a three-eighths-inch basis. Ringblom explained the decision as aligning production with demand. The company had reviewed operating costs, capital needs, logistics and long-term use of its assets.

For employees in Jasper, the announcement carried consequences more immediate than any strategic argument. LP committed to career-transition and job-search support, including help applying for openings elsewhere in its network. Ringblom explicitly separated the decision from the Jasper team’s performance and commitment. An executive’s operating judgment arrives in a town as somebody else’s change of plans.

“Current market conditions require us to align OSB production with demand.”Jason Ringblom · September 2026

Knowing the place is only the beginning

North Branch and Jasper belong in the same account of his leadership. One involved preparing capacity for future demand; the other involved reducing production in response to current conditions. Both fell within the company Ringblom had spent two decades learning. Experience could inform those choices. Their eventual results would still have to justify them.

His stated priorities remain connected to that operating history: innovation, entering new markets, winning share and improving execution. In his first annual-report message as CEO, he described the unified Siding and OSB structure as a foundation for the next phase of growth. The ambition is an extension of work he had already begun as president.

The next scheduled public checkpoint is November 3, 2026, when Ringblom and chief financial officer Aaron Howald are due to discuss third-quarter results. By then, another set of numbers will sit beside the promises and decisions. Ringblom started at LP by managing accounts. He now has a much larger account to give: what the company did, why it did it, and what happened next.

“Over more than two decades at LP, I have seen this company evolve in remarkable ways.”Jason Ringblom · 2025 annual report