Family Owned, American Made: ResinTech Is an Engineering Triumph for This Alumnus
Long before Michael Gottlieb ’63 became a chemical engineer, he learned how to think like a scientist. Growing up in Newark, he would watch his father take apart vacuum cleaners piece by piece on the kitchen table — he was a vacuum salesman. His father was not just pitching a product. He understood how every component worked and how to show customers that what he sold wasn’t a vacuum at all, but a cleaner, healthier home. Gottlieb absorbed that lesson: know what you’re working with, understand the people you serve and recognize the good your work can do.
Facts about space were among his earliest infatuations. He was the kid that would make sure everyone knew the sun was 93 million miles away and that it took its light eight-and-half minutes to reach Earth. The moon’s diameter, he happily explained, was 2,159.2 miles.
Before he even arrived at NJIT, he’d grown to love chemistry. His mother bought him a set of Encyclopedia Britannica, and he devoured the high-level physical chemistry sections. But when it came time to make a decision about college, his parents wanted to send him to Wharton to enter the business and finance industry.
“I didn’t want to sell stock. I wanted to be an engineer or a pharmacist. A pharmacist was like an engineer. Back then it was easier to buy and own your own drugstore than to start your own company,” Gottlieb said. He applied to Rutgers University’s pharmacy program and the Newark College of Engineering’s chemical engineering program, was accepted into both and ultimately deciding on chemical engineering.
Early on, he described himself as just an average student. “I was a C-plus student,” he said. “I didn’t know if I was really smart.”
He would hit his stride though in academics and in friendships made at NJIT. In one of his labs, he was teamed up with four Italian classmates who quickly pulled him into their circle. One afternoon, when a lab experiment called for olive oil and none could be found, his lab partner Vinny D’Ippolito tapped a bottle of stopcock grease and playfully dubbed Gottlieb an honorary Italian. “They anointed me right there in the lab,” he said, laughing.
Michael Gottlieb’s NJIT fraternity, Tau Delta Phi. Gottlieb is top row, third from the left.
His grades improved as he progressed. “I just realized I liked what I was learning.” The deeper the coursework became — especially in physical chemistry — the more the content matched the way his mind worked. He found he could concentrate intensely late at night, getting more done in an hour of focus than in several hours during the day.
By his final year, he made the Dean’s List and earned the highest mark on the physical chemistry final exam — an outcome that surprised him less for the grade and more for how natural the material felt. “Once I understood the logic of it,” he said, “it stayed with me.”
I want to support the school that gave me the power to be where I am today.
NJIT had done more than give him a degree; it had aligned his curiosity with a discipline and taught him how to think rigorously. That way of thinking would guide every chapter that followed — in industry, in entrepreneurship and in the company he would eventually build.
From the (Under)Ground Up
After graduating in 1963, Gottlieb spent years in the ion exchange resin and water treatment industry, gaining experience that would later shape his own ideas. He understood science, but he also understood something else — a lesson he had learned from his father. Customers were not buying chemistry. They were buying cleaner water, confidence and trust.
When he eventually founded ResinTech, he did so the way engineers often start: with what he had, wherever he was. The company began in the basement of the family’s Cherry Hill, N.J. home in July of 1986. He built his own equipment, blended batches by hand, and refined analytical methods for one experiment at a time. The family kitchen often doubled as the company laboratory where Gottlieb would analyze resin samples. He even used a rented cement mixer to blend cation and anion exchange resin to produce mixed bed resins. His sons were often enlisted to bag the resin and ship it — one cubic foot at a time. “It wasn’t pretty,” he said, “but it worked. And that mattered more than anything else.”
Left to right: Larry, Michael, Lynne and Jeffrey Gottlieb.
ResinTech grew to be a leader in the field of ion exchange for water and fluid purification, creating resins, cartridges and high-purity-systems. In 2020, they opened a new ion exchange resin factory and global headquarters in Camden, N.J. It’s the first new resin manufacturing plant constructed in the U.S. in over three decades.
Practical, perceptive and clear, Gottlieb’s wife Lynne was a steady force, especially in the early years, about the principles that would shape the company’s culture. “In the beginning, you do whatever it takes to keep things afloat,” she said. “Butone thing we promised each other was that we would stay in control of our own decisions and family.”
Their approach was straightforward: do excellent work, treat people well, stay honest and remain independent. Gottlieb’s technical precision and Lynne’s grounding proved to be exactly the combination the young company needed.
ResinTech’s first major expansion came in 1991, when it moved out of the basement and into a 10,000-square-foot building with a lab, pilot plant and warehouse space. That move planted the seeds of the company ResinTech would become.
Growing the Vision
When sons Jeffrey and Larry eventually joined the company full-time, they honored their father’s vision by staying true to its roots.
Jeffrey brought discipline from his years in finance and a clear grasp of what large-scale customers expected from a technical manufacturer. He understood that to earn credibility, ResinTech needed to build on ingenuity. Jeffrey helped usher in an era of precision equipment and standardized systems.
When sons Jeffrey and Larry joined the company full-time, they honored their father’s vision by staying true to its roots.
The company’s later move to Camden, N.J. reflected that strategic mindset. ResinTech was investing in its future, building the first fully integrated polymer and ion exchange resin production plant in North America in nearly 50 years. “And it’s played a significant role in helping us to secure new customers because of our investment in U.S. manufacturing.” Camden wasn’t just a larger space; it was a declaration that ResinTech belonged among the field’s most trusted producers.
Larry strengthened the operation in a technical fashion. A mechanical engineer, he learned resin processing at his father’s side when much of the work was still manual. “The system we had in the ’90s was basically hand-operated,” he said. “Only my father and I could run it.” With his mechanical engineering expertise, he worked alongside his father to build new controls, automation and consistency that allowed ResinTech to scale without compromising quality.
Through it all, Gottlieb watched with a mix of pride and gratitude.
“My kids have done everything I was doing,” he said, “but they’ve taken it to the next level.” What he values most is how they work together. “They respect each other. They honor each other. That is why the company works.”
Built with Purpose and Inspiration
Today, ResinTech is one of the few U.S.-based manufacturers producing ion exchange resins at scale — a distinction shaped not by marketing, but by values. Gottlieb believes in American manufacturing because it creates accountability and ensures quality. He believes in understanding every part of a system because that is how he was raised. And he believes that engineering is both method and mindset.
Labs and equipment inside ResinTech’s Camden, N.J. plant.
Those beliefs also shape the company’s relationships. Gratitude is not a slogan; it’s something the family practices. Larry put it simply: “A lot of the equipment we purchased… we bought from customers who helped support us and get us to where we are. It was our way of saying thank you.”
His commitment to NJIT comes from a similar place. “I want to support the school that gave me the power to be where I am today,” he said. The university sharpened the instincts he carried from childhood: curiosity, discipline and the desire to make things better than he found them.
Walking through ResinTech’s headquarters today, Gottlieb sees more than production lines or a company that far outgrew its basement beginnings. He sees the life he built with Lynne and his sons who now carry his vision forward. And he sees, in the rigorous mindset he formed at NJIT, the foundation that made all of it possible.
ResinTech may look different from the company he started decades ago, but its core remains unmistakably his.