Monday Manufacturing Motivation – with Petra Mitchell

Okay, here we are. So Happy Monday, September 20. Already we’re right on the edge of fall leaves are changing. And so guys happy Monday. I am so honored. This is such a privilege for me. I want to introduce my dear friend Petra Michel Petra, happy Monday. How are you today?

Petra Mitchell 0:18
I’m great. Thanks. Yeah, another wonderful weekend here in Pittsburgh. Beautiful weather. It’s awesome.

Curt Anderson 0:24
Absolutely. So I want to give a little background on Petro. So Petra is in here comes here comes Damon.

Unknown Speaker 0:30
So sorry about even how are you? Hey,

Curt Anderson 0:32
good morning. So, Petra, this is Damon Damon. We’re jumping right into things. So Petra is the CEO and President of catalyst connection. If you’re not familiar with callus connection, you must be coming outside of Pittsburgh, PA. So folks catalyst connection is the MEP representative for Pitt, Metro Pittsburgh, as well as the southwest region of Pennsylvania. And Petra, I just wanted to if you don’t mind, you’re very humble, I just want to give a little I did a little digging on you. If you don’t mind, I just want to give a little background. And then I know, we’re gonna dig right into things. And you really have, you know, I view you as a true pioneer, from manufacturing women and manufacturing, as well as all the work that you’ve done at the MEP network on a national scale. So you’ve been the president since 2007. Is that correct? Yeah, time flies when you’re having fun. It really has gone fast. So I know manufacturing runs deep, I did a little check in I started like your father was a manufacturer. So I know we’ll dig into that. And so you and I both went to college in Ohio, you went to UD University of Dayton, great college masters at Cincinnati, and find yourself in manufacturing. And I know we’re going to we’re going to get in, we’re going to dig a little bit deeper there. But just just share a little bit about your background, your passion for manufacturing, and why did you plant your plant the stake in the ground for manufacturing?

Petra Mitchell 1:55
Well, I think as you mentioned that, you know, my father was in manufacturing, he was a machinist, actually. And I really learned firsthand, you know, I’m the product of what a manufacturing a middle skilled manufacturing job can do for a family, including my own family, I like to talk about that. I’m the beneficiary of that. And I feel strongly about hoping and trying to pay that forward to other people in our community.

Curt Anderson 2:25
What a What an absolute incredible success story. And again, I know like talking to some of your folks at your at your network, and I have the honor and privilege of work with a number of MEPs around the country. And the respect for you is just off the charts. And before we dig in, I just want to share I know you serve on a number of boards, we were talking about this the other day, you know advanced robotics and manufacturing American small manufacturers coalition, the Pennsylvania Industrial Resource Center Network, Sister Cities Association of Pittsburgh, you also I believe, not anymore, but you served on a Federal Reserve Board in Cleveland, super impressive, I’d love to hear a little bit about that. Keystone powdered metals. So again, you know, the what I love, what we try to do here on our Monday program is we just share the enormous and the wealth of talent that is found within MEP network here nationwide. And you just look at the diversity of your colleagues, your peers, but especially what you’ve done, and what you bring to the table is just so impressive. Again, we’re just honored to have this time with you. Now Petra, did you happen to bring a little presentation this morning for us?

Petra Mitchell 3:29
I did, I thought it would help to perhaps streamline the conversation a little bit, just to help, you know, share a little bit of my story. And, and I’m just one of many MEP staff around the country, all of whom have great stories to tell. So, you know, I’m not that unique, although I appreciate your kind words, Kurt. But I did bring some slides, I thought again, it would help to facilitate the discussion and share some data actually like to share data. And I’m an engineer, I like data. And yeah,

Curt Anderson 4:03
let’s go for it. So if you want to go ahead and share those we’ll dig right in and let’s learn a little bit more about you your background and catalyst connection.

Petra Mitchell 4:14
Here we go. And I’m gonna quickly go to slideshow.

Curt Anderson 4:18
Okay. And I know I think you lose us which is fine. If you do down here, so you know, but your your presentation is up and looking good.

Petra Mitchell 4:28
Yeah, well, again, thank you so much, Kurt and Damon for having me on the show today. I’m just so proud of all the work that’s done at callus connection, the southwestern Pennsylvania community proud to be part of the MEP national network. And so I never say no to an opportunity to to share all that. All those wonderful things that we do. So in terms of my agenda, you know, you did ask me to share a little bit about myself but more importantly catalyst and the southwestern Pennsylvania community. Have some data about me and you Capturing and about our clients. And really what my objective is, is to just share how, you know, the services of the MVP, and MVP like catalyst connection, what it means to our community, and how that translates into company ROI, regional economic impact, and more importantly, how it translates into creating family sustaining jobs. And it’s why I like to include a picture of my own family because like I mentioned earlier, I’m the proud beneficiary of a manufacturing, middle skill manufacturing job with my own parents. Hey, Patrick,

Curt Anderson 5:35
if I could quickly just chime in, I want to share a quote that I found of yours that I just I absolutely loved. And I just felt this kind of just epitomize, you know, your background, your legacy. When manufacturers succeed, the ripple effect can be felt through the entire economy. I just absolutely love that quote, it just and I love your story about sharing, you know, with your father and your family. And so I just wanted to, if you don’t mind, just want to chime that in right there.

Petra Mitchell 5:57
Yeah, thanks. And I truly believe that, you know, because it’s, again, it’s not just the business owners and managers, but it’s all the workers, and all of the direct and indirect jobs, you know, related to manufacturing. So I truly believe that and I see that, you know, in rural Pennsylvania, to where these smaller communities, a couple manufacturing establishments really make, make the difference, you know, quality of life and so forth. So, yeah, oh, sorry, go ahead.

Unknown Speaker 6:27
Where I grew up in in the Dakotas, too, it’s the same thing as a manufacturer can really prop up and median almost, when you know, when you have some of these that are, you know, employing 100 people or even 50 people, or even in some communities, even 20 people makes a huge difference. Yeah, but there are, and I love talking to young people about this, because there are great career options. With that don’t take a four year college degree in manufacturing, right, either through an apprenticeship program, or a one year two year technical degree can launch them on a different career path. That is so much better for them in the long run, then a lot of other options. Yeah,

Petra Mitchell 7:08
absolutely. You know, didn’t mention, but I’ll talk about in a minute, my family is immigrated from Slovenia. And you can see there, one of my proud roles is the Honorary Consul for the Republic of Slovenia. My dad was trained as a blacksmith, you know, and he was able to successfully transition from blacksmithing into machining and becoming a highly skilled and, you know, well paid machinist for his entire career. So, so absolutely, you know, you can be an immigrant with almost nothing, and ended up with a very nice middle class life, you know, thanks. Yeah. So, you know, you shared a couple of highlights of crown and I have been the CEO callus, I’ve been with callus connection since 1994. So a very long time, the CEO since 2007. And like I said, one of my proud roles is to be the honorary consul. It’s very exciting right now, because the Republic of Slovenia is actually celebrating 30 years of independence as a country, and very, very exciting and interesting to think about the connections between a region like Pittsburgh, and a country, you know, like Slovenia. And just, here’s just a quick little time timeline. You know, I mentioned my parents immigrated to the United States with almost nothing, you know, literally like two suitcases and a child. And, you know, they were going to stay here for a short period of time, and then go back. And obviously, that never happened, they decided to stay. My dad was a machinist, on the product of this family sustaining career manufacturing, where you can almost you know, start with nothing. And ultimately send your children to college if they so choose, or support them however they want, you know, that kind of thing. And ultimately creating opportunities for me that my parents, you know, would never have even dreamed up. So I’m very proud of them. And I’m grateful for their hard work. And like I said, the the best way that I can honor that is by trying to pay it forward. Yeah. Well, you’ve done

Curt Anderson 9:21
you’ve done an amazing job and just, you know, a couple more things, just you know, and I’m, I know you’re very humble you and I might be making you uncomfortable, but I saw you know, like you you’ve won numerous Leadership Awards in your community and amongst your peers, top woman and business top energy leader, most admired CEO in Pittsburgh, my goodness in Pittsburgh is just an abundance of, of competition. So it wasn’t you know, there’s great companies in the Pittsburgh area, Pittsburgh region and reuse it or net top honor is, you know, such an incredible massive accomplishment. And again, I love how you’re staring your modest means in a modest background and I think you know, while I’m I’m a product from manufacturing as well. And so I just I love the story that you’re sharing. And just you know, as Dave and I are proud girl dads, we an inspiration for women out there of you know, you’re just breaking ceilings, and just so much as possible. So again, we just love this story here.

Petra Mitchell 10:17
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Well, let me move on a little bit to talk about Catalyst connection, you had introduced us a little bit, you know, we’re an economic development organization. We’re a private nonprofit, our focus is dedicated to serving small and medium sized manufacturers. You can see we provide a variety of services, all kinds of focused around this theme of people products and processed. And a little bit later, I’ll get into some more details about that. But we’ve been around, you know, for over 30 years, we were started as part of the Pennsylvania Industrial Resource Center product. Well, let me let me share that. So on the right here, on this particular slide, you see the map of Pennsylvania, our geography, there’s the bottom southwest corner of Pennsylvania, we have we’re proud member of the IRC network and our sister organizations throughout the state. And then, as we talk talked about earlier, we’re a proud member of the MEP national network. And what I was just going to say is that, you know, the Industrial Resource Center Network was created in the late 80s, to help manufacturers in Pennsylvania diversify and retool from the decline of the steel industry. And you would think, Okay, well, we solved that problem. You know, Pennsylvania doesn’t need us anymore, we can just move on with our lives. Well, fortunately, you know, we have been, we have demonstrated that we can help solve many more problems and just the decline in the steel industry. And over time, we’ve really helped, you know, 1000s and 1000s, of manufacturers in Pennsylvania, manufacturing is still a very, very important industry in Pennsylvania and employs well over 500,000 people. It’s a third largest industry by contribution to gross state product, you know, all of these wonderful things, still challenges, particularly during COVID. But I think the Industrial Resource Centers, we’ve really proven that we’re the go to organizations to help manufacturers deal with whatever those modern day challenges are. And I think that’s true for the MEP national network, as well. So just a little bit, you know, just a little bit by the numbers, we have an online annual report we’re very proud of it’s very interactive, has a very, very good rundown of COVID, the COVID timeline, so things that were happening in our country and in the world related to COVID. And then what we were doing at the same time to help our clients and our community address the crisis. So I’m very proud of that annual report. But just a few summaries, you know, we have actually have 29 employees now, we serve about 250 companies in the region with project type work, but really do outreach to a lot more than that. So I would say, you know, 20% or so of the market at any given time is being served by our team. And then you can see a lot of like other MVPs, we have some very significant economic impacts over 140 million in the last four quarters. So we’re very proud of that as well. And then lastly, just wanted to mention, just before the pandemic, we moved our offices into this building, it’s called the Hazel Wood Green, it’s a neighborhood in the city of Pittsburgh, it’s the last brownfield site, it’s 178 acre was a former steel mill, the Jones and Laughlin steel mill. And what you see there in the top left that brown rusty part is the actual steel mill, it’s it’s the frame, it was used as a rolling mill is actually called mill 19. And steel was made in that same spot where we now go and talk about robotics and artificial intelligence. That’s where they were making steel. And so we’re co located with Carnegie Mellon University and the arm Institute, which you mentioned. You know, we, we remember the past, but we’re focused on the future. And we know we have a very important role to play to help manufacturers in our region really understand and adopt these advanced technologies.

Curt Anderson 14:18

You know, Patrick, I’m glad I’m so I’m thrilled that you showed that I’m a huge history buff I love you know, going back to particularly business history and Carnegie and, and I visit Pittsburgh frequently and just you know, just the legacy of Pittsburgh and just always always on the cutting edge of technology going back to the steel Carnegie days. And even you talked about how, you know, the area was so reliant on on those particular industries came back roaring with diversification, you’ve gone having to healthcare and now as you’re mentioning robotics, automation. You’re at the cutting edge universities with the University of Pittsburgh Carnegie Mellon and just you know, Duquesne University, so it’s just you’re just in such a hotbed air Yeah. And I love how you’re preserving the legacy, combining it with 2021 technology. That’s just great.

Petra Mitchell 15:05
Yeah. And it’s such a unique building. And, you know, I really can’t can’t wait. I mean, we all can’t wait for the pandemic to be. You know, in particular, I can’t wait to be able to host people at our site, because it’s so interesting, and really something to see both on the outside, almost like a tourist attraction, and then come inside, and really just see the amazing advancements that are occurring. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. Well, I mentioned we’re in Pittsburgh. And so just a little bit about Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh is an iconic city. It’s been well known for over time, you know, for many different reasons. It’s the birthplace of industrial or American steel, like you mentioned, industrial Titans are three rivers there combinate, in this downtown area, our rivers are among the busiest inland ports in the country. They still carry coal, sand, steel, other metals down the Ohio River and into the Midwest. And, you know, for anyone that’s not familiar with Pittsburgh, what you’re seeing there, on the top, let’s say with like the three or four bridges, that’s the Allegheny River. And then the one closest to me with the one yellow bridge, that’s the Managua, hallo river. And actually Hazelwood green is essentially up the river on the Managua hayleigh, you kind of can’t see it, but just maybe a couple miles there. And then right there at the point, that’s where the Ohio River begins. And so there’s a lot of busy traffic on that river. But I think we’ve really done a great job in Pittsburgh and preserving, you know, the river fronts and making for a very high quality of life where all of our, you know, our arts, all arts, culture, sports, recreation, and we get very beautiful pictures. So it’s just really nice, you know, nice area. But what I like to remember is that, you know, this region was built by immigrants. And so I throw that picture in there, because it’s really, we have to be thankful and grateful for all these people that came here from Eastern Europe, and, you know, all over and a time suffered, so that we can enjoy this high quality of life that we have here. And you know, just a couple of things, we’re in a very good strategic location where within, you know, 500 miles of the Northeast markets, and what we’re sitting on top of one of the world’s largest natural gas reserves, and, you know, thinking about how do we leverage that natural resource for the benefit of our community in a safe and productive way. And for the benefit of, you know, manufacturing. And then just lastly, you alluded to a little bit there, Kurt, but, you know, the future of Pittsburgh is in robotics, automation and autonomy, we just got a study was just released about the autonomy sector. So we think about autonomy with driverless cars, but you know, we have autonomy in all kinds of applications and distribution and logistics and mining and nuclear power plants. I mean, you name it. Someone in Pittsburgh is working on how do we get people out of unsafe conditions, and, you know, working from, let’s say, an office or somewhere and get the robots down in those, you know, dirty, nasty places that no one wants to go. And yet still, you know, maintain all those important jobs. So it’s really cool. Yeah. Yeah.

Curt Anderson 18:40
I love it, Petra, and again, you’re a wealth of I found a bunch of quotes from you, if you don’t mind. I’m gonna throw one more. So you I found another quote, you said Southwestern Pennsylvania, has the potential to be one of the top innovative economies in the world. And it really is. That is the case if you visit Pittsburgh, I you know, my mother has her master’s degree from from Pitt. So you know, I’m very proud Pittsburgh kid, I guess, if you will, you’re proud of your kids going to college. I’m proud of my mom going to college. Right. Damon, your mother, your mother. We’re both very proud of our mothers. But again, it’s just so exciting when you see what Pittsburgh’s doing just on the cutting edge, and just multiple different aspects of, you know, very rich startup community as well. Right?

Petra Mitchell 19:25
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of those are, you know, product oriented startups. So we think of them as manufacturers and, you know, we’re reaching out and working with them as much as we can. In fact, I have a case study about one on one. Okay, awesome. Yeah. So let me just highlight here, just a couple little datasets. So this is a shows the sectors in the Greater Pittsburgh region so this is kind of like the metro region around Pittsburgh. You can see here gives you my pointer manufacturing is our fourth largest industry by contribution to gross regional product or output. But if you look at, you know, finance, insurance, professional and business services, educational services, manufacturing really is becoming the largest traded industry, where the majority of the goods that are produced are sold outside of our community. So even though it might not be as large as let’s say, you know, finance, banking, and so forth, it’s still, like I said, plays a very important role with, you know, some good substantial growth here over the last nine or so years. And then what those trendline lines look like, you know, the output kind of little ups and downs, ups and downs, but really starting to, you know, during the pandemic 2019 was about halfway through the pandemic, I think, 2020, when the data becomes available, we’re going to see this trend line continue to go up, and we’re seeing employment go down. So, you know, from markets and customers perspective, that’s a good thing in the sense that we are seeing productivity gains. And companies are adopting technology, they are implementing process improvements, and so forth. So there is a lot of good productivity and efficiency there, which is good for markets and customers. As economic developers, obviously, we want to see jobs go up. And so, you know, at catalyst we’re we’re just very, very focused on helping companies grow their business, improve their productivity, and create retain jobs, all three at the same time, we think it’s possible.

Unknown Speaker 21:28
On it is it’s a matter of the growth allows you to, to not have to hire as many people through the future. And it’s a wonderful thing when you can mix in the productivity improvements. Because as we know, now hiring is so difficult, right? So difficult. And in an in an economy like it is now and well into the future. This gives massive benefits to these companies.

Petra Mitchell 21:50
Yeah, absolutely. And hiring is very difficult. I don’t have a lot of slides on this. But you know, it countless we are highly involved in recruiting, attracting and recruiting job seekers that may not have considered manufacturing as an opportunity. So I’m talking about, you know, minority populations, underserved communities, women, veterans, all those kinds of things, because there are opportunities there. We just have to get the word out, you know, that kind of thing. So, but yeah, let me just mention a little bit. So this goes into a little bit more detail about the actual services that we offer. And during the COVID time period, we did an analysis to see okay, well, what our clients actually buying. So here’s what we offer, what are they actually buying. And so over a one year period, this represents about a million dollars worth of investments. You can see, during COVID people was really the top, you know, companies were investing and saying, Hey, this is a good time to develop our leaders to engage in, you know, group activities with peers. So whether it’s women in leaders, a program that we just launched, or emerging leaders, young professionals, we have a senior executive group. And we have an apprenticeship program that during COVID is growing rapidly. We’re a group sponsor of a registered apprenticeship program. During COVID, We registered our pre apprenticeship program, we found that high schools were looking for more experienced their students, you know, and particularly, you know, in a virtual world, I’m sure, you know, can get kind of tough for kids. And so what, how can they augment that experience? We probably had about 200, pre apprentices during the last school year, and this year is not going to be it’s going to be about the same. Yeah. So excited about that. Yeah. Yeah. And then you can see, you know, business growth. Yeah. For some companies, you know, they did lose business during the pandemic, Mark markets changed, you know, the need for certain products changed. And so how can we help them with that strategic plan, we did a number of strategic planning engagements. We have a great lead generation activity in partnership with our sister IRC in Philadelphia. And, you know, you see there quality management, we include quality management as part of business growth, sometimes companies really need to achieve that new certification to pursue those new markets. And even cybersecurity, you know, companies down the road want to maintain their DoD business, they’re going to have to get that cmmc certification. We launched a whole new initiative around that this year to help our clients get on that pathway. And then, not that operational improvements aren’t important. They certainly are, they’re critical. And we found ourselves saying, Okay, what’s the new world of you know, production layouts look like? How do you maintain social distancing, but still main, operate and maintain operational efficiency? Where’s that roll for automation, robotics and so forth? When we do In a number of projects on helping companies evaluate those technologies, and you can see that’s starting to come through even in the macro data there. So, yeah, I just have a couple of case studies. So I’ll be wrapping it up here. Shortly here, but Oh, sure. This fonts a little bit hard to see. Sorry about that.

Curt Anderson 25:19
That’s a doctor this morning, I’m fine. Yeah.

Petra Mitchell 25:24
So you know, it’s really more not so much about the company themselves. But I pegs a company here in Pennsylvania, north, just north of Pittsburgh, you know, their worldwide company here in Pittsburgh, they employ a couple 100 people, which is very important. And, you know, really one of the things that they wanted to do this, take this time, and train those supervisors, those frontline leaders, because as we know, people generally leave a company because they don’t like their manager. That’s cute. They don’t, it’s not like they don’t like the company, or they don’t like the CEO, or they’re not getting paid enough. Usually, it’s because they don’t like their manager. And, you know, we engage in a series of frontline leadership training to build up those skills build up that employee engagement, and turnout be very successful. The company is growing the reporting group impacts they have, as you can see, there a lot of happy employees, which was the goal. Yeah. Then we talked about Pittsburgh startup community. So capsule robotics is a member of that community. It’s a robotics company, they do end effectors for robotics, 3d vision systems and so forth. They only have six employees. But when we started working with them, they had two. So that’s rapid growth, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And their CEO Jarrods on my board of directors, he’s incredibly engaged person, just very passionate about not only his company, but but his community as well. And then just lastly, this company Sonneborn is really more like in the chemical processing industry, make hydrocarbons, vegetable based Somalians, basically, what they means is they make waxes, oils and waxes for, you know, like chapstick, or sunscreen or anything like that. And we’re help them also with, you know, their Lean efforts, but focused on Lean leadership. And so knowing that one of the challenges for companies to sustain their lean initiatives, their continuous improvement initiatives, you really have to have those leaders to drive that. Since we’ve implemented this program, the company has been bought by another larger company that’s really dedicated to them, keeping them here in our community, making the investments that are needed. So we like to think we had a little small little role to play in that. And we’re proud of that as well. And so that that’s really it, you know, I can maybe stop sharing. I can stop sharing when and be mindful of everyone’s time. But once again, are you seeing me? Did I stop?

Unknown Speaker 28:02
Now? You’re good, you’re good. It’s funny, because the eye peg equipment, I came from the plastics industry and injection molding, and we used to use those same kinds of pieces of equipment that they do that that oh, yeah, that’s a vacuum. That’s a value of material handling system piece that goes on top of a hopper, which isn’t just, yeah, we’ve seen a lot of those.

Curt Anderson 28:22
That’s awesome. Well, I would I’d like to do Petra, if you have just a minute or two more to go with us. I just like to kind of first off, thank you, you know, what an incredible thank you for the presentation. Snia, our friend in Los Angeles was on the program today. She wonderful, brilliant entrepreneur, and she went to school in Pittsburgh. And so Cynthia, thank you for joining us today. She’s an engineering, I believe, as well. And I just want to pack a few things that you dropped some incredible value information. They’re valuable pieces and nuggets, if you will, patch right. And so a couple of things that you dropped, you know, and this was kind of new to me as an, you know, kind of a lifelong entrepreneur. And I heard this from my friends and corporate people don’t leave companies, they leave managers. So if that’s new to you, that was new to me years ago, and that’s a big takeaway. So I love that, you know, the MVP network callus connection can help entrepreneurs and folks kind of figure out that retention piece, because they’re so focused on the recruiting piece. Sometimes we overlook that that retention piece so I you know, hats off to you on that. You mentioned cybersecurity which we had the Damon we had the honor of interviewing. So Paulson from NIST, the cybersecurity expert and she did a phenomenal job of educating us on cybersecurity. So again, folks can lean on your look wherever you are in the country. You can lean on your local MEP and NIST for cybersecurity. You gave an example on how you’re helping a small company with lean the Department of fence back to cybersecurity how important that piece is. Automation robotics, I know you’re helping folks with marketing. We’re doing a bunch of programming with different MEPs around the country is trying to help with E commerce and digital transformation and when LinkedIn, all these other fun things. So Petrit, let’s just just real quick. So any manufacturers that are out there? We’ve we’ve uncovered a lot today, a lot of manufacturers are out there like, Hey, I’ve never heard of this MEP. What is this MEP thing? Manufacturing Extension Partnership? Just kind of like just share, you know, how, how can they you know, I know, the obvious, you know, let’s Google it. But talk just quickly on, you know, how would they engage? How would they contact their local MEP? What would that engagement look like? And what’s, what’s the starting point, if they’ve just never gone that route? before?

Petra Mitchell 30:30
Yeah, I mean, the nice thing is that, you know, the MEP program, and at catalyst, I think I can speak for others, as well as we like to meet companies where they are. And so we are more than willing, you know, every engagement is really a discussion, maybe a negotiation between what the company thinks they need to do, and what we think they need to do based on industry best practices. And when we want to do is we want to come into the middle, we want to pull that company a little bit forward to say, Hey, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that, but we want to meet them where they are, we don’t want to force them into something they’re not ready for. And I think I think that’s, you know, that would be my main message to any manufacturing manager, CEO, Owner, don’t be afraid, we’re not going to force things on you, we’re not going to tell you that, hey, you need to spend a million dollars on the next new automation, you know, system or program or whatever, if your company is not interested in that, and you’re not ready for that. Let’s, let’s start slow, let’s think big. But let’s start slow, do some things that we can small increments are average engagements, probably, you know, 40 to 60 hours of work. But we have many engagements in a row. So we’re always touching base with the company saying, Are we on the same page? Are you satisfied with where we’re going? Do you feel confident in your ability to sustain the improvements? The answer is yes. Let’s move on. If the answer is no, let’s regroup. Let’s fix it. Let’s get to where we need to be.

Curt Anderson 32:04
Let’s I love that you come in with that objective, you know, you’re not necessarily trying to sell them anything. So it’s not like you know, you’re trying to sell a particular service, you’re coming in objectively, of like, you know, and again, with your background, your experience, GE Aviation, you mentioned 27 folks on your team, which is a huge, some states don’t have that many at the MVP network. That’s a lot. And so and I have had the honor and privilege of meeting a number of folks in your team, Matt and Connie, you know, many others. And again, I don’t want to keep it but just share a little bit of just I know you have just a rock star, all star team just share a little bit of the talent that you guys bring to the table when you’re doing manufacture.

Petra Mitchell 32:45
Yeah, well, we have a really good mix, I think of experienced individuals, folks that came from industry. Like you mentioned Connie Palooka, who is our business growth, director of business growth. Our manager, our Managing Director of our marketing and sales, many, many years of experience in sales, and so forth. are, you know, well, all of our managing directors, we have a model managing directors are leading our practice area. Our organizational development work is amazing. We’re one of the top 10 partners with DDI development dimensions International, so we utilize their full portfolio of leadership development. So David Ray on our staff has really developed that relationship. Our quality management managing director has been with us for 30 years, I would say Craig Wilson, he’s probably the best quality ISO quality management as well as 9100. All of those certifications, probably the best for sure, in the region, maybe in the state, maybe in the country. I mean, he’s amazing how many companies he’s helped achieve those certifications. And the team just, you know, cascades down from there. And but we have probably 10 of our staff that started as interns.

Curt Anderson 34:00
Isn’t that awesome? Yeah. We

Petra Mitchell 34:03
have, you know, experienced people that came from industry, worked in their field and so forth, in a pretty significant group that our group that we have developed ourselves, so maybe you don’t have that, you know, standalone industry experience, but have that, you know, growing up with organization, working with clients, learning the system, having that experience under the belt, we’re super proud of that, just as proud of them as we are, you know, are more experienced.

Curt Anderson 34:32
That is just awesome. And in again, you are just just a selfless leader, you know, a true inspiration. And I just, you know, when you look at the team, you know, check out catalyst connection, you know, again, check out the folks check out their website, please connect with Petra on her link, you know, on her LinkedIn profile, check out her team, and again, when you look at the wealth of talent that you bring, and again, if something were to slip, slip outside of the expertise of those 27 Folks, you have a national network that Right and benign from this. As far as you know, again, we’ve been interviewing different folks. We had University of Nebraska last week, Purdue the week before. There’s a so much talent and so much passion. And we could wrap up on this Petra, what I absolutely love is consistently Damon, I have the privilege, we interview a lot of folks from MEPs. It’s the what’s the common thread, it’s just that deep, unapologetic passion for helping us manufacturing. And again, you have such a wonderful success story, you know, hats off to mom and dad for, you know, what a leap of faith to leave their country come. You know, it’s scary to think about, you know, what they what they would have gone through to do what they did, and you’re just a true testament of America, you know, the American Dream is right here. And, you know, you go back to America, manufacturing, when you think legacy from the 40s and 50s. It’s still going on here in the 2020s, you know, so, so again, Pecha Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You’re super busy. Thank you for taking the time to join us today. Hang out one second, I’m going to end the broadcast, but guys, please contact your local MEP. If you’re a manufacturer we had we had Scott shine from GENEDGE, the Virginia MEP, he was a manufacturer for eight years sold his business ended up at at the MVP. He was like man, I wish I would have known the MVP network was out. So if you’re out there, you’re not in a silo. You’re not on your own. There’s amazing resources out there to help you at the Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program. Connect with Petra and the team at Cal is connection. Guys go out and absolutely crush it this week. We thank you for your time, Petra. Thank you and next week.

Petra Mitchell 36:39
Yeah, thank you