FLP: Alumni Spotlight

The AHTD Future Leaders Program is a comprehensive two-year course accomplished with both in-person and virtual training. Offered to talented, high-potential employees from member companies, the curriculum has provided these emerging leaders with the leadership skills to help them grow professionally as individuals, and to help with the growth of their teams and organizations. We are proud to share the accomplishments of each of our AHTD Future Leader alumni! (please send the details of any Alumni updates to Leigha.Schatzman@ahtd.org)

 

Let's get to know our Future Leader Alumni!

 

August 2023 Alumni Spotlight

Adam Jackson
Regional Vice President of Sales for Illinois,
Iowa and Nebraska / Leader of the Business Development team
Power/mation
Fall 2021, Alpha Cohort
LinkedIn Profile
 

Residing in Iowa, Adam Jackson is Power/mation’s Regional Vice President of Sales for Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska as well as leading the Business Development team. Adam graduated from the first group of Future Leaders where he found the opportunity to train with a diverse network of colleagues - where it was possible to conduct conversations specifically in the context of the automation industry - to be of the greatest value. As a leader, Adam finds that he is often challenged to provide a common direction to members of his team who all exhibit a disparate set of communication and behavior styles. He feels the Future Leader Program training prepared him to be more effective in seeing each member of his team as an individual and to communicate with and motivate them in the way needed by each one.
 
For his first job, Adam was employed at a country club where he worked in the bag room cleaning members’ golf clubs, maintaining the driving range, and ensuring an enjoyable member experience. If Adam weren’t in automation, he would be teaching high school physics or chemistry. 

Adam is the husband to the greatest wife, Trichelle, and father to four of the best children, so it comes as no surprise that if he won the lottery, he would take Trichelle on a well-deserved vacation.

Adam is now a Director on our AHTD Board and participates in a number of other programs offered by our association. It is great to have Adam as one of our Future Leaders Alumni, and as such, an ambassador of this beneficial AHTD program! 
 
#AHTDrocks because of members like Adam Jackson.



July 2023 Alumni Spotlight

 

Adam Hershey
Vice President - Administration
NOSHOK
Fall 2021, Alpha Cohort
LinkedIn Profile


 

Adam Hershey took part in the first class of our AHTD Future Leaders Program, having graduated in the fall of 2021. Adam values the relationships he is building among the other Future Leaders Program participants and appreciates the opportunity they had to determine how distributors and manufacturers could improve relationships and work together, better. He attributes AHTD’s leadership training as having provided him with the tools for handling difficult conversations, and in Adam’s current role as NOSHOK’s Vice-President, Administration in Berea, OH, he finds these communication skills are key. Adam has also coupled what he learned in the program with distributor feedback to update and improve processes and provide the best outcomes for NOSHOK’s partners. 

When we asked Adam what he would do if he weren’t in automation, Adam responded that he is still unsure about what he wants to be when he grows up!  He feels that, like most in the industry, measurement instrumentation manufacturing was not on his childhood list of what he wanted to be, but it has worked out great!

#AHTDrocks because of members like Adam Hershey. It is great to have Adam as one of our Future Leaders Alumni, and we appreciate his outstanding ambassadorship for this AHTD program! 

 

June 2023 Alumni Spotlight

Lillie Deas
Director of Projects
EandM
Fall 2021, Alpha Cohort
LinkedIn Profile




Lillie Deas, one of the graduates of the AHTD Future Leaders Program's Alpha Cohort, completed her instruction in the fall of 2021. Now, as Director of Projects at EandM in Healdsburg, California, Lillie has stepped into a role that touches just about every team in her company.  She is finding everyone has different needs, a daily challenge that Lillie really enjoys! As an up-and-coming manager, she appreciates the tips learned from more experienced managers who participated in Future Leaders' discussions. She reports that it was “...great to hear examples of situations and how they were handled with grace and poise.” While she took away several concepts she regularly utilizes in her current role, she has been applying the concept of “flexing communication styles” the most.

Lillie has been in the automation industry since she began working; no flipping burgers for her. Her first job rewinding motors in EandM’s Motor Shop taught Lillie the importance of being dedicated and detail-oriented. If Lillie were not in automation, she says she would either be an artist or do something fun with the Spanish language. She also shared that she would perhaps appreciate combining the two by moving abroad and being creative.

If Lillie were to win the lottery, she dreams of helping close family members pay off their mortgages, and then take a proper family vacation. The rest she would wisely put away for the future.

In addition to participating in the Association’s Future Leaders Program, Lillie is an active AHTD member, participating in a number of our programming opportunities, including Women in Automation. It is great to have Lillie as one of our Future Leaders Alumni, and as such, an ambassador of this AHTD program! 
 
#AHTDrocks because of members like Lillie Deas.