“You need to plan and you need to be strategic. But you also can’t get stuck in strategy, because if you’re always focused on planning, you’ll never execute. And you’ve got to execute. You’ve got to fail in order to learn and do it better.”
For years, Lisa did not entirely see herself as a manufacturing leader. She remembers early trade shows where the scarcity of women was impossible to miss. “I remember going to McCormick Place, and it’s the only place during that time that there’s no line for the women’s room.” Her involvement with the National Association of Manufacturers eventually changed the way she saw her own place in the industry. After joining the NAM board, she found herself sitting beside leaders of some of the largest manufacturers in America.
“I think at that point in time, I said, ‘I’m legit.’”
She laughs at the contrast.
“I’m a small little, tiny 35-person manufacturing facility, and I’m sitting in a room with Exxon.”
Her work later took her to Washington, where she participated in policy discussions and spoke about manufacturing from the perspective of a small business owner. “They’re listening to me. They’re listening to my voice,” she says. “And I’m still thinking—I think I have imposter syndrome at this point—because I’m like, how am I here?” Over time, she came to understand that her perspective mattered precisely because it was different. “There was a paradigm shift of, you know what, we need to have more women at the table. We need to have more women in manufacturing.”
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