From car and parts manufacturing to car inspection – meet Sandra Y. McCulloch, President, US & Asia
Sandra Y. McCulloch came on board April 1 – 2017.
Her considerable experience from the automotive industry – including General Motors – as well as her two degrees – a master’s degree in management from Stanford, and a B.Sc. Eng in metallurgical engineering from Queens University – are certain to come in handy.
Yet the automotive industry almost missed out on Sandra’s talent, as she started out studying biochemistry.
– I started studying Biochemistry because I loved science and math, Sandra says. “Upon entering University and making friends who were in engineering, I realized that engineering provided much better job prospects, and still was filled with science and math. Engineering had never been recommended to me; maybe because I was a girl. As I progressed in my career it was clear that running the business required additional skills so I completed my Masters of Science in Management at Stanford.
From a career at GM to Opus
As a graduate engineer, Sandra secured work at GM’s Canadian lab where she worked with things like failure analysis, manufacturing issues, and the approval of material samples. After her time at GM, Sandra joined Delphi – a leading global supplier of technology to the automotive industry. Her last role before she came to Opus was executive director for powertrain products.
So what made Sandra switch from building and developing cars to inspecting them?
– You could say I really didn’t choose the vehicle inspections business, I chose Opus. Opus contacted me and after the first interview I was completely impressed with my predecessor Lothar Geilen and Tom Fournier.
Attracted by the company
Naturally Sandra had other offers and opportunities – people with her abilities do – but the more she learnt about Opus, the more interested she became. She was very impressed by the company’s passion for its business, and felt positively challenged by its ambitions. Sandra felt she wanted to be part of fulfilling the company’s vision and mission, and that she had key skills she could offer.
So now that you’re here, what challenges are you finding the most important right now?
– Firstly to not mess up what Lothar has gotten right. I’m not kidding. He’s done a tremendous job, and I have big shoes to fill.
I am responsible to grow the company at acceptable and sustainable profit levels. I’m currently building and equipping a high performance team (all levels) to meet the challenges that lie ahead with global expansion and new product introduction and growth.
Concrete future plans
What challenges do you face going forwards?
– Managing the US emissions market
decline while expanding globally and introducing new products and services. Introducing processes and systems that allow us to grow from a small player to a much larger global company, at a very fast rate, while improving customer satisfaction at the same time. Finally integration and harmonization of cultures as appropriate from the multiple acquisitions that have occurred.
So what are you planning to do in the near future to achieve these goals?
– Getting Punjab and Sindh provinces fully functional in the next 6 and 16 months respectively. Apart from that, eliminating field service backorders and fulfilling demand for new Gen III analyzers; Increasing the transparency and robustness of our Engineering processes while improving the quality of our software and time to implement a new program; Defining and improving our Business Processes with defined work flows; and Creating and implementing the Opus Production System. I am fortunate to have a strong leadership team who have embraced these priorities and are working diligently on delivering!
There’s lots to do! But there’s more to life than work, right?
– I have a wonderful, supportive husband, Chris, and three grown children, Sean, Geoffrey and Jenna. We make a point of all going out to snowboard together and share some solid family time around Christmas. Besides snowboarding and skiing, I love to snowshoe in the winter. And in the summer that switches to kayaking and paddle boarding. Indoors I love to cook, read books, do puzzles and watch movies.
And with that we leave Sandra. As you’ve read, she has a lot to do.