HR Notices From June 13
Cascade Engineering Promotes Jo-Anne Perkins to Vice President: Grand Rapids-based Cascade Engineering today announced the promotion of Jo-Anne Perkins to corporate vice president. In her new position, Perkins will assume an increased leadership role within the Cascade Engineering family of companies and maintain strategic oversight for Cascade Cart Solutions, a flagship Cascade business unit focused on providing innovative solid waste and recycling solutions for municipalities, private waste haulers and consumers. Perkins will continue to report directly to Company founder, Chairman and CEO Fred Keller. Perkins has played a key role in driving the Container Group's growth since she joined the Company in 2001. Following a successful, two-decade career as a self-employed entrepreneur in the municipal solid waste industry, Perkins came to Cascade as a regional sales manager with responsibility for expanding the Company's markets in Canada and the Northeast United States. The following year, she was promoted to Municipal Sales Director, a position that required building a new sales team and marketing strategy for public waste haulers in markets across the United States and Canada. Perkins was subsequently named National Sales Director, with responsibility for all of the business unit's sales targets and personnel. In 2005, Perkins was appointed General Manager for Cascade's solid waste business. Working amid the economic challenges of the recession, Perkins doubled group revenues through a dual emphasis on new and organic business growth. Today, Perkins' business unit is one of Cascade's two largest -- out of a total 15 operating units worldwide. Along the way, Perkins has become widely recognized as a leader and innovator in North America's $53 billion solid waste and recycling industry, including being named a winner of the YWCA's 2010 Tribute Award, which recognized her extraordinary efforts to strengthen the West Michigan region through her business and community leadership. Perkins' industry vision has included applying leading-edge technology in ways that are making the waste and recycling industry more efficient, environmentally friendly and beneficial for cities, haulers, and -- for the first time -- the consumer, as well. Her focus has centered on making carts "smart" -- including an entire system to support their operation in the field -- and has involved the formation of two additional companies, Integrated Solutions and Capturit. Together, the businesses for which Perkins has oversight are dedicated to: making Cascade's products more environmentally friendly (the Company's EcoCart utilizes the highest post-consumer recycled content in the industry); manufacturing the SmartCart, which incorporates barcode or RFID technology; and providing everything for the "back of the collection truck" -- from the lifter that picks up the container, to the scanners and software that register each container's pickup. More at www.cascadeng.com.
