Donald Jones

I think it was around the year 2000 as we were working on the Vision 2005 strategy, and just during that period, the organization started developing a growth mindset and really implementing that growth and growing. It was a very exciting time for an organization with the history and the tenure that a lot of people had. But it made it really exciting, and the part that was exciting for me was the fact that it created a lot of opportunities for people. We had a lot of people in the organization that had been in the organization for a while, but without growth, those opportunities for them to move up, let's say from a foreman to a plant manager, or from working in a plant to a foreman or somebody that was in either IT or in Finance.

And so it really created a lot of opportunities for people in the organization, as well as it was just an exciting time, because if you looked at the sales growth, you looked at the footprint of the organization, it was continually on an uptrend. Outside of the technical skills and running IT and learning the business, I was really being paid for becoming really a better person, a better leader, a better husband, a better dad. And I don't think you get that opportunity, and it meant a lot to me and still does.