Emerging Leaders Nominations Now Open

With the new year comes another opportunity for the precision machining community to nominate young, talented future industry leaders who deserve recognition for their work ethic, ingenuity and unique skill sets. Consider nominating a coworker, colleague or someone you know — perhaps a shopfloor manager, CAD/CAM programmer, member of your shipping department or any other talented person — for Production Machining’s 2025 Emerging Leaders program. It’s easy to do and only takes a few minutes to fill out the form here.

Beginning in 2018, PM has chosen new groups of Emerging Leaders that consist of precision machining professionals under the age of 40 who are nominated by their peers as shining examples of eager, enthusiastic and thoughtful individuals. In nominating them, you can cite examples of leadership qualities and innovative ideas they have implemented, whether it be for workforce development, continuous improvement or another area of expertise for your company.

Click to nominate your Emerging Leader by March 1!

It’s important to provide as much detail as you can about what he or she has contributed to your company as those descriptions are what the PM staff will use to select this year’s winners. Here is a great example from the last edition of the Emerging Leaders program. It’s from Bill Berrien, CEO of Liberty Precision Machine, nominating Darrin Baker, who now is the company’s production supervisor-Swiss CNC:

Darrin Baker has had an absolutely stand-out career at Liberty Precision and has contributed immensely as he has advanced from CNC Swiss machinist to CNC Swiss lead to CNC Swiss supervisor. Darrin has a laser-like focus on his team’s value creation, whether that is developing the talent on his team, recruiting/referring other machinists to the company or organizing production and determining priorities. Darrin is a tremendously eager learner and has embraced any training offered to him — in fact, presently, he is attending the Living as a Leader course and you can see him applying his learnings daily. As well, he is always looking across the industry for other companies’ and machinists’ best practices, and then bringing those to Liberty.

The whole leadership team at Liberty Precision implicitly trusts Darrin to have the best interests of the company and his team in mind at all times. Darrin truly embodies the mantra: Accomplish the mission and take care of your people. And we couldn't be happier to have him as a leader at Liberty Precision.

This year’s nominations are due March 1. Winners will be announced and profiled in an upcoming edition of PM and promoted on our website, social media channels and e-newsletters throughout the year. In the past, stories and videos about Emerging Leaders covered topics such as the importance of educating the community about manufacturing, hiring inexperienced workers, in-house training, treating valuable machinists well, lean manufacturing and much more. And, we might have more surprises in store for the winners.

No doubt you have examples of creative young individuals who face — and even welcome — challenges head-on. Many have transformed the companies at which they are employed, making these businesses more competitive, efficient, organized and overall better places to work. Fill out the form so we can potentially shine a light on them.