Women of the Industry

Among the automotive recycling industry are dedicated professional women who make significant contributions to the success of the business.

By Coleen Krause

A friendly face at the ARA Conventions and affiliate events for the last decade has been Julie Cain, sales representative for Buddy Automotive Innovations. She recently celebrated her 10-year anniversary with the company, for which she does marketing, journal publications, website updates and management, promotional products, regional and national shows. She is the customer service representative to everyone east of the Mississippi River.

“I am able to work from home in Dunedin, FL. Our corporate office is in Colorado, where owner Mike Lambert lives, and our co-owner John Johnson, Jr., lives in Connecticut,” she said. “Bid Buddy is an auction bidding software solution that uses your yard management data to buy cars. Inventory Buddy is a tablet you can use to whole manage vehicles and manage your existing inventory, and you can take pictures of each part or vehicle. In loose parts you can manage your existing inventory by stock numbers, parts tags, location, part codes and OEM number. It’s an easy-to-use, electronic data transfer system.”

Like many people, Julie came to her job through a circuitous route. She grew up in Howell, MI, not far from Lansing, where her father was a union electrician and her mother was a nurse. Julie graduated from Michigan State University in 1990 with a degree in horticulture. She married and moved to Yuma, where she had her children, Catie and Nick, who are now 26 and 23 years old. She moved back to Michigan, but then made the move to Florida after a vacation to Orlando. “I hate winters,” she said. “Let’s come here.”

Julie moved to Lakeland, FL and worked for Commercial Forms for three years and went to school to learn computer software. She had taken a course at Michigan State – in DOS – and wanted to improve her skills. Then fate intervened.

“After my dad died, my mom, sister, and I planned a trip to Las Vegas. While we were there, as luck would have it, I ran into Mike Lambert of Buddy Automotive. We got to talking, and by the time I left Vegas, Mike had offered me a sales job. I can’t believe it’s been 10 years already.”

She might not have used her degree in horticulture, but Julie remains an avid gardener and has a nice orchid collection. Julie is an avid boater and diver, and belongs to the Freedom Boat Club, where members can use boats maintained by the club. She goes out boating most weekends. She has gone diving in Aruba, Tahiti and Bora Bora, Playa del Carmen, Cozumel, and Cancun in Mexico, and in the Bahamas. Her biggest underwater thrill, she said, was diving near a giant manta ray in Bora Bora.

Julie enjoys a balanced life mixing family, professional attainment, and the outdoors. Be sure to say hello the next time you see her at an auto recycling convention.

As a woman working in the industry, I was the ONLY woman in my state running a professional automotive recycling facility and I thought it was important to find opportunities to empower women and encourage them to seek nontraditional roles in our industry. So often we see women filling back-office roles rather than front-line roles that I feel they are more capable of handling than many would have thought. In fact, one young lady who was working for me eventually became my top salesperson when I recognized her skills in talking with customers and handling difficult situations.

LARA – Ladies of the Automotive Recyclers Association seeks to promote automotive recycling as a career choice to women and open pathways to enter and thrive in a fulling career within this business community. LARA also provides networking and educational events, usually held at the annual convention of the ARA. If you interested in participation, contact staff@a-r-a.org to find out more on LARA. You can also email Coleen Krause at ColeenKrause@comcast.net to be featured here in a future column of “Women of the Industry.”  

LARA was created to give all working women in our industry a resource to share, collaborate and learn how to continue to grow in their companies and seek more opportunities for advancement in their careers in recycling.  If you would like to learn more about LARA and its membership, please contact Sandy@a-r-a.org

Coleen Krause is co-owner of Speedway Auto Parts, Joliet, IL. She is a marketing and communications expert working previously with Acrelec Maerica, as well as Governors State University and other educational institutions. She has extensive experience building marketing plans and budgets for B2B technology companies within the food, telecom, and transportation industries.