Donna Vann

Background

About Donna Vann

My professional experience has been somewhat challenging in two aspects. One was the amount of knowledge and experience I had gained at an early age and with the added factor of being a women in engineering was the biggest challenge of my young Quality Engineer days. With grit, determination and some fanstastic Managers and mentors I achieved my goals of becoming a Quality Manager around 30 which was my target. Then, I needed more, so moving into new roles, industries and then to director has and still is a very hard challenge but not one I planned. The reasoning behind this shift in goals was that firstly, having a young daughter, the reality of a senior role in automotive or most manufacturing industries meant I would never be at home (double and triple shifts)! Also, seeing the level of people moving into group leader, middle and upper management roles without the training or support saddened me -"getting higher positions just because they were good at machining or welding doesnt make a good man manager". I wanted to help develop the next generation, our future teams - be it in manufacturing or service the UK have to survive and need to up our game and continually improve to allow industry and service to remain in the UK for our childrens future. Specialties: Training and developing engineers is what I see I excel in due to the experience I have gained over the years. Project and Planning Manager is a key strength in so much as achieve and hitting targets on the all KPIs set. From running million pound durability and complete vehicle Homologation projects, Completly relaying out process lines, using surplus machinery and turning a company from a negative to a profit in 6 months.