March/April 1998
Shelley E. Padnos will make history when she becomes ISRI’s first woman president in March. And that’s only the start of her big plans for the association during her two-year term.
By Kent Kiser
Kent Kiser is editor of Scrap.
It’s late January, and in two months Shelley E. Padnos—executive vice president and chief administrative officer of Louis Padnos Iron & Metal Co. (Holland, Mich.)—is going to make history.
On March 21, she’ll become the first woman president of ISRI. In fact, if you look back at past presidents of ISRI’s predecessor organizations—the National Association of Recycling Industries (NARI) and the Institute of Scrap Iron and Steel (ISIS), whose roots date back to 1913 and 1928, respectively—she’ll be the first woman president of a national scrap industry trade association ever.
Yet here she sits, in a meeting room at the Westin Resort Miami Beach, looking not a bit worried. Perhaps that’s because she’s had plenty of time—eight years as a national ReMA officer, to be exact—to adjust to the idea.
Padnos, an attorney with a Juris Doctor degree cum laude, unknowingly began her ascent to the top in 1984 when she started serving as legislative chairman of the Michigan Chapter of ISIS. In 1988, she became the chapter’s secretary/treasurer. Also around this time, her legal talent and legislative experience—earned, in part, from working in the Michigan House of Representatives in the 1970s—prompted ReMA to recruit her to serve on its first Superfund task force. Padnos made history for the first time in 1990 when she became the first woman elected to a national ReMA office, filling the secretary role.
And eight years later—after sitting in the secretary, secretary/treasurer, second vice president, and first vice president seats—here she is, sitting calmly in a Miami Beach hotel, on the verge of making history once again.
What are her thoughts and feelings as she prepares to assume ISRI’s highest volunteer leadership position? What will be the goals of her administration? And doesn’t she feel even a little bit daunted by the task ahead of her?
The answers to these and other questions are in this exclusive interview.
* * *
What are your early memories of your family’s scrap company, and when did you start getting introduced to it as a youngster?
Padnos: I grew up in my family’s scrap business because the business was a very big part of our family life. My dad [Seymour Padnos] and uncle [Stuart Padnos] were the second generation, and the business was a huge part of their lives. This summer, I was showing some old home movies and it struck me again. All the big events in the scrap yard’s history are interspersed with footage of family events—our birthday parties, my grandparents celebrating Hanukkah. There we are—we’re swimming, sailing, skiing, and then here’s the new baler, and we’re all down at the plant to watch the first bale come out. Then all of us are aboard the ship holding the first overseas cargo that we ever loaded. The family business was an integrated part of our lives.
My dad and uncle used to take turns working Saturdays, and it was usual for my dad to take us with him. There weren’t a lot of people working in the office on Saturdays. We’d play around down there. As we got older, all of us—my cousins, siblings, and I—worked at the company. The first job any of us had was sorting computer tab cards by color. That was a very safe job for kids because it was hard to even cut your finger on the cards because they were so thick. When I was about 18, I also spent a whole summer sorting paper.
Did you always assume you’d work in the family business?
Padnos: My dad and uncle were adamant that all of us had to work someplace else first. They thought we needed to get an education, then go work outside the company and prove to ourselves and people we’d be working with at Padnos that we were capable of earning a living someplace else. They thought that was very important. So I always knew I’d work someplace else first.
I always had a curiosity about going back to work in the business, however. What made a huge difference and continues to make a huge difference is that my dad and uncle really love the business. They’ve always been proud of their profession, and it wasn’t always an easy business to be proud of. Today, it’s easier to feel pride about being in the recycling business because it’s much more accepted as a positive force in society. But when I was a kid, to an outsider it was the junk business, and it looked like the junk business, and it had all the bad connotations of the junk business. All of us were teased when we were kids.
But my dad’s and uncle’s feelings about the business were passed on to us. All of us of the third generation chose to return to the family business. As an example, my cousin Jeff is a Harvard MBA who worked for McKenzie & Co. for a number of years and chose to come back. He certainly had a lot of options. His coming back sends the same message—it’s an attachment to the business that goes beyond having worked there. It’s some sense of ownership, pride, and responsibility.
When did you begin working full-time for Louis Padnos Iron & Metal?
Padnos: I started in 1984 as an account executive. Before that, I practiced law for about five years with a medium-size firm in west Michigan. And I actually liked practicing law. Everything was going along fine, and they offered me a partnership. That caused me to stop, reevaluate everything, and ask myself if that was the kind of commitment I wanted to make then. I was going to be 30 years old, and I thought that if I was going to take a flier and try something else, that was a good time to do it because if it didn’t work and I wanted to go back and practice law, people wouldn’t say, “You’re too old to do this” or “Where have you been all this time?”
So I decided that if I was going to try the family business, that was the time to do it, see what I thought, and still leave my options open in terms of going back to practice law.
Did you get involved with either ISIS or NARI?
Padnos: I was involved in ISIS. Before I went to law school, I worked for a couple of years at the statehouse in Lansing [Mich.] doing some legislative work. When I joined Padnos, I became involved in the legislative work that the Michigan Chapter of ISIS was doing.
How did you get involved with ISRI?
Padnos: My uncle came to my cousin, my brother, and I and said, “One of you needs to be the representative to the trade association. You can decide among yourselves who wants to do what, but one of you needs to be the representative.” At that point, we hadn’t thought of anything beyond the Michigan Chapter. Since I was doing the chapter’s legislative work already, I was the logical choice. So I volunteered, and they said fine.
I got involved with ReMA national when the association put together its first Superfund task force. The leadership was looking for people with some legislative understanding to try to design an ReMA concept for dealing with both CERCLA and RCRA issues. I was asked to sit on that task force, and that was my first exposure. I was an officer of the Michigan Chapter at that time, and I was still doing all its legislative work.
How did you become a national ReMA officer?
Padnos: I got a phone call one night from Howard Meyers asking me to run in an election for the secretary position of ISRI. And Howard’s a very persuasive guy. I said, “No, no, no, I don’t think it’s my time. Jim Fisher’s already an officer, and he’s from Michigan, and it would be unusual to have two officers from Michigan.” But as I said, Howard’s a very persuasive guy. By the time he was done flattering me, I’d been flattered right into running for office. That, by the way, was a hotly contested election that I didn’t think I’d win.
What have you gotten out of being a national ReMA officer?
Padnos: First of all, nobody gets to where I am on their own. You have to have a lot of support in a lot of different places. First, you have to have support at home, and I’m fortunate that I have that in terms of my two cousins and my brother, who give me the flexibility and freedom to do what I’m doing here.
Then you have the benefits of climbing the ladder with other leaders of the association. I’ve had the opportunity to work with David Serls, Arnie Gachman, Cap Grossman, and Jim Fisher. I’ve had the chance to see them up close and learn a lot from them. I feel fortunate to have been able to work with all of them, watch their different leadership styles, glean the best from them, and learn.
Another benefit is that moving through the ranks gives you self-esteem and skills that you can’t get in other situations—for example, public speaking in front of 3,000 people at an ReMA convention. Those kinds of opportunities don’t come in this kind of profession from many other places.
Being asked to sit on the federal government’s NACEPT [National Advisory Committee on Environmental Policy and Technology] subcommittee on Superfund reauthorization was also a phenomenal opportunity. It was an incredible experience to meet the people who are making the legislation. Serving on that task force was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and one that my contributing to ReMA gave me and that I wouldn’t have had outside of this association.
You’re about to become the first woman president of ISRI. You’re basically making history. What are your feelings and thoughts about this?
Padnos: I know that being the first woman president is making history and I’m proud to be here. At the same time, when I think about the job ahead of me in the next two years, the fact that I’m a woman doesn’t even enter into my thoughts. Maybe I’ll be proven to be naive in that. I see a lot of responsibilities and a big job out there, but I don’t see that job as being any different for me than it’s been for any of my predecessors. And I hope to do as good a job as my predecessors have done.
If I can leave two years from now saying that I’ve accomplished that, then I’ll feel very good about myself and feel that I’ve succeeded.
Has being a woman in this business been difficult, either in your company or in your role as an ReMA leader?
Padnos: I’m probably not the best person to answer that question because I was extremely fortunate to enter the business with instant credibility thanks to my family’s name. From the beginning, I wore a name tag and everybody knew me, even when I didn’t know anybody, because I just happened to have a great last name. I believe that instantly overcame a lot of problems for me that a woman who was unknown in this business might encounter.
On the other hand, there are differences. There are definite differences.
The theme of your administration will be “Power Through Professionalism.” Why did you select that theme and what does it mean to you?
Padnos: I’ve long been a proponent of trying to raise the level of performance of our members through education and training that provides practical and cost-efficient solutions to different problems. When I became involved in the drafting of ISRI’s Environmental Operating Guidelines, I saw that as a first big step. And in that manual as well as in the association’s education and training programs, I’ve always pushed the idea that we must present not only the problems to our members but also solutions that are practical and economically manageable. I’ve believed that that is one of the ways of raising the industry’s overall performance.
I think we have to acknowledge that our industry continues to suffer from some adverse perception problems in the general public, and there are only a couple of ways to solve the problem. One is to act in a professional manner. The other—something my dad once told me—is that if you don’t respect yourself, you can’t expect others to respect you. That’s all part of what I’d like to see this industry become—one in which we respect ourselves, respect each other, and act with ourselves and with each other like professionals.
This year’s convention theme is “Gateway to a New Era.” In what ways is this a new era for ReMA and the industry?
Padnos: Obviously, the consolidations that are occurring are going to have a large, dramatic, and long-term impact on the industry, the association, and the people involved. I’ve wished in the past year that I had a crystal ball to see what the future holds. There’s a lot of speculation, but I think it’s premature to guess how this will all play out. Nevertheless, the idea that things are changing—I’d say that’s an understatement.
Do you view the consolidation trend as the next logical step for the scrap industry?
Padnos: In terms of the world at large, we’re on the late side of going through this. This trend has been occurring on Wall Street for the last 20 years. In some ways, we’re fortunate to be on the late end because we have the ability to learn from others’ mistakes. We can look at what others have done well, what they’ve not done well, and try to find our way through this—in particular as a trade association—with much more data than others had access to. The association and its executive group are committed to finding as much information as they can about successes and failures in consolidation situations to help us wind our way through this in the most positive way possible.
So will consolidation and its effects be the dominant issue of your administration?
Padnos: Only in the sense that ISRI’s responsibility as a trade association is to remain viable in terms of its value to its members. To me, whatever it takes is what we need to do. If we have a changing membership base, it’s our responsibility to determine what changing needs and services that changing membership base has and be certain that we’re ahead of the curve, providing those if we expect to continue to have value to our membership.
So while I wouldn’t say that the consolidation issue itself will be the driving force, the issue of what our members need and what our membership base looks like will be an important part of what we look like a year or two years or five years from now.
Superfund will certainly continue to be an issue. What else will be ongoing issues or new issues you might be facing in the next year or two?
Padnos: Superfund is obviously and sadly an ongoing issue. For the last six years, we haven’t been able to accomplish our goal of getting reform legislation through Congress. But we’ve come up with some new ideas to help us move forward.
In general, we need to be ever-vigilant on the legislative front, and we have a great team in place to do that. We’re certainly seeing more activity these days on the state and local levels than we are on the federal. We need to continue to monitor all of those. I look at situations like the flow control case for which we’ve recently filed an amicus brief. There’s also a case that’s been accepted for a hearing at the Supreme Court dealing with successor liability between a parent and a subsidiary. This case has the potential to be critical for many of our members, especially larger members.
Inside ISRI, I’m interested in trying to streamline and realign ISRI’s committee structure. I think we have too much duplication and have asked Robin Wiener and the staff to look at how we might collapse things down a bit.
I also want to create more focus for the membership meetings. I’m hoping that each one can have a theme and more of a focus on speakers, with presentations on a specific area that might interest different sectors of our membership. For example, we talked about a consumer focus for the Chicago membership meeting in October because we have a lot of consumers in that area. We’ve talked about a safety focus. It’s a way of broadening interest in the membership meetings.
Leadership development is also a big consideration, and we already have a task force working on some ideas. We’ve learned by going out into the trade association world that almost every association is suffering from many of the same problems that we are. Members have not only a lack of time, but also a lack of understanding of what leadership within ReMA means. Everybody has amazingly busy lives these days. It seems much more complicated for people to juggle everything in their lives today. The task force has looked at the chamber of commerce program for leadership development, which has been very successful. We’re looking at those kinds of programs to find out what the mix is that seems to make the whole thing work.
How will you view your role as ReMA president?
Padnos: First of all, my being the president is a misnomer. To me, the president of anything connotes the chief operating officer, and I don’t have any intention or capability of being the chief operating officer of this organization. That is and clearly, unequivocally will be Robin Wiener. I see myself more in Herschel Cutler’s role—senior adviser, though I’m not quite as senior. We have an absolutely great staff in whom I have a great deal of faith to do the job that needs to be done. I see my role as one of helping to set policy and direction, looking at longer-range planning, and being an adviser.
Are you daunted by the task that lies ahead of you as ReMA president?
Padnos: I’m not daunted in the sense that it’s going to be burdensome. Robin and I have a clear understanding of what my current work situation will allow me to do in terms of time. I mean, I do have a full-time job, and I’d like to have a full-time job when I’m done with my presidency. If that’s to be the case, I need to keep my oar in the water at home, and Robin understands that.
I am daunted in the sense of responsibility I feel—that I would like to leave this association in better shape than when I start and that I follow in the footsteps of previous leaders who have done a terrific job. I’d like to measure up to those people. •
Shelley E. Padnos will make history when she becomes ISRI’s first woman president in March. And that’s only the start of her big plans for the association during her two-year term.