We would like to highlight the amazing women who work with us everyday.
heather vike - truck country dealer family cic
A member of the Truck Country team since 2013, Heather Vike quickly developed a reputation as one of the company’s key movers and shakers.
Vike joined the company as a coordinator for one of Truck Country’s fleet customers, while also performing service advisor responsibilities. Within a year, she also started as the local Continuous Improvement Coordinator for the Appleton dealership. From there, Vike’s career was on the fast track. In 2015, she was appointed Dealer Family CIC for Truck Country’s Wisconsin locations. Succeeding in helping dealerships earn Daimler Trucks’ Elite Support certifications, she was promoted to serve Dealer Family CIC for all of Truck Country’s Iowa and Wisconsin locations.
During this time, Vike earned the admiration of her peers across the industry. She was voted to serve a three-year term on Daimler’s Dealer Advisory Group, where she assisted others in creating criteria for the Elite Support dealers. With Truck Country’s parent company, McCoy Group, adding a new John Deere construction and forestry division, Vike assisted during the transition by providing Change Management Team and Continuous Improvement Coordinator training for McCoy Construction & Forestry.
When COVID first hit in early 2020, Vike assisted Truck Country’s HR department with managing protocols and procedures associated with the pandemic.
Q & A WITH HEATHER VIKE
Q. Describe your day-to-day duties with Truck Country?
A. I am the primary Dealer Family Elite Support representative who manages and coaches our local continuous improvement coordinators from multiple locations within the same dealer family. My role is to ensure the vision, strategy, and priorities of the dealer principal and vice president are consistent across the dealer family with respect to Elite Support and Continuous Improvement efforts.
Q. What challenges as a woman have you faced while working in this industry? How have you overcome these obstacles?
A. It’s an interesting question because I never thought of this industry as traditionally being dominated by men. My mom, working as a self-employed agent in the industry, was as an example for me at a young age. Then, I worked with an office full of women, where we managed the day-to-day operations.
It was only when I transitioned to the “customer service” side of the industry where it became more outspoken that this is a “male-dominated” industry. When I started, female technicians weren’t a thing. We didn’t have locker rooms for female technicians, and (at the time) in some of our newer locations, we didn’t even put a shower room in the customer lounge for female customers nor did we have a lower restroom for our parts and service female employees. In 2015, I remember working in our Marinette location and quickly realizing that no female had ever worked there before me as the accommodations for the male technicians really didn’t suit a female presence being at this dealership.
All these opportunities for improvement were overcome by working with the VP and general managers. We created female changing rooms at each of our stores to ensure female technicians felt welcome during the onboarding process and just not like we had to “accommodate” them. We are also working this year to rectify the shower rooms for female customers and lower restrooms for female parts and service employees at locations that previously didn’t have them. At the end of the day, it’s all about people and processes.
sarah dazey - STOOPS DEALER FAMILY CIC & STOOPS FT. WAYNE DEALERSHIP CIC
Detours are not just encountered when you are traveling. Sometimes they pop up on one’s career path as well. During her 15-year career with Stoops, Sarah Dazey has worked her way up the ranks from her days starting as a temporary receptionist. Soon thereafter, she found herself in the position as the Stoops – Fort Wayne office manager and then as a sales administrator.
In 2011, she was named to serve in the new role of Continuous Improvement Coordinator in Fort Wayne, before adding the title of Dealer Family CIC across Stoops’ family of dealerships. All along, she did this while earning the admiration of her colleagues. However, if not for some unfortunate professional timing, Dazey’s career with Stoops likely wouldn’t have come to fruition.
“Prior to coming to work with Stoops, I had no connection to the transportation industry,” she recalled.
Based in Lansing, Mich., Dazey worked in the areas of marketing and communication for a nationally recognized organization that helps people with weight-loss management. But as many others have experienced, when the organization was bought out, Dazey was laid off from her position.
In 2006, Dazey returned to Fort Wayne in search of a new job. That is when things started to turn back in her favor.
“It was in March 2006, that I moved back home to Fort Wayne, when the parts manager at the Stoops – Fort Wayne location, my cousin, Jeff Buuck, called looking for someone to quickly fill the needed position of receptionist,” she said. “I started at Stoops on April 7, 2006, and as they say, the rest is history.”
Q & A WITH SARAH DAZEY
Q. Please describe your day-to-day duties with Stoops?
A. As a CIC, most of my time is spent working on continuous improvement events at my location and conducting dealership walkthroughs to verify Elite Support criteria and processes. I also travel weekly to other Stoops locations for training and coaching purposes with local CICs. Most recently with the growth of our locations, I have been heavily involved with new hire orientations and onboarding of new employees throughout the Stoops group.
Q. What challenges as a woman have you faced while working in this industry? How have you overcome these obstacles?
A. Coming from my previous position, a company that was dominated by women — it was a culture shift for me to adapt to working with men. Women communicate very differently than men and it is important to know what is effective in order to be successful at one’s job. In this business, I learned to be more direct and to the point with my communication, while being more open about my goals for myself within the company. As a woman who has been with this organization for 15 years, I feel that Stoops and the McCoy Group have both welcomed women into the fold and have extended opportunities for me and other women in the company to expand our reach and responsibility as respected team members.
Q. What motivates you to come to work each day?
A. I truly enjoy what I do in my roles as both a CIC and DFCIC. Cleanliness, organization, creative thinking, and the attainment of goals are things that drive me to do more. I have a fantastic team in Fort Wayne that support me as a CIC in the dealership and they too share my goal to be the best dealership for our customers every day. As many people know, I am also lucky enough to work with four of my six siblings at the Stoops – Ft. Wayne location. While we are scattered throughout different departments and shifts, we all cross paths which is a bonus to coming to work each day.
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