Shelley Padnos of Padnos

Shelley Padnos rose through the ranks of her family’s scrap business despite initial hesitancy from her own father as to whether it was the right career choice for her.

Subsequently, Padnos spent decades not only with Holland, Michigan-based Padnos (formerly Louis Padnos Iron & Metal)—helping the company grow and diversify—but also accepted increasing responsibilities in volunteer positions with the Washington-based Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI).

Starting in 1998, she served as president of ISRI, in a role now known as the chair position of the ISRI national board. She remains the only woman to have reached that highest volunteer post.

This June, Recycling Today Senior Editor Brian Taylor had the opportunity to interview Padnos as part of “The Scrap Show” podcast series. In this edited excerpt from the interview, she looks back at her decades in the metals sector. Padnos also offers her perspective on what the scrap recycling industry can do to cultivate a more diverse workforce to find the best people available.

Q: When did you get your start in the scrap business? Was it inevitable growing up in the Padnos family?

A: Well, it might have seemed inevitable to me, but it did not seem inevitable to my father. I think I grew up not just with the business but in the business. All of us worked when we were young. Actually, I worked until I was about 16, during the summers, just doing all kinds of different things, including dispatching and the scale operation and those sorts of things. So, I really grew up in the business. It was a big part of our lives, and I think I always had an interest in the business.

I went to law school. I practiced law for about five years. And then they offered me a partnership. And that seemed like a very big deal to me, like this was now going to be this big commitment that I was going to make. And I was going to do that for the rest of my life. But I wasn’t quite ready to try that. I really thought since I was 30 years old, I could still try something different. Even if it didn’t work, I would be young enough to still go back and practice law. So, I went to my dad (the late Seymour Padnos) to talk to him about it. And he said, “This is no place for a woman.” Actually, I think he probably said, “This is no place for girls.”

Eventually, he came around to more of a “Go think about it” response.

I came back to him, and I said, “I’m really serious.” And he said, “OK, well, you have to go talk to your uncle (the late Stuart Padnos).”

Q: How did the Padnos company change? How did you try to shape it?

A: During the time that I was in a leadership position, it was very much my cousin, Jeff, and my brother, Mitch, and me, and we sort of had a division of responsibilities. But we worked together on almost all the major things. If I had a niche, it was probably in the mergers and acquisitions and real estate areas.

I’m a big believer in taking a brownfield site and rejuvenating it. It is actually quite a bit less expensive than buying an existing [facility]. And we have been able to do that on several different occasions, including moving operations that were not particularly productive because of their location, or their size or whatever else. And so, I spent a lot of time a doing that. I also did a lot of work with industrial accounts, and I think I’m responsible for getting us a little bit more focused and organized in terms of that aspect of working on industrial account acquisition and retention.

Q: When accepting your Lifetime Achievement Award from ISRI, you said more needs to be done in terms of finding more and loftier roles for women in the scrap industry. Can you revisit your suggestion about diversity?

A: My comments go beyond women. I think the most important point I can make to people is that if you look at the most successful companies and entities out there, what you will find is diverse teams. And if you want to increase your chances of success, what you will do is create diverse teams and make room for different ideas and different opinions to influence your direction. And I think that is a hard concept to grasp. I think it’s even more difficult to implement.

Q: A scrap company in the United Kingdom had sent a press release about its efforts to increase the percentage of women in its workforce, and this company found a major barrier was it simply never thought to try to recruit or find a forklift driver or scrap handler operator from the whole female half of the population.

A: Oh, absolutely, for sure. I still remember our first female truck driver, and a lot of the guys were lined up to watch her back in. I mean, speaking of hurdles, if you weren’t nervous enough to begin with, that doesn’t help. But, you know, at Padnos we now have very senior level female managers of yards. We have a woman who is responsible for a big part of our facilities management. So, they’ve succeeded, right?