Department/Title: Sales / Application Engineer
Worked at Kadant Since: June 2007

Tell me about your career path and how you got to Kadant Johnson. 
After graduating with a BSME in mechanical engineering from Western Michigan University, I worked in research and development at a furniture company in Grand Rapids. I moved back to my hometown of Three Rivers to be closer to family after the birth of our first child and started doing research and development at a multinational steam specialty products company and then moved into sales and application work at that same company. Looking for new challenges, I joined Kadant Johnson as an application engineer specializing in our auxiliary product lines such as condensate pumps, desuperheaters, thermocompressors, vacuum breakers, and water heaters.

What’s one thing you’ve learned in your time at Kadant?
I’ve learned that rotary joints are like Mexican food. In cooking Mexican food, a handful of basic ingredients put together in different ways leads to a variety of flavors and tastes. In rotary joints, a few basic parts put together in different ways leads to solutions for a large range of applications challenges. Quality ingredients and finding the best recipe to fit the application is the key to success.

How would you define exceptional customer service?
Customer service needs to be helpful, timely, and personal. It shouldn’t take forever to get a live person on the phone and you should be able to get that same person back on the phone if you have more questions later.

Finish this sentence: At the end of a successful support experience, a customer feels…
Connected.

What’s one thing you could live without?
I can easily live without TV. As a family, we chose to get rid of cable and even our antenna years ago and haven’t missed it yet.