We often use the word “family” to describe the culture of care here at Barry-Wehmiller, but for Noah Yaagoubi, the BW “family” runs much deeper than that.
When Noah — a Data Engineer for BW’s Digital Innovation Team — was looking for internships during his time at UW-Green Bay, he had several options to choose from. One of them, a Finance internship through his father, Hicham, who works for BW Converting Solutions’ PCMC division as a Supply Chain Leader, would change the course of his career forever.
When Noah accepted the internship at PCMC in Green Bay, Wisconsin, he “never thought it would go this far.” He has stayed at BW for five years, as the Finance internship turned into a Data Analytics internship that eventually led to a full-time position as a Data Engineer at the Barry-Wehmiller Corporate Headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri.
But it wasn’t the business model or inner workings of the company that influenced his decision to initially join the team; it was his father’s positive experience.
“My dad never came home complaining about how his leader would patronize him or anything like that,” Noah said. “He seemed to have made a lot of good friends through work, and that's just encouraging to know that this is a place where you don't feel like a worker bee who isn't valued.”
Noah and his passion for applying new data engineering technology certainly serve a valuable purpose at Barry-Wehmiller. Our Digital Innovation Team supports all our businesses. And currently, Noah is working with his team to lay the groundwork for a series of advanced analytical use cases. Once the platform is set up, Noah will work closely with engineers and customers to better understand what their headaches are and how they can be prevented through equipment data analysis and anomalous behavior detection.
“We have barely scratched the surface of what our data is capable of producing for us and for our customers,” he said. “And at the end of the day, right now it's a lot of more grunt foundational work, just kind of setting up the platform. But once we move into more of a production phase and we have all this data sitting around, that's when it's going to be really fun to start tearing into it. There are a million different places that this initiative can go, but that's what excites me and that's what gets me out of bed and tells me, hey, do the groundwork first now and it'll pay off.”
Noah is curious by nature. He loves to stay up to date on the latest developments in the data engineering field and find areas where he can employ them to make everyday tasks and processes more efficient. He can do so because his leaders listen to him and allow him to use his best judgement.
“I never feel patronized, I never feel micromanaged,” Noah said. “When I want to have a serious heart-to-heart, one-on-one with my leader — and I've been with several leaders, and I can say this for all of them — they truly do listen and understand that while they do have subordinates, they are also humans with feelings and families and fears and everything that defines our experience. I feel like I have the freedom to bring my own ideas to the table and inject my thoughts where appropriate.”
Listening is a core value of Truly Human Leadership. Empathetic listening — the kind where you throw away all biases and try to understand how the speaker feels — is the foundation of human connection. Good leaders can enamor a room with their strong speaking abilities, but great leaders embrace vulnerability and understand the importance of taking a step back to listen to others.
Barry-Wehmiller has been teaching listening skills within our organization since 2008. Because empathetic listening has proven to be so valuable within Barry-Wehmiller, Chapman Foundation for Caring Communities and Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute offer a course on it to outside organizations and communities.
“I think it's just reflective of the culture that we not only preach, but actually live and act every day,” Noah said. “The fact that, while I'm not doing the exact same thing as what my dad does, but that I want to follow in his footsteps and continue to bleed BW blue, that says a lot about what this company stands for and what the experience is like to work here.”
And while not every team member is related to Noah by blood, it’s important to remember that we all bleed the same BW blue.
Better Work. Better World. is a video series designed to shine a
light on team members throughout the global Barry-Wehmiller
organization. Watch the video through the link above to hear more.