Shawn Marken, BDI, has been honored as the 2022 recipient of the PTDA Foundation’s Wendy B. McDonald Woman of the Year Award. The award recognizes a woman who has established herself as a critical contributor to her company’s success and has affected positive change in the power transmission/motion control industry at any level in her career.
Marken’s career began at Bearing Service Co. at a time when women were not given many opportunities for advancement. During her 40-plus-year career, she advanced into various leadership and management positions—from personnel supervisor to insurance administrator, to database editor, and many more. Today, she works as the manager of BDI’s Priority Accounts Data Support Team. She and her team manage large customer files ranging from 500 to 40,000+ lines.
“Shawn has built a foundation of excellence in data management and process automation that has been taught to many others within our company,” says her colleague, Bill Shepard, vice president. “She is one of the primary resources that has enabled BDI to grow the priority accounts business over the past 15-20 years––one of our largest and fastest growing segments. There are
not any significant priority account relationships that Shawn hasn’t played an integral role in winning, implementing, and optimizing.”
Shawn is a sought-out colleague for her business acumen as well as her desire to grow the knowledge and experience of her team. As one colleague described Shawn in a letter to BDI’s U.S. president: “Shawn is not a manager. She is a leader. She has shown an abundance of patience, kindness, and understanding. She is constantly busy with her work, but always makes time to not only answer questions our team has (and we have a lot), but she makes it a point to TEACH us the answers.”
The Wendy B. McDonald Award was established by the PTDA Foundation in 2014 to honor its namesake––Wendy B. McDonald––a true power transmission/motion control (PT/MC) industry
pioneer.
Read more about Shawn and this award at ptda.org/WendyBMcDonaldAward
