welcome to bets on the future where we highlight the various career paths in the electrifying Metals World from the vehicle you ride in to the bridge holding and up metals are everywhere why not in your career too I’m Jennifer BS a Metals industry veteran with almost 20 years experience here to highlight these incredible career paths As Told by the women who are living them this week we are hitting a wide variety of careers in the metals industry Paula Summers is a recycling equipment Finance specialist based in Charleston South Carolina she has earned a degree in civil and environmental engineering is a certified lease Finance professional immediate past chair of the is women and recycling Council and vice chair of the is equipment and service providers so this week on vets on the future we have an incredible guest with us we have Paula Summers she is the vice president of strategic Partnerships at cista leasing and finance thank you so much for for joining us and um I’m pretty excited I’m going to be coming to your state um in a in a couple weeks I get to see you in person not just

on Zoom yeah that’s right it’s actually my the state just south of me so I’m in South Carolina the conference the southeast disy conference is going to be in Savannah Georgia so just about an hour and a half down the coast but yeah I’m really looking forward to it it’s always great to get together in person and talk about ideas and Concepts and just support each other it really is and on that note I may not have told you I’m coming to Greenville South Carolina the third week of November at this point so we we’re g we’re going to need to maybe see if there’s an opportunity to get together that week as well we will do some connecting I need to be up in Greenville anyway so we will we will do that that sounds great I love it back on on the East Coast it’s fantastic welcome welcome water’s fine over here for those listening for those viewing um you are based out of Charleston South Carolina um probably one of my favorite cities um in the US it’s just an an incredible City filled with history and the architecture is gorgeous

there the food scene is incredible um if you ever need a restaurant recommendation uh Paula is your go-to person on that FR that is one of my hobbies I am I am known as a foodie in fact my father calls me the the tree hugging foodie and’s he’s made that up over the last several years um but yes it’s a great it’s a great City I’m one of the lucky folks I get to work remotely I’m here out of my home office Charleston South Carolina so I have a nice view of the of the river right now and um it’s October and 75 and Sunny so sort of like Southern California uh yes well today yes you probably have a few more fall leaves going on uh than than outside the LA Metro that I’m I’m at today maybe a few here and there uh and yes spoiler alert if this gets aired in the middle of winter uh we were recording this during the fall uh but I I want to get into a little bit about how I know you uh because obviously this is a podcast about the metals industry

and um we met several years ago um through I I want to say which is the Institute of scrap recycling Industries you’re heavily active in that in that Association and so I just want to learn a little bit more about um how you got into this industry and more about how you fit in into the the metals Community sure absolutely um you know it’s interesting to you and I have talked about this over the past several times that we’ve been together um I feel that most people do not have a direct line to the metal industry right they don’t study Metals in in college or recy in college um unless you’re born into the industry there’s typically some other careers that you might have first or you may study something else in college before you find the metals industry so for me I started off um studying civil environmental engineering went to Georgia Tech in Atlanta so grew up in Pittsburgh but found the South and now I’ve been in the South for about 25 28 en counting years um but went to Georgia Tech studied civil environmental engineering I really enjoyed the environmental

side of things ended up getting into real estate development and my grandio scheme was to help developers be more environmentally friendly so here in Charleston we have a lot of wetlands we have beautiful Live Oak forests we have endangered species there’s a lot of environmental considerations when you’re thinking about developing real estate so I had over the last you know I’d say the first 15 18 years of my career there was some winds you know I I was able to dedicate some nice park space in Charleston save a lot of trees um there was an interesting story about a a endangered woodpecker that I might share with you over over a cocktail sometime but but uh all in all it was a really great experience but I hit a little bit of a wall professionally say in my early 40s and I thought to myself you know do I really want to continue to go up against these developers where it’s really David and Goliath right um and I was getting a little bit of tired of that and I said do I really want to do this for the rest of my career

so what I decided to do was shift gears I’m staying in that World by serving at on the board of zoning appeals site design with the City of Charleston so now I hear tree removal requests and determine whether or not we’re going to save those trees or allow those trees to be um taken down in some case you know trees are a renewable resource so in some cases it does make a lot of sense however I’m saying in in that one um part of the industry but as I tried to started to shift and decide well what’s next for me right I’m 42 years old I’m I’m an expert in my industry do I want to start all over and the answer was yes so after leaving the um real estate development world I decided to take a stab at joining my family business so my father when I was in high school started an equipment finance company now at the time I was an obstinate daughter I had no desire to work in the finance business with my father that just sounded dreadfully boring um but after you know many years of of

doing something else and bringing you know having a little having my own career and establishing myself as my own professional um I decided you know family is important let’s let’s see what the business is all about let’s at least dip my toe in the water and see if it’s going to be a fit so approached my father and my brother was actually also um our president at the time my father was kind of in a transition period where he was getting heading towards retirement although he’ll never retire fully and I said look I’m really interested in the business I want to see if it’s a fit and the first thing they said was oh this isn’t the business for you there’s you know you you don’t know anything about Finance and you know you don’t know anything about sales and I said well you know I took six calculus classes at Georgia Tech I think I can probably figure out how a t value operates and uh how to work in HP 17b financial calculator so not just the little sister right um but it’s interesting I think probably a lot of your listeners

may have had similar experiences when um speaking with family about coming in you know we have kind of preconceived about the roles we we fill and I think sometimes it’s hard for specifically fathers and older brothers to sometimes take their daughter or younger sister seriously as a professional when they rest already sees them that way yes I I realized early on with the finance business I was fighting another uphill battle right to demonstrating to my dad and my brother that I could U make a career of this so I realized very early on that this business was not going to be interesting to me if I was financing forklifts and Over the Road Traffic trailers and equipment that I just deemed to be not very interesting essential equipment but not interesting for me personally so the recycling industry was just a really natural fit I was already kind of a steward of the environment in my own previous career and in my personal life and recycling just was this natural niche market for me so I had a colleague who had been very active on the waist side of the business and had talked

with his local murf facility just to kind of get a little bit of research understand how the recycling process works and we realized very quickly what a fantastic industry this is um not only do you have Fortune 500 companies that are you know recycling but you have small multigenerational family-owned businesses which is exactly the business that the wi were at the time which Vision Financial Group and we really connected with a lot of those types of compan companies um a lot of I think when you’re competing as a small equipment Finance Company against you know the banks of Americas of the world and the wellest faros of the world you have to really develop a expertise in specific Industries and be able to understand your customer yes that’s why I really jumped in with both feet with iy and in the recycling industry you know I went out and I went to recycling yards and I said explain to me the difference between feris and nonf feris you know what does that machine over there how does wire get stripped from copper you know it’s just all these questions and I educated myself

and I realized there are a lot of sophisticated people in the recycling industry so I really just it was kind of love at first sight for me so that’s kind of a roundabout way of how I how I’m involved in metals I find it really interesting how you were able to take something that you’re obviously very passionate about from a personal standpoint and you pivot your career to a a pretty different career sector but still be able to apply the skill sets that you had and the knowledge and the passion that you had from the previous one and bring it into this world we have a lot of equipment and it’s very expensive and in our industry and so we need companies we need folks like you to help us be able to purchase this equipment so that we can run our businesses and so that’s sometimes not really thought about terms of jobs or careers that can be in this industry that can be more of that service provider role um that not necessarily be directly at the manufacturer but you get to still do the tours you still get to go see

the cool stuff that’s out there right absolutely and that’s a great point you know as as is remembers we actually fall into the service provider category right so we’re providing a service providing capital for companies to grow and acquire equipment and it’s it’s really I think wonderful that the organization allows service providers such as myself to participate in isra councils so I served for two years as the chair co-chair of the women and recycling Council first year with Sandy Brooks and second year with Sandy Pierce and we just it’s just been a pleasure getting to know a lot of the women in the industry and you know the men in the industry obviously are supporting the women in the industry as they grow but you know sometimes a group like the women in recycling council is a great way for someone who maybe is new to getting involved with isra as kind of a a stepping stone right it’s that first group you can get involved with similar to the young Executives Council right so there’s there’s people just like you that you know you don’t have to cross that barrier of um

meeting new friends you there’s people you already know and it kind of just helps you springboard your career I believe I think it’s a great I think it’s great that isra supports that those types of counsels for sure the isra women in recycling and the isra young executives are fantastic groups like you said for people that are just getting into the industry also because from a networking perspective you’re probably gonna you know create a book of business or maybe you get you know fortunate enough to get handed a book of business or you know something along those lines at your company but by joining these organizations these these these committees you are going to get introduced to folks that you may not not have gotten introduced to in your line of work that might eventually lead business your way or maybe they can provide some sort of information or knowledge and help you grow and a lot of people don’t think realize that there is a lot of knowledge and Business Development possibilities that come from these committees not just giving back and helping with the Next Generation to know about it as well

but business too absolutely and you know I think the important thing to to remember is the people that are involved in these councils and networking groups they’re in it for the long B you know I’ve been involved the past six years and counting so it’s not just something I’m thinking about you know being involved in recycling and trying to get some business out of it it’s something that I’m actually really really passionate about and one thing I love the recycling Community is that I may meet someone and you know next week right at the southeast of isra conference and we they may refer me to a customer five years down the road right so it’s not necessarily you know immediate business tangible results that you’re seeing but you’re growing and you’re establishing yourself as a professional and someone who understands the industry and for me that’s just you know not just another Finance person a finance person who has an engineering degree who understands the difference between a sheer and a shredder right so it’s makes it fun it it really does you had some connection coming into this into this world but you’re

also still here right so can you elaborate on why like why are you still here is there anything in particular you know an interesting story like what is what is holding you into this in into this sector of the industry well you know it’s really one thing I like about recycling is I I I learn something every every new every day right so every client is different and every client needs a different problem solved um I’ve tried to establish myself there’s a lot of finance companies out there in Banks and I had no idea when I was in the world of engineering and and and and um real estate development that there were so many finance companies right so there’s a lot of competition out there and you know most finance companies and banks of course they know how to finance a material handler or a or a you know a a rolloff truck or a container these are pretty basic assets uh however it takes a little bit more of a specialty and research to be able to finance a copper chopping machine or an any current sort um to really understand that

those assets have value and that’s really what’s been interesting for me is to find out more about all the different types of Commodities that are recyclable I mean I’ve even learned more about how trade because it’s just very interesting to me and I want to be able to talk to my clients and say hey I see that you know copper is down 30 cents this week how’s that you know how is that affecting your business and being able to have that communication I think is is kind of puts me ahead of the competition but it’s also interesting so I’m kind of one of these women that I want to I have a thirst for knowledge and I feel like there’s there the whole I’ve maybe tapped 5% of the knowledge in the recycling industry there’s just so much more to learn and I think that’s what really drives me to be a part of it along with my own personal beliefs in you know protecting the environment protecting this world that we’re you know so gracious to to walk upon the recycling and the knowledge aspect of things is been really fascinating I I’m

you know almost 20 years in in the industry and it seems like every day I’m still learning and that’s fascinating to me it keeps it interesting like it’s it’s not like the the same thing every single day there there’s constantly the the markets are changing current events are affecting those markets I learned something new about a new equipment that exists out there or a new company that’s in installing new technology in our field and this is what it’s going to do and it’s it’s it’s all at the core of it I’m very similar with you on the environmental front of things that it’s it’s kind of uh the perfect scenario where you can professionally Excel and also still have a way to to give back on some of those uh personal beliefs that you hold strong it’s this industry is kind of perfectly set up for that yeah and you know it’s it’s similar to civil engineering it’s it’s sort of an industry that hasn’t changed a lot over you let’s say the past 100 years but I um I think there’s going to be a lot of change in the next five to

10 years I mean that’s in every industry not just not just recycling I was at a non-destructive testing conference last week and they’re um using robotics for a lot of their um wall thickness testing and things like that and I was thinking gosh you know I know that we’re using robotics at murf facilities for sorting and I know a lot of the the companies that are working on Robotics and AI they’re very close to a solution um for sorting metals and that’s exciting right I mean it’s just going to help expedite process um and and you’re going to and and that’s not necessarily necessarily eliminating people in labor and I think a lot of people get kind of scared when they hear robotics but you have to have somebody there who can you know make repairs if repairs are needed um and program program robotics right so there’s there’s still roles for everyone but I just think it’s a really exciting time and for those that are listening I steal this from another podcast but I essentially say you know when we get a little technical you use the term murf we’ll explain

that in a minute um but like to say for uh you know my husband who is completely outside the industry how would you uh describe you know what a murf is uh to the individual that you know doesn’t work in the midds industry on a on a day-to-day basis well a murf is a materials recovery facility and basically these are essentially I would say 90% of the time owned by by a municipality or government and they are recycling um just a mul a multistream they call it a multi stream of recycling prodcts right so they’re recycling paper and plastic and metal and think about your blue bin everything that goes into the blue bin goes to the MF right um now recycling is so much more than the blue bin so it’s almost like I hate even to to mention yes but that is how it relates to to the murf and then also you know PIV you know private citizens can come in and they can bring their Recycling and and drop it off so I is that how you would describe it Jennifer what’s your definition uh I think you

did a great job on that um I was actually having a conversation with somebody that’s been in the metals recycling industry for for a long time and he mentioned um you know oh I just put it you know I just put it in the bin you know talking about his his home and he’s like yeah it gets recycled I was like but but have you verified that your your local municipality or whoever is servicing your your your home actually have the equipment the manufacturing equipment that you’re talking about here that has the technology maybe the robotics to actually sort what you’re putting in there and it was kind of this like light bulb moment where he assumed that the United States you know as a nation has like this very um uniformed recycling program in the background when in reality we are like just a Patchwork of different machines and equipment and capabilities and it’s it’s all over the board some some have very sophisticated capabilities you know you’re talking about the AI the robotics the scanning all that to pull out everything to some areas have nothing no option right well I mean

our materials recovery facility does not process glass so I take my glass to a private recycling company and they utilize that actually they have this really cool product where they are using um glass to make countertops so I take it all there which is really cool I I I’m gonna have to look into that that’s looks I’m just trying to Envision what the the final product is and I’m like well we we might want to redo the the kitchen one day um yes exactly exactly recycling it it very much I mean I I do have to comment we are both in Green Jackets today I mean I feel like we are really ultimately living and breathing this this Mantra um well and we’re going to Georgia next week so it’s kind of the uh the Master’s jacket as well so Master that’s very true that’s very true yes that’s what I’m gonna say it’s more the Augusta aspect of it that that leads me into you know what specifically are you excited for in the next five to 10 years like what do you see coming down the pipeline that that gets you um

you know really interested in in the next future in our industry yeah I think we um we talked a little bit about this earlier but you know definitely the I I I think the different types of machinery and Technology that’s being developed to more quickly and efficiently process material so there’s no waste um you know I I know that there’s a a drive for the um the ASR the automobile Shredder residue and find a use for that right so because there’s metal in there um after the Shing you know some people don’t really even realize you know the amount of recycled content that’s in their vehicle um either um the the ASR the auto automobile Shredder residue that you talked about so just you know little for those that are listening that are in the metals industry that might just be more on the OEM side of things or like past the the the Mills um essentially your car is going to go through a shredder at end of life and I’m yes I’m skipping over a lot of parts where we’re going to probably pull off the um um radiators we’re going to

pull off the wheels and you know Etc but essentially you have the seats still in there seats are usually you know made of non-metallic material um and it’s going to go through the shredder it’s going to get um essentially hammered into a bunch of smaller pieces and torn up and we have um whole Downstream systems where we can pull out a lot of the metallic content it’s not a perfect science yet um there are definitely some very cool Innovative companies that are bringing new manufacturing equipment to the table to to pull that out but essentially there is going to be fluff from car seats and things like that are left over that are probably going to hold on to a little bit of metallics that get caught in there Etc and that typically has gone to the landfill in the past and so there are some companies out there that are turning that material into energy through a variety of different measures but that’s not everywhere yet and so I think it’s it’s it’s really fascinating to see people see those problems and try to figure out and come up with Solutions and

that’s going to only increase like you said over the next you know five ten years I think we’re going to see a lot more of that right and you know I do like to see that you know Tesla has a battery recycling in it right I think that we’re starting to see manufacturers think about Crea up a grave more on the front end than they used to right so I I really like to see where I don’t drive a textas Tesla but I I think it’s great that they’re looking into into you know how how is what we’re producing going to make a how are we going to be able to recycle this product and there’s a lot of problems obviously we all know that there’s that’s a whole different podcast to talk about um how environmental electric vehicles are but we’ll save that for another time yes yeah yeah um we’re we’re bumping Up Against Time and so I feel like we would just completely double uh the amount of time on on that front but you know you you mentioned you know the essentially the Electric Vehicle Manufacturer starting to think about

designing those batteries for end of life that didn’t happened 20 years ago you know when the hybrids first came onto the marketplace yeah they just they were looking to make a vehicle more efficient have higher um MPGs I’m actually going to be in Greenville South Carolina in a couple weeks because isri is putting on an EV circularity conference it’s it’s it’s going to be a mini Think Tank essentially where they’re pulling in oam’s auto manufacturers government officials government agencies um people from the recycling community essentially coming together across the full gamut from you know Engineers um designing the batteries to the people actually handling the batteries at the end of life to start talking about here are all the issues around this how do we make sure that we’re designing for recycling and mine so that we don’t continue to mine because I’m sure that’s probably part of the conversation on how green those vehicles are so it’s really exciting to see these types of companies coming together saying yes we want to invest in this we want to include a higher percentage of recycled materials in our products to to make sure that

we’re we’re not completely making a a more impact a larger impact how to politically correct say that on um the environment right right now I that’s that’s fantastic and that’s um and actually might attend that conference with you that sounds very interesting and scen Bs right up the road and we can also go to the BM W RAC trck race BMWs while we’re there uh yes that sounds fantastic um just bring uh just bring the uh the racing gear um that’s right exactly if people want to find out more information about isri is.org um if people want to get in touch with Paula Paula Summers is on LinkedIn she’s an excellent resource excellent person to follow on there posting really great articles uh commentary on there and so if you want to get in touch with her she’s a great resource in the industry thank you Paula I really appreciate you taking the time I’m very much looking forward to um one maybe two dinners um coming up um in the next uh month so I’m I’m really appreciative that you were able to come on and share your story absolutely thanks so

much Jennifer it was my pleasure