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Atlanta, GA | Posted: July 21, 2015
For media inquiries contact:
Laura Diamond
Georgia Tech Media Relations
For more information about GaMEP contact:
Katie Takacs
GaMEP Marketing Manager
About the Faces of Manufacturing
Each month, GaMEP will highlight a different person as the Face of Manufacturing. Those chosen as the Face of Manufacturing will be selected by a 12-member committee composed of representatives from Georgia Tech, economic development groups, manufacturing companies, and related associations.
Summary Sentence:
From changing careers to going back to school in his 30s, Randell Harper's ambition continuously drives him to step out of his comfort zone.
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Randell Harper
Randell Harper - July Face of ManufacturingMaking a professional change isn’t always easy. But Randell Harper shows how stepping out of what he calls his comfort zone and into a different career — one in manufacturing — has created new opportunities both for him and his family.
Harper is a production manager at JAC Products in Franklin, Ga. The plant produces roof racks and auto body trim. His journey into manufacturing is one about the willingness to make and accept change.
“Manufacturing challenges your mind and gives you the opportunity to learn amazing things,” he says. “Manufacturing also showed me new ways in which I could grow. Everything my team and bosses have been willing to teach me, I have been willing to learn, which tells me that my opportunities are limitless.”
Harper is the Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership’s (GaMEP) July Face of Manufacturing.
The sector remains an integral part of Georgia’s economy. In fact, manufacturing employs more than 365,000 statewide, and the Faces of Manufacturing initiative is designed to demonstrate how Harper and other dedicated individuals in manufacturing not only keep their companies strong economically but also help their communities to thrive.
While manufacturing was a constant in his life — his mother worked as a weaver in a LaGrange, Ga.-based cotton mill — Harper’s career path led him to work with his brother and a cousin to hang wallpaper. Within three years of doing that work, Harper launched his own wallpapering and painting company with a staff of eight.
He was already married with a young family, and during the slow months for the business, he took on additional jobs and worked the weekend shift at the cotton mill where his mother worked.
It allowed him to see how much the industry changed and the opportunities manufacturing offered, he says. And as he made the switch in manufacturing full time and out of the wallpapering business, he also realized the skills he developed in running his own company were transferable to a new job working for an aluminum extrusion firm in Newnan, Ga.
Those skills and professional commitment led him to obtain a number of promotions, but then he hit a ceiling: Without a college degree, he couldn’t move up into a role he wanted.
The human resources manager at that company continually encouraged him to go back to school to obtain his degree, but he kept making excuses for why he couldn’t.
“I just kept putting college off. I wasn’t ready to go back and didn’t believe I had the time,” he said. But that didn’t match his personal philosophy: “I am in charge of my future.”
So he enrolled at West Georgia Technical College, where he earned his associate’s degree. He is now studying for his bachelor’s degree. Taking charge of his future not only meant going back to school but also taking on a new opportunity, one that led him to his current position at JAC Products.
And his philosophy has made a profound difference in his family. Two of his daughters enrolled at West Georgia Technical College, and he encouraged his wife to go back to school to finish her degree.
“Whether you’re coming right out of high school or looking for a career change, manufacturing is a great environment and can provide you with a great career – not just a way to live paycheck to paycheck,” he says. “I don’t think I would have what I have today if it wasn’t for my decision to go into manufacturing.”
— By Péralte C. Paul
