Shahd Mansour, MBA, Business Area Financial Controller, Phoenix Contact USA
Shahd Mansour is an accomplished professional working as a Business Area Financial Controller at Phoenix Contact. She has a unique background as she started her career working as an industrial engineer supporting manufacturing and focusing on production continuous improvements initiatives for Phoenix. She was in this engineering role for seven years before completing her MBA at Lebanon Valley College then transferred into the Financial Controlling department and became one of the organization’s BA Controllers for the Development & Manufacturing entity. Since moving into finance, she uses the knowledge she gained from engineering and production into finance to bridge these worlds.
Currently in her role as a Controller at Phoenix Contact, she provides financial analytical supports to D&M leaders and executives to help them understand implications of business decisions on the financial health of the organization and how they can succeed in today’s ever changing business landscape. In this role, Shahd combines her technical knowledge & diverse experience to empower executives and teams to make financially profitable decisions.
Over the past several years Shahd has been involved in multiple key initiatives at Phoenix. She currently leads one of the organization’s Digitalization committee’s which focuses on the adoption of IIoT applications in manufacturing and digitalization of internal processes. She leads nine colleagues from different departments as they help to develop a digital twin for the organization. The committee has helped several IIoT and digitalization initiatives come to fruition. Projects include: implementing AR/AI for training; harnessing data from new energy production capabilities (solar/gas turbines/etc.) to improve facility energy management; digitalizing visualizations across campus; and implementing an energy monitoring strategy in our production areas.
She has also been leading the Business Improvement Towards Excellence (BITE) program. This is a process improvement with real-time reporting, identifying opportunities to reduce hard and soft costs across all production areas. Shahd works closely with production managers/industrial engineers to identify, prioritize, and calculate savings for each area so they can hit yearly targets. Prior to this project, each production area conducted its own cost reduction activities without clear reporting on the site. The project identified about $4M in savings in in the last 3 years.
Shahd enjoys giving back to the community, especially when it comes to promoting STEM to the younger generation. She believes that STEM knowledge and awareness result in critical thinkers, increase science literacy, and enable the empowerment of the next generation of innovators. She has worked with students of all ages, from elementary school through college. She’s collaborated with several many local organizations and educational entities such as the Whitaker Center, Millersville University, Middletown Area School District, & Foose Elementary School for STEM outreach initiatives.
She is also an Adjunct Professor at Elizabethtown College. There she has taught undergrad students Quantitative Methods & Operations Management, which is a class required for Business and, some, Engineering concentrations. Shahd enjoys interacting with students and bringing to them real-world experience to the theories and concepts presented in books.
Shahd grew up in Lancaster, PA and went to Elizabethtown College for her undergrad degree. She is extremely close to her friends and family. One of her favorite quotes is “Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.”