Michele Weinert

Michele Weinert comes to C3 with 19 years of Human Resource, recruiting and talent management experience. Upon leaving Madonna University with a major in Chemistry, she quickly learned she had a knack with people and process development. She utilized process experience and began her career with Management Recruiters international, initially recruiting chemical engineers in the exterior plastics area of automotive development. Michele quickly found her passion for the automotive industry and more so assisting people in finding the right professional roles, that mirrored their aspirations, personalities and values. By tapping into her passion, she quickly rose through the ranks to become one of the top 50 recruiters worldwide. During the downturn in the automotive industry in the early 2000's, Michele made the conscious decision to leave recruiting and entered the financial products industry. She obtained, her life insurance, health insurance and series 6 licenses and worked at Financial Services of America. At the time, FSA was a relatively small financial organization with big aspirations. Upon quickly obtaining success in selling financial products which included, long and short disability, health insurance, Long term care insurance and complex annuities; she was asked to develop a human resource department to support the organizations aggressive growth plan. She developed and implemented and managed a successful human resource department which included recruiting, education, compliance, and training and development, she and her team, grew the organization from 28 registered agents to 143 in less than 18 months and helped FSA achieve the Ernst and Young's, Entrepreneur of the Year award. In late 2006 once again decided to go back to her true passion of recruiting. Upon hearing a few rumblings in regards of the potential of a new technology in lithium batteries for automotive application, Michele began researching organizations, understanding the technology and ultimately decided to specialize in the battery market. She worked with obscure start-ups by the likes of A123 systems, Compact Power, Saft America, and Kokam batteries. She worked closely with these organizations, not only as a recruiter but as a consultant in building the recruiting processes and developing manufacturing experts in the US in an industry that only produced batteries in Asia. she was the first recruiter in the United States that specialized in Battery engineering and manufacturing. Out of sheer necessity, she became the go to person in the industry to develop competitive benefit packages and immigration techniques. In 2009, during the automotive crisis in the United States, she expanded her knowledge internationally. She was responsible for Consulting Indian Companies on building technical centers in the US and developing a western engineering leadership team based in Chennai and Mumbai India. Upon the upswing in the US automotive market, Michele once again rose through the ranks in Staffing agency in the RPO realm helping to build human resource departments and fully functional engineering and manufacturing staff for the current leaders in the alternative energy industry. She rose through ranks to ultimately the Vice President of Operations in a staffing agency with headquarters in Flint, Michigan with 26 direct reports in 5 offices in 3 states. In 2014, after a successful agency career, Michele was approached by a long time professional acquaintance to work for a California based Electric Vehicle start-up Atieva. She accepted the role of Talent Acquisition Manager, however she was the first employee dedicated to Human resources. Michele was responsible for building HR and recruiting processes, policies, compensation and benefit plans, organization planning, immigration, Human Resource Information Technology, training and development and recruiting. Michele was directly responsible for personally recruiting over 120 world class engineers and business p