\u201cWe have come a long way developing a learning organization, where people are encouraged to share ideas, make mistakes, try something different and learn from those experiences,\u201d said Sound Manufacturing and Monster Power Equipment President and CEO Kelli-Marie Vallieres. Talking from her office in Old Saybrook, Conn., Vallieres shared how she and her team transformed an idle family business into an innovative manufacturer and expanded into international markets.<\/p>\n
Like many companies during the recession from late 2009 to early 2010, the precision sheet metal contract manufacturer lost 34 percent of its sales. However, instead of accepting the negative effects the economy had on \u00a0Sound Manufacturing, Vallieres used the educational principles she gained as a PhD student in the Neag School\u2019s Adult Learning Program to creatively direct her company out of this difficult period.<\/p>\n
Drawing on her graduate research about how adults learn best, she developed and implemented a new strategic direction, engaging all members of the company in reflecting on what they\u2019d learned from past experiences, as well as how this learning could enable the company to proactively change. \u201cThis led to the creation of Monster Power Equipment, an example of how applying prior experience to a new situation can enable individuals and organizations to grow,\u201d Vallieres said.<\/p>\n
Established in April 2011 by Sound Manufacturing, Monster Power Equipment focuses on developing and manufacturing commercial and municipal landscape equipment. It was an endeavor Vallieres and other staff believed both fit into the business\u2019 overall core competencies as a precision sheet metal manufacturer and pushed it to expand its capabilities.<\/p>\n
The result: Monster Power Equipment enabled Vallieres and her team to gain a foothold in the leaf- and debris-control market, with total sales of approximately $650,000 the first year. These sales tripled in 2012 and then grew by another 10 percent in 2013. \u00a0Its success was highlighted on the Discovery Channel program \u201cIn View with Larry King.\u201d The Made in America segment was titled \u201cWhy America Matters, Sound Manufacturing \u2013 Monster Power Equipment.\u201d In it, Sound Manufacturing was spotlighted as one of the most forward thinking and innovative business enterprises in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo affect change and succeed, we need to understand ourselves as learners and critically examine our prior experiences,\u201d said Vallieres, who took the company\u2019s helm in 2006. \u201cThen, we plan, monitor and evaluate how our decisions and actions effect current situations, and seek out new information to fill in the knowledge gaps.\u201d<\/p>\n
She credits the company\u2019s successful transformation to the adoption of the organizational learning strategies she learned at the Neag School, coupled with first-hand manufacturing experience. She said she was drawn to UConn\u2019s Adult Learning program after questioning the effectiveness of more traditional workshop training.<\/p>\n
She describes this time at UConn, her undergraduate alma mater, as \u201cone of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life. The entire learning process and interaction experience with faculty, fellow graduate students and groups of professionals made a great impact on my learning and personal growth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Located within the Department of Educational Leadership, the Neag School\u2019s Adult Learning program is one of just a few programs of its kind in the country. It\u2019s designed to provide students of varied backgrounds with a strong theoretical foundation and empirically-validated set of best practices to design, facilitate and evaluate learning opportunities for individuals, communities and organizations of all kinds.<\/p>\n
Neag Professor Emeritus Barry Sheckley said he knows of no student involved in manufacturing who\u2019s applied adult learning principals as effectively and insightfully as Vallieres, who used them to both withstand an economic downturn and establish her business as a global leader.<\/p>\n
\u201cFaced with a need to close her company, Kelli instead used the insights she gained from her graduate program, tapped the reservoir of learning among the company\u2019s workers, and reinvented her company to become an industry leader,\u201d said Sheckley, who helped develop the Adult Learning program and its focus on mining employees\u2019 experiences.<\/p>\n
\u201cKelli Vallieres\u2019 success is a testament to the program\u2019s growth over the years in enhancing adult learning effectiveness through engaging students with authentic experiences and job-embedded learning,\u201d added Educational Leadership Department Head and Professor Casey Cobb. \u201cWe are proud to see more and more non-traditional students from a variety of industries join our program and strive to be as successful as Kelli.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vallieres and her team\u2019s success made Monster Power Equipment a finalist for the Dealers\u2019 Choice Award at the 2012 GIE-EXPO in the Industrial Engine Category.\u00a0 Today, the company is winning contracts that were once awarded to overseas firms from large, established organizations such as Briggs and Stratton. Yet Vallieres\u2019 ambition in developing the company has no limits.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most important thing I learned in the Adult Learning program is that learning is a lifelong activity,\u201d Vallieres said. \u201cI will utilize the knowledge I gained at the Neag School to continue to engage myself, and our organization, in learning opportunities to adapt to our continuously changing environment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Instead of accepting the negative effects the economy had on Sound Manufacturing, Vallieres used the educational principles she gained as a Ph.D. student in the Neag School\u2019s Adult Learning Program to creatively direct her company out of this difficult period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":204755,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,1855],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2455],"class_list":["post-204754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-neag"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 07:14:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204756,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204754\/revisions\/204756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/204755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204754"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=204754"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=204754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}