Building Successful Teams for Corporate Growth

As vice president of professional services at Cox Automotive, Nuan Openshaw-Dion works closely with engineering teams and top clients around the world delivering solutions for corporate growth.

She has successfully taken on several unique and complex challenges throughout her career with the company. One of which was the formation of a group charged with creating solutions from the company’s existing product portfolio for clients and partners. Working alongside sales and client services, she has transformed how the company interacts with clients, tripled the size of the group and delivered successful solutions. They included launching large, complex, and unique OEM programs with aggressive timelines.

Her colleagues say she’s an outstanding leader, known for building high performing teams while maintaining a core commitment to creating a strong, positive culture and delivering business value. “Relationships matter,” she said.

She has held various leadership roles within the company, all of which have required her to work closely with engineering teams and top clients. She says her biggest career leap was being promoted from manager of a team of business analysts to director of client solutions managers. In that transition, she successfully developed a unique client engagement model, grew several teams, and strengthened client partnerships.

“The leap from software engineering to client services forced me to change my perspective – the lens in which I looked at solving problems,” she said. “It was a reminder that focusing on making your teams successful will ultimately lead to success of the entire organization.”

Openshaw-Dion believes the most important quality a woman leader should have is confidence. “Everyone struggles with confidence, male and female,” she said. “You are more capable than you think. You just have to believe in yourself.”

She holds an MBA and BA in business administration from the College of William and Mary, and a BA in economics and computer information systems from James Madison University.

Words she lives by: “Relationships matter. The more we care about who we work and associate with, the more successful we will be.”