Neva Burke recently married and now Neva Burke Hawes is the Senior Director of Human Resources at the BlueOval SK side of the mega site Blue Oval City. At the mega site, employees will build electric batteries to support electrification of the transition from gas powered engines to electric battery powered engines. Neva is responsible for overseeing the creation and execution of all things Human Resources for the BlueOval SK site in Tennessee and Glendale, Kentucky (site approx. one hour from Louisville, Kentucky). Neva oversees all aspects of human resources management, provides leadership strategies to the executive operating committees, and focuses on building the culture at BlueOval SK as the facilities continue to stand up in West Tennessee and Kentucky.
These sites combined at its peak will have over 6,000 employees and will have a full human resources department to support both Tennessee and Kentucky.
Neva started her career at New United Motors Manufacturing in 1989, a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors. This joint venture has been written in the history books as one of the most successful joint ventures of its kind in American History. At New United Motors she served as a Labor Relations Represen-tative and after 5 years, transferred to Toyota Motor Manufac-turing in Georgetown, Kentucky. After serving 2 years at Toyota, she continued her career at Ford Motor Company in Louisville Kentucky – Louisville Assembly Plant as an Employee Relations Specialist. After serving time in Louisville, she was promoted to Human Resources Generalist and moved to Detroit Michigan to work at the Ford Motor Company Headquarters to support the Ford Customer Service Division of Ford. During the time at Ford in Detroit, she worked with the Management Team on the 1999 Union Negotiations Team to service the 9 Parts Depots positioned throughout the United States.
Neva enjoyed her time working at Ford, but towards the end of the 1999 Labor Negotiations, she got a call from a local company, Thomas & Betts Corporation, in Memphis Tennessee which led to return home to West Tennessee.
The opportunity at Thomas & Betts (now owned by ABB) was Human Resources Manager and she continued to excel at her HR career for the next 16 years in various roles, utilizing and sharping her skills in labor negotiations, and becoming a Senior Director of Human Resources after a spinoff of her product line to Trinity Industries in Dallas, Texas. After accomplishing much in her career, she wanted to do more for the community, so she accepted a position at the LeMoyne Owen College, where she served as Executive Director of Human Resources for 18 months. After LeMoyne Owen College, she also worked as the Human Resources Leader for PMC Biogenix Chemical Company where she learned a different kind of business and acted as the Chief Spokesperson for their labor negotiations across the table from the United Steel Workers Union. She led them through a successful labor negotiation yielding their first ever, 4- year labor agreement.
Her most recent role, Vice President of Human Resources, prior to BlueOval SK came with the Edelbrock Group, two iconic brands – Competition Cams and Edelbrock. Neva led the merger of these companies from creating the HR function, moving a headquarter location from California to Olive Branch, MS, and closing plants, and transitioning two cultures into one distinct culture.
Through her roles, she became more adept at labor relations, understanding joint ventures, mergers, and acquisitions, specifi-cally in the manufacturing world. She has immersed herself in many roles throughout her 35 years career and as she states it, “I took a lot of dirty jobs in my career”! Jobs that most people would not want or take the time to learn.
Believing that: “to whom much is given, much is required,” she managed to also give back to the on the community 17 years of leadership development of girls and she is proud of the devel-opment and execution of her outreach ministry, the Divas of Olive Branch Dance team, as seen on Lifetime TV show “Bring It” for 6 years of the 17 years that she had the business. With her outreach ministry, she used her leadership skills and dance ability to build a person relationship with girls, leading them ultimately to college and dancing in college.