During Janet Marzett’s 38-year tenure with Mercedes-Benz Financial Services, she’s managed many aspects of the business in economic downturns and booms, through mergers and demergers, throughout the country and with global colleagues.

She started at Farmington Hills, MI-based Mercedes-Benz working in administrative positions, joining the company as a retail credit investigator, and advancing through 19 roles of increasing responsibility across many functional areas of the business.

Now since 2011 Marzett’s been leading more than 600 people in the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Canada and Mexico, and overseeing all operational functions, including customer service, collections and remarketing in the company’s Americas region, as vice president, operations Americas.

Prior, she was vice president of Mercedes-Benz Financial Services customer service, collections and remarketing for the U.S. She was also previously vice president of HR and administrative services in Detroit, MI, zone manager of field operations in Kansas City, KS, and senior manager of the Dallas, TX customer contact center.

Through it all, the one thing Marzett’s found perpetual is change.

“As change is constant, to remain competitive, a company must be innovative, and each representative of the company must be customer-focused,” says Marzett, who’s also a member of the Daimler Financial Services Americas Region executive leadership team, as well as a member of Daimler Financial Services global diversity and inclusion executive committee.

“To create that unified customer-focus, it’s critical to create an inclusive workforce that’s made of diverse, valued and empowered people that are capable of driving needed, continual and sometimes radical innovation.”

As a leader, Marzett is focused on people. “Every year, every day, I’m continually searching for ways to help people, including myself, to be their best, their most authentic selves. It’s my belief that professional and personal growth should never stop.”

Marzett also remains people-focused as Mercedes-Benz undergoes a tech transformation.

“On the business side of things in 2018, we have exciting digital transformation priorities to help refine the company’s operational excellence,” she elaborates. “However, people are at the core of that objective, as well, as through those transformations, we seek to provide our customers with maximum value.”

Overall, for Marzett, it’s about passing on your knowledge. Her advice for young African-American professionals is three-fold:

• “I strive to be a good teacher as well as a good leader, and, like any good teacher, I recommend three Rs for success: be real, be relatable and stay relevant.”

• “The cultural norm today is that of immediate gratification. However, experience is still built over time. As such, lateral positions can often times be as valuable as upward mobility.”

• “A broad diverse network of support should include people who don’t look like you, who don’t act like you, and who challenge and help push you out of your comfort zone.”

Marzett’s also learned from her diverse network: “Colleagues and customers have taught me the most; and, in finding commonalties, [they’ve] brought the greatest rewards in my career.”

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