2 Leading Women blazed trail together, starting in a weld shop

Smashing the auto industry's remaining glass ceilings can be difficult work — but it's much more fun if you have a friend who's always standing by with a hammer.

That's the case with Leah Curry and Susan Elkington. In the early 2000s, the two met as managers in the welding shop of Toyota's massive assembly plant in Princeton, Ind. Though vastly different, they quickly became lifelong friends, trusted confidantes and, over time, champions of each other's careers.

Today, they command two of Toyota Motor Corp.'s largest assembly plants and are among the 2020 Automotive News 100 Leading Women in the North American Auto Industry.

Elkington, 49, is president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky — the automaker's largest assembly plant in the world — which makes the Camry and Camry Hybrid, Avalon and Avalon Hybrid and the RAV4 Hybrid, as well as the Lexus ES 350 and ES 300h.

Curry, 59, is president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Indiana, one of the automaker's most profit-rich plants, which builds the Highlander and Highlander Hybrid crossovers, the Sequoia SUV and the Sienna hybrid minivan.

Theirs is not a story about building cars, but about building an enduring friendship — one that began amid the daily shower of sparks in the body weld area of the plant that Curry now runs.

"The first time I saw Leah, she was in her weld gear — hard hat, sleeves, boots — and she was among all the men in weld shop," recalled Elkington, who was, at the time, a young engineer with short-cropped hair who had moved over from general assembly to body-building stamping. She was also Curry's boss.

Elkington remembers being a little awestruck of Curry, who came to work each day with full makeup and kept her long, curly hair tucked up under her hard hat.

"She was clearly the go-to person" in the department, Elkington said of Curry. "She amazed me by how [her male co-workers] respected her, and she knew so much more about welding and the equipment than they did. She was a little intimidating to me."

For Curry, her new supervisor also left an impression.

"We were in a common meeting together, and I remember thinking, 'Hey, here is another female in a predominant male role,' " Curry recalled. "It made me proud to work for Toyota."

The two quickly struck up a friendship, discussing their families, their struggles, their jobs.

They spent the next six years working side by side — or hard hat to hard hat — in that weld shop, surrounded by mostly male team members, being in charge and always learning from each other.

"I always give Leah credit for teaching me how to be a female in this industry," said Elkington. "When I first joined Toyota, I cut my hair, so I had short hair because I was working with men. And then I transferred to this department, and I was working with Leah."

One example Elkington recalled was a change in Toyota's uniform policy that allowed for pink uniforms at the time.

"One day, she came in wearing pink, and I looked at her, and I said, 'We don't wear pink in weld shop!' And she goes, 'Oh, yes, we do!' And within a week, she had all the guys wearing pink, too," Elkington said. "She brought that personal side — not just the work and the serious side — to the job, and how you can do both together. She really taught me how to do that. That is what really helped me become who I am now, and me being able to be my authentic self. I don't think anybody can really succeed to the level of their highest capability without being truly themselves."

Over the years, Elkington and Curry had grown to feel like each other's family. Like siblings, they pushed each other.

"I think we will always be competitive," said Curry. But "we are like sisters first; we have each other's back. Then we can be competitive, push each other to be better and grow in our knowledge and leadership."

Curry and Elkington grew up 40 miles apart in rural southern Indiana, and they took different paths to being hired at the Toyota plant. Curry had studied chemistry at the University of Evansville but became a skilled maintenance team member at the plant in Princeton in 1997 after a three-year internship in industrial electronics.

Elkington graduated from the same university with a degree in 1993 in mechanical engineering and had hired into Toyota in 1998 after working at another company.

Both had spent several years in the Princeton plant before they started working together in the weld shop, with Curry coming into the department first, and Elkington moving into the department in 2003 as her supervisor.

"When I first came [to the Princeton Toyota plant], my whole goal was to be a manager of a production shop, and that was as high as I could see. When I achieved that, I thought, 'OK, I've really come a long way,' " Curry recalled.

Though she was already a supervisor, Curry lacked confidence in her abilities. She "stayed in the welding area too long," she says now, because she never raised her hand "to try something new, to take a risk."

But like a younger sister, Elkington kept pushing Curry, challenging her to expand her horizons, showing her what she was capable of doing, Curry said.

"As far as going through that broken rung on the ladder, she was able to repair that broken rung that we didn't see a lot of women [get to], and she helped me get to that level," Curry said. "We've been great friends ever since. She helped me see that I was capable of doing [the job] and even more capable than some of my team members I was working with, which were all men. I really feel like that was a turning point for me."

For Elkington, watching her friend expand her horizons was personally rewarding, but it also meant — as her supervisor — that she eventually had to get out of Curry's way.

Each time Elkington would get promoted, Curry would get promoted behind her. But that routine was no longer working, Elkington said.

"I had to go and talk to my boss and say, 'Hey, you know, I'm at the point that I need to move because Leah needs to soar, " Elkington said.

So in 2013, she took a temporary assignment in Japan as general manager of Toyota's production control division, clearing the way for Curry to spread her wings, which she did.

Curry continued to rise up the corporate ladder in Toyota Motor North America's manufacturing structure, following the trail that another female manufacturing pioneer, Millie Marshall, had blazed at the Japanese automaker.

Curry became president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing, West Virginia and in October 2019, she succeeded Marshall as president of the Indiana plant when Marshall retired after 28 years with Toyota.

Even the vast Pacific Ocean couldn't keep the two longtime friends apart.

"Whether Susan was in Japan or Kentucky, we were always in communication," Curry said.

"Anytime I would visit Japan, we would get together to catch up. It was hard for her to be gone from her family and the familiarity of the U.S., but I could see tremendous growth in her knowledge, her sense of self and her capability to grow much further in the Toyota organization."

Elkington returned to the U.S. in 2017 to become president of the assembly plant in Georgetown, Ky.

"To see people like Leah, or others in our industry, come to levels that surpass me — she became a president before I became a president — that is, to me, one of the best work accomplishments that you can have," Elkington said.

Today, though their jobs, family lives and manufacturing plants are 185 miles apart, the two longtime friends still stay in touch regularly — their bond welded in the arc of an auto plant's body shop.

"The joke is, you don't want to go against the two of us together; you have to divide and conquer. We both will listen, but we won't back down if we know something is right," explains Elkington. "We want each other to succeed, but we push each other to be better. If she does something great, I will compliment her, but I will also want to do it a little better next time, and so will she. But all I want for her is success. She is an amazing person and leader."

Curry, of course, concurs.

"We know no matter what is going on in our personal or work life, the other one is only a phone call away. Whether we share our joys or our struggles, it doesn't matter," Curry said. "We're never too busy to listen, give advice or just have fun.

"I'm proud to call her my friend."