People First, Pt. 7: Meet the Innovation Core Values Award Winner, Lauren Mollencupp

Welcome back to our series recognizing TA Service’s award-winning employees. In our last post, we introduced you to Linda Elgas, our Safety Core Values Award winner. Today, we’re spotlighting our Innovation Core Values Award winner, Lauren Mollencupp.

Our Core Values Awards is an annual series of awards recognizing TA’s exemplary team members who embody our core values: people first, service, safety, results, and innovation. The winners of these awards were chosen from an exceptional pool of employee of the month honorees.

Lauren serves as an implementation manager for the warehousing division of TA Services. During her time at TA, Lauren’s innovative initiatives for bolstering employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention have been nothing short of outstanding. She puts an incredible amount of time and effort into developing ways for TA Services to be an employer of choice for her team. One important initiative that Lauren spearheaded was an employee reward system that helped boost engagement and morale at her warehouse site, the largest in TA’s warehousing network. It was such a success that it became the catalyst for a company-wide employee reward system.

She is always willing and eager to think outside of the box and implement creative ways to serve her team and customers. She is a leader that consistently puts others before herself, focuses on big-picture results, communicates with poise, and treats everyone with professionalism and respect. Her commitment to living the TA Services values makes it an honor to present her with this well-deserved award.

We recently sat down with Lauren to learn more about her background and role as well as her commitment to innovation in logistics. 

Q: How did you get started in the logistics industry?
A: I had no intention of going into the logistics industry. I have a bachelor’s degree in political science and government. My plan was always to go to law school, but I decided to take a year off to work and save money. During that year, I started working at TA and discovered that I was passionate about logistics. I’ve actually been around trucks my whole life — my dad is a truck driver — so getting into logistics felt natural to me.

I’ve been at TA for eight years now, and I spent the first three years on the transportation side of things before transitioning over to warehousing — where I’ve been for the last five years.

Q: How does being the daughter of a truck driver impact your work?
A: I always thought about my dad when I was working with carriers. My dad worked with 3PLs, so I would hear him talk about his experiences, like if they gave him the wrong appointment time and how that would affect him. I saw how important it was to be accurate with your work. I focus on attention to detail and have extra compassion for the hard work of truck drivers because I always picture my dad on the other side of things.

Q: As the winner of the Innovation Core Values Award, what does innovation mean to you?
A: I was actually surprised to get the Innovation Core Values Award because when most people think about innovation, they immediately think about technology. For me, I think innovation is about doing things differently. Anybody can come in and do the basics, but it’s how we do things differently and how we make the experience unique for our employees and customers that makes TA stand out.

Q: Can you tell us about your new role as implementation manager for warehousing?
A: This is a new role in the warehousing division that was created to help us gear up for future growth. As we bring on new warehousing customers, I’ll go to those locations and help get things set up from an operational perspective. In between my time on-site, I’m also working on a lot of projects that are designed to help standardize the way we do things in the warehousing network. For example, I’m creating a playbook that will be our guide for how we do things at all the sites in our network.

Q: What is the greatest advice you give to your team?
A: I think it’s important to define your core values. When TA shared our new company values and I was acting in a site leader capacity for SILC (Southern Indiana Logistics Center), I decided to put together my own list of personal values. That’s something I encourage everyone on my team to do as well. Even though my role and responsibilities have evolved since then, I keep them saved on my computer so I can pull them up and remind myself of what I believe in and what I stand for. 

Lauren’s Core Values as site leader for SILC (Southern Indiana Logistics Center)

Join us in congratulating Lauren on winning the Innovation Core Values Award. And come back next week to meet another award-winning TA employee.

Looking to join a winning team? Check out our careers page to learn more about logistics careers at TA Services.