“My #AeroPassion is make your work your playground and dare to engage.”
MarieChantal's Biography
A seasoned entrepreneur, MarieChantal Chassé holds more than 23 years of engineering experience, 17 of which are in the aerospace sector. Always driven by a strategic vision of needs and results orientated, MarieChantal actively collaborates with aerospace and research institutions to implement structuring innovative solutions aiming to increase industry’s competitiveness by implementing a collaborative intelligent system that optimises resources utilisation while putting the human in the center of the solution.
I am the CEO & President of JMJ Aerospace and President of PARC (Pairing Automation of Resources in Communities). Being at the head of an evolving company and leading the innovative project PARC, big part of my job revolves around leading and managing human interaction to achieve a strategic vision. I work very closely with the internal team at JMJ, promoting team work and strategy buy in from the entire team, by coaching them and ensuring that the governance system that is set in place is helping the organisation grow.
JMJ Aerospace offers strategic outsourcing services in the aerospace industry. With almost 20 years of experience in the aerospace field, we at JMJ act as being the flexible extension to our clients. We diligently and proactively help our clients achieve their operational objectives. Our services varies from on time technical assistance in case of AOG to taking charge of their operations, whether by strategically outsourcing a function to JMJ or by implementing a new site, locally or internationally.
My favorite part of my job is the continuous human interactions with our teams, our industrial and university partners. If by the end of the day, I succeed in creating a work environment where each and every one offers his/her best, then I know we are getting closer to our objectives and targets. What really stimulates me intellectually is innovation; structuring a system that we can rely on to valorize the human and organisations is really my passion. And that is exactly the vision for our project PARC (Pairing Automation of Resources in Communities), we have to find a better way to optimise our resources, and that can only be achieved by putting the human at the core of the solution.
JMJ Aerospace is the first and only SME at the head of a mobilizing project; project PARC (Pairing Automation of Resources in Communities). Winning the 5th mobilizing project of the MEIE was the first step of realizing a vision that I had since the late 1990s. Being an engineer at heart, I quickly observed that the industry’s human resource management practices were highly overlooked and put second in companies’ priorities. And following my rule of three: OSE for Observe, Systemize & Evolve, I realised that the best way to solve this challenge is via a systemized process that breaks silos and bridges resources through collective intelligence. Not only that; as we embarked in the process, we realised that the scope needs to go even wider. As a small nation such as Quebec, competing and maintaining our leadership position in the industry demands a new way of thinking. We realised that by sharing, not only human resources, but material and immaterial resources, we can go even further by strategically allocating our funding in order to optimize and valorize them . PARC is a live proof that the collaboration between organizations by pooling together financial resources, expertise, research capacity and human resources ensures an efficient and effective use of the community’s collective resources.
What we are experimenting in aerospace can easily be applied to other critical industries
Via our project PARC, we are working together to bring stability and continuity in a business that is well known for its cyclicity. We are embarking in a new economic era where collaboration is inevitable to ensure the collective wellbeing of the community. We see it now in all sorts of commodities where interaction between people is becoming more and more valued and appreciated. However, most if not all these initiatives are launched in a B2C or C2C settings. It is only logical, and in fact unescapable, that we change our ways to optimise our organisational resources through systemised and controlled sharing models to include B2B processes. That includes not only material or commodities resources, but it ventures also into immaterial as well as the most valuable resources that are unfortunately overlooked and taken for granted, our talents. This culture of sharing is what I am trying to build in my company. We take the time every morning to share our major achievements of the past day were we celebrate together these “WOW moments” and nourish this simple act of communication that ensures we are all aligned and share a common vision.
I grew up in a house where my parents treated me and my brother exactly the same way, my mother always got us the same toys such as Lego and chemistry sets that we always shared, and my father never made me feel that there are opportunities or goals that I could not achieve. Even when I went to engineering school, I never felt any difference in the way young ladies & men were treated. And I never thought opportunities where out of my reach. That is why I was able to prove myself in the business leading a successful company specialised in the aerospace sector and heading a project that is backed up by the MEIE that has an impact on the way of handling resources for years to come, all while being at the head of a family of 5 girls. This path allowed me to imagine that anything is possible. I dream for the day when women, or any minority for that matter, from all ages, background and education can succeed not despite of being different, but because they are in fact different. We have to think that our difference is our added value, and in fact, it is. Diversity proves bringing value to an organisation. It saddens me that to this day when people have to make a choice, either to succeed in their work or take care of their family. It is a choice no one should be required to make, and for that a big objective of our project PARC is to ensure we offer a solution that guarantees a work-life balance for women & men out there. There are a lot of talents out there who were forced to make that choice and I am here to guarantee that they get the chance to contribute to the community while ensuring their job as a head of their family is not compromised. I truly believe that families are at the center of communities; we can only strive as a nation by nurturing our families.
The best advice I have gotten was actually a saying by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that goes like “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”. It basically summarizes how I have been living my life. Dare to engage!
