Questions have swirled around Dominion recently - what will happen after Todd Fontaine retires? Who will take over the General Motors account?

Dave Strzalka will be filling Todd's role and transitioning to take over the GM partnership. Eventually, he will be moving away from his current position as Chief Program Manager - his idea while keeping in mind the future of Dominion.

Dave started his career in the automotive industry 39 years ago at Ford Motor Co. - eventually working his way into project management. In 2017, he took a retirement package from the company and made his way to Dominion. Dave called Dan Hettel, with whom he previously worked with at Ford when they first started in Final Assembly Engineering, and he wanted to work with Dan again.

"If (Dan) wasn't at Dominion, I probably would've never went," Dave said.

He originally began in alignment, moving his way up and taking on more responsibility. Dominion decided to create a new position, one specific to Dave's strengths.

"They wanted to create common practices and procedures for how project management was done," he said. "It was difficult at first to get acceptance of all those people you interface, and now all the sudden you want them to do it certain ways. It took some time for that to be accepted."

Dave sees his ability to take this new position and run with it as his greatest accomplishment at Dominion.

"I had to cultivate a change within the three commodities in order to get everyone to work together," he said. "The group is pretty tight-knit that can call upon each other and say, 'Hey, can you guys help me do this,'; they'll all do that. They don't say, ' Well, that's not my project.' I'm pretty proud of that."

Dave is continuing to create a change of culture at Dominion by stepping back into a project manager role. He hopes DTG will bring new talent into the Chief Program Manager position that he's worked hard to make successful.

“If we can get a new thread of people to come in, the ones that are here now can teach them. Then we know the company still has a future versus just walking away and it dies on the vine, because you don’t have the right levels of people. They need to be trained with the knowledge of the past so they can move forward with the knowledge of new technology that they bring forth.”

— Dave Strzalka

He hopes the company will bring in younger talent to take over his role; he sees it as in the best interest of the company going forward. Dominion needs new, fresh ideas and someone that will be able to grow along with the company.

"We need to give back to a new breed of employee that can learn from (current employees) and bring in new ideas with an understanding of technology. We'll always have these commodities, yet I'm sure there are new things that will take place to make the tooling technology better for the cars of the future," Dave said.

Now Dave will be stepping into another important role - maintaining a contract with GM.

"I look forward to that - it will be a change of pace for me," he said. "Todd has cultivated a partnership and a trust with GM... and that's what I need to carry on."