This December we are happy to have Mark Anderson as our Member Spotlight!

Innevation Center member Mark Anderson is the Director of Nevada Industry Excellence (NVIE), the Nevada representative of the national Manufacturing Extension Program, a unique, statewide, public-private partnership that delivers business solutions to U.S. manufacturers.

Mark joined NVIE in 2017 after a long-standing career in the automotive industry.  He was the first hire by Panasonic Energy North America to start the Tesla Gigafactory operation and grew the operation to over 500 employees in just two years.  We spoke with Mark on his journey from industry to leading a public-private service organization.

As a Nevada native growing up in Carson City, Mark had the ambition to work for a Japanese automotive company.  After high school, he attended Brigham Young University majoring in Japanese Studies. Mark is fluent in Japanese and conversant with Japan’s unique and ritualized business culture. He has helped local Reno companies with Japanese cultural training to prepare them for engaging with Japanese clients.

Mark started his career with Tsuchiya Automotive Systems (TASUS), a premier supplier of components for the automotive and transportation markets. When Panasonic contacted Mark about a position at the Gigafactory, Mark was excited to come back to Nevada and make use of his experience in automotive and Japanese business culture.  As Panasonic’s first employee at the Gigafactory, Mark was tasked to build a large team in a very short time.  He spearheaded major hiring and onboarding programs, employee benefit programs, not to mention cultural trainings for new employees in a Japanese company.

Mark joined NVIE in 2017. Many of NVIE’s clients are small- and medium-sized manufacturers. Oftentimes these manufacturers have limited resources, are busy keeping their production lines running and have very little time to look into technologies and business processes that could improve their operations. NVIE wants to help Nevada manufacturers look forward in the next five to ten years on how technologies could impact or disrupt their industry and help them to be a global leader in their industry.  Mark’s vision is for NVIE to be the “easy button,” the go-to place for Nevada manufacturers to access expertise and business solutions. He also wants to build a strong manufacturing community in Nevada where manufacturing peers get together and develop best practices for the industry. Toward that end, NVIE was recently awarded the Google Impact Challenge Nevada grant to help fund the new industry-led Nevada Manufacturing and Tech Forum initiative.

When not working with manufacturers, Mark enjoys college basketball, composing and recording classic rock music, and spending time with his wife, four children and the family dog Indiana Bones. Learn more about NVIE at their website.