Employee Spotlight: Meet Cheryl Binney

Cheryl Binney  |  Production Supervisor  |  Alameda, CA

Q. What is your role at Penumbra?

I work with a group of highly skilled production builders and engineers to coordinate and ensure quality standards and compliance are maintained throughout the build process.

Q. What aspects of your job do you enjoy most?

Working in a supportive and collaborative environment where all team members are focused on the same goal — to provide life-saving technologies that change lives. I also enjoy the opportunity to help team members feel successful by acknowledging their incredible achievement of building to exacting standards of quality on a daily basis.

Q. What are three career lessons you’ve learned thus far?

• Step outside your comfort zone — Often! This is the path to broadening your capabilities.
• Embrace the challenges. When you recognize a challenge as an opportunity is when you’re most likely to succeed.
• Stay motivated. Staying motivated will enable you to make significant contributions every day.

Q. Before working at Penumbra, what was the most unusual or interesting job you’ve ever had and why?

Professional athlete (road cyclist). I’ll start by saying, “It takes 10 years to make an overnight success!” Building a career as an athlete meant developing a host of skills: self-sufficiency, perseverance, mental fortitude, the ability to take risks. It also taught me leadership; how to turn a group of individuals into an effective elite level cycling team on and off the bike.

Q. What would people be surprised to learn about you?

I am shy. Ever since I was a kid. I work hard at being the opposite. I have purposely made choices that helped me break out of my shell and that has made all the difference in my ability to contribute.

Q. What is your personal philosophy?

We all have the power to have an impact and create change. It starts with each of us as individuals; by what we decide to do and who we decide to be from the beginning to the end of every single day.