Juliet Alleman overcame a less-than-enthusiastic initial response from the collision repair industry to build a lucrative and award-winning career, now serving as a regional manager with CollisionRight, a growing MSO with more than 115 shops across 11 states.
Alleman, whose team won Region of the Year in 2024 for the second consecutive year, and who was also recently named one of this year’s Women’s Industry Network’s (WIN) Most Influential Women Award winners, spoke to Autobody News about how she progressed from getting fired by a shop that wasn’t even paying her to building an effective leadership skillset.
‘You Know That They Just Don’t Want You There’
Alleman grew up in Central Pennsylvania attending car shows with her dad, who would point out how to spot subpar body work or rust on restorations.
“I always thought that it was really interesting, to be able to look past the way the car looked and see the quality of work behind it,” she said.
In 2005, when Alleman was a junior in high school in Central Pennsylvania, she was inspired by a local auto body shop manager who came to speak at a Career Day event. She went home that day and told her parents she wanted to learn to work on cars.
Alleman helping her dad work on a car as part of her "first apprenticeship."
Alleman contacted the same body shop manager who had spoken at her school -- several times, with no response. She finally asked one of her parents to drive her to the shop to speak to the manager in person about an apprenticeship.
“When I spoke to him, he said, ‘Look, I'm really sorry. It's cool that you want to do this, but I don't think that this is a good atmosphere for you. I'm concerned about your safety with the technicians I have here,’” Alleman said.
Disappointed but undeterred, Alleman reached out to other area body shops. On her fifth or sixth try, she finally found a shop willing to give her an unpaid position as a detailer. She was allowed to work with the technicians on her downtime.
“I was so excited about it,” Alleman said. “A month later, that body shop owner called me into his office and said, ‘It's a little bit too distracting to have you here, so we're gonna go ahead and let you go.’
“Keep in mind I wasn't getting paid,” Alleman said. “It really hurts your feelings to get fired from a job you're not getting paid to do. You know that they just don't want you there.”
She found another shop, 45 minutes from her home, that gave her an unpaid internship. She worked after school and on weekends through the rest of her time in high school.
“I loved my experience with that shop,” Alleman said. “It was a great group of people, and they were so kind to me and taught me so much.”
After high school, she wanted “something formal under my name so people would take me seriously,” so she attended the former WyoTech in Blairsville, PA, to learn collision repair and refinishing with a specialty in chassis fabrication and high-performance engines.
After graduating from WyoTech, she took a paid internship with a metal fabrication shop in Southern California.
“It was a phenomenal experience with them,” Alleman said. “They had offered me a job to stay out there when I was done, but I unfortunately found out that Southern California is a lot more expensive than Pennsylvania.”
Alleman returned to Pennsylvania, where she worked for Nationwide Insurance as a material damage appraiser, during which time she earned her appraiser’s license.
In 2011, after taking a year off following the birth of her son, Alleman joined Select Collision Group, a regional MSO in Central Pennsylvania, as an estimator.
Two years later, Alleman took a position with Innovation Group as a quality control specialist, to gain management experience. Not long after, she joined Assured Performance as its national inspection compliance manager, working directly with body shops on getting OEM certifications.
In 2015, the owner of Select Collision Group offered Alleman a job as general manager of one of the group’s shops.
“I said absolutely because I really wanted to come back to them,” Alleman said, who later took on a second shop within the group, and eventually handled training and purchasing equipment for all four of the group’s shops.
In May 2021, Select Collision Group was purchased by CollisionRight, which quickly promoted Alleman to regional manager.
Alleman called it “the biggest opportunity for me to this point, to join a company like CollisionRight and to have the increased support from them, to see the way that they handle all of the people in their company, but especially to see the way that they give opportunities to women and to people who maybe would have a more difficult time in another environment has been just phenomenal.”
An Award-Winning Management Style
To win a performance-based award like Region of the Year for two consecutive years, Alleman said she makes sure to get to know her employees as well as possible.
“I try to find out what they want to accomplish for themselves, what they need help with, what resources and support I can provide to help them,” Alleman said. “I try to spend a larger part of my day serving my team then I do anything else.
“If you take really good care of your people, they will take care of your business for you,” she said.
Alleman today.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are important, Alleman said, and she stays on top of all metrics, but employee satisfaction is the most important factor in managing her region.
“Employees have to be your No. 1 customer, because if you mess that up, there is not a chance that they're going to take care of your outside customers the way that they need to be,” Alleman said.
Her initial reception from the collision repair industry has also shaped how she relates to all of her employees.
“When that happened, I remember trying to look at it from an objective position, and I remember thinking to myself, ‘You can get frustrated by this and use it as an excuse, or you can use it to find out how to be the best that you can be,’” Alleman said. “That's what I try to communicate to my staff -- whatever challenges we come across, if we focus on doing the right things, it's always going to come back in our favor.
“I don't think that it's fair for anyone to experience [what I did], but I do think that it can be very powerful, and I do think that it made me want to relate differently to people than what I experienced, which I think has been an enormous contribution to my overall success,” she added.
Alleman said as she’s progressed through her career, she has come to know several of those shop owners who turned her away when she was in high school.
“They have been nothing but encouraging and supportive of what I've done,” she said, a few of whom have told her, “They're really glad that I didn't listen to them.”
Alleman said she has also experienced pushback from a handful of customers throughout her career.
“I had one lady one time. I went out to write her estimate and I started explaining our repair process to her and she goes, ‘Excuse me. Could you just get one of the guys who actually does this?’” Alleman laughed. “And I said, ‘Nope I can't, because I'm the only licensed estimator here.’”
Alleman said she views interactions like those as an opportunity to change other people's perception just by doing her job well.
Supporting the Next Generation
Alleman is further involved in the collision repair industry by serving on advisory boards for Carroll County Career and Technology Center in Westminster, MD, and Cumberland-Perry Area Vocational Technical School in Mechanicsburg, PA, and volunteering with Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology in Lancaster, PA.
Going forward, Alleman wants to get more involved with mentoring. She currently serves on WIN’s mentorship and industry relations committees, and is helping to get a mentorship program started at CollisionRight, to match women in entry-level roles with more experienced women.
Angelee Richards, director of talent acquisition for CollisionRight, said the company is implementing the mentorship program after noticing women were “cleaning up the awards” at the company’s annual leadership conference.
“We are finding that when we do have women in any position, they're really excelling in this industry,” Richards said.
It’s one thing to attract people to the collision repair industry, Richards said, but providing a mentor aims to keep people in it by guiding them to the next steps to progress in their career.
Looking back at her now 20 years in the industry, Alleman said she never dreamed it would take her as far as it has.
“I just wanted to learn how to fix a dent,” she said. “I definitely want to continue to learn and grow and do as much as I can to continue to make an impact in this industry, so that other people have the opportunities I have, whether it's men or women or minorities -- anybody.”
Abby Andrews