Attendees: PMA’s MDA is A-OK

Each session includes expert-led workshops, facilitated debriefs, activities and interaction, as well as plenty of time to connect with the presenters, facilitator and cohort peers. The sessions offer valuable best practices, lessons and experiential activities that participants can bring back and employ.

Since its inception in 2012, more than 300 individuals have graduated from MDA, with many earning expanded roles and responsibilities at their organizations, a direct result of the skills and confidence gained from participating in this program.

Many Helpful Takeaways Cited

Providing insight into MDA and its return on investment are two graduates of the academy, both from MDA power user ODM Tool & Mfg., McCook, IL. The company has sent more than a dozen of its associates through the MDA program, including Brandon Enright, general manager, and Carl Michaelsen IV, second-shift plant manager.

“The leadership here at ODM suggested that I attend MDA Class 4 in 2015-16 based on their prior attendance, given that I was employed in 2015 as a manufacturing engineer with some management responsibility,” recalls Enright. “Also, at the time I was managing a group of people that were all at least 15 yr. my senior—I thought the program could help with that.”

The result of attending MDA?

“I told Chip (Carl Michaelsen III, ODM president and key contributor to the formation of PMA’s executive- and management-development programming) that we need to send everyone that even potentially is on a career path toward management,” Enright says. “I had a great time at MDA—it was very beneficial and one of my first experiences with networking. I met people that I still communicate with, and for a few years after graduating from MDA, we were still bouncing ideas off of each other.”

Michaelsen IV attended MDA Class 14 in 2024-25—initially not terribly excited about it, but “after the first day of the first session, I thought that MDA was very much worth it. Being relatively young and new to management, it was great getting to meet and talk to people in similar roles but of different backgrounds and ages, and pick people’s brains. I felt that to be very beneficial.”

Both cited particular MDA exercises and tasks that helped tremendously in their management evolutions.

“I took away from (one particular MDA exercise) the fact that you have to make decisions, which I do every single day at ODM,” Enright says. “If you’re going to be in management, the vast majority of your job involves decision making. You cannot hesitate or seek validation from the group when you are the person to which everyone is looking.”

Interpretation and effective communication—another exceptional takeaway from MDA cited by Enright.