April Diez
CEO
The Diez Group, Dearborn
Employees: 475
Revenue: $1.1B
Before she tells you anything else, April Diez will make sure you know she has a phenomenal leadership team at The Diez Group, a Dearborn-based source of aluminum and steel, as well as processing, warehousing, and logistics services.
When she became the company’s CEO in 2022, following the death of her father, Jerry, she says it hit her that “The buck stops with me.”
Diez had been a full-time employee of the company since 1985, starting in shipping and receiving before working in inventory control, costing, purchasing, and other operational aspects. Throughout all of those experiences, she found that spending time on the plant floor was her favorite thing to do.
“The whole time I was learning all the different operations, (I realized that) just being out on the plant floor is where you really learn things. So that’s what I enjoyed the most,” Diez says. “I was basically a plant rat for a long time, working in shipping and receiving, working with the truck drivers and the guys in the plant.”
After gaining knowledge and understanding of the company’s operations, Diez ascended to the role of COO in 1997. She remained in the position for 25 years before succeeding her father. Since then, she has leaned on the leadership team that was already in place while making a way forward for new leaders.
She’s grateful that she hasn’t had to do any of it solo.
“My brother is the president, so he and I talk multiple times a day if we’re not actually in the same room,” Diez says. “And we’ve got a phenomenal team. Of course, we’ve built on it. A lot of people over the course of time came up with my dad, and we’re developing new people as others retire or move along in one manner or another.”
While challenging economic times can tighten the industries The Diez Group serves, Diez persists in her commitment to two priorities that have never receded in importance: quality and safety. And while she’s open to innovations to improve both, she also recognizes the company has achieved a lot with the processes already in place.
In addition to the Dearborn headquarters, The Diez Group operates facilities in Woodhaven; Jeffersonville, Ind.; Kansas City, Mo.; and Montezuma, Iowa. No decision has been made to embark on a specific expansion, but she says it’s “definitely on the table,” depending on the needs of specific clients.
One of the imperatives that comes with leadership is deciding how to deal with challenging needs — and Diez has found an approach that works for the company as well as customers.
“Right now we have one customer in particular who is struggling — not due to their own circumstances, but due to something that happened with the raw material that comes in,” she says.
“We’re on a program right now to help facilitate that and get it to them as fast as possible, so we’re doing a lot of things that normally are not in our wheelhouse. But we’re going to do whatever it takes to make our customers happy and successful, as long as it makes good business sense for us.”
In her formative years, Diez had a plan to complete her studies at Macomb Community College, but the priorities of the family business forced a “temporary” halt to her schooling — one that has now stretched beyond 40 years.
“The summer before I was to start my second year at Macomb, we had been awarded a program called Double Eagle at Rouge Steel,” Diez recalls. “We had to ship several times a day, and I was already working a double shift. My mom and I were working in the shipping office together.
“I would have to be there at six in the morning and stay until one or two in the morning. And I went to my dad the day before I was supposed to start back for fall semester, and said, ‘There’s no way Mom can handle this. I’ll take a semester off.’ And we never slowed down. I went to the school of Jerry and Brenda Diez.”
One thing she learned at the school of her own parents was that there’s definitely a place for women in manufacturing.
“My father was always a girls’ dad,” Diez says. “I have a sister and two brothers, so it’s not like he had only girls, but he treated us the same and he was as excited about the things we would do as my brothers.”
She also learned that not everyone recognizes a woman’s place in manufacturing.
“My dad and my brothers and I used to go around together as much as anybody,” she says. “There was a gentleman at one of our OEMs who had met us all multiple times, and he would greet my dad and my brothers, and then he would say, ‘Oh, April, nice to meet you.’
“So, I did have to work harder and longer to prove myself — also because I’m the boss’s kid. But that’s not why I was here. I was here to bust my butt for this company.” Her passion for the family business certainly comes shining through.
While Diez remains a fan of spending time on the plant floor, she recognizes her position as CEO makes that a different experience than the one she used to have in her earlier days with the company.
“Walking the floor still has huge benefits,” she says. “You get to see things firsthand. I like to see that the cleanliness is still there and that everybody’s got their protective gear on. But believe me, when I’m out on the floor, the word spreads very quickly.”
Because, as the rest of the team knows, the buck stops with her.
— Dan Calabrese
“My mom gave me this Diez pesos pendant, and I wear it because my family is everything to me, and so is my faith. Family, faith, and community is what my whole family has always been about.”
