Community Leader Spotlight
In this interview we talk with Pamela Veldman, President of Dienen, Inc. (parent company Transcend Orthotics & Prosthetics and SureStep, LLC). Pam spoke to Diane Doyne, Villing’s Vice President of Client Services.
Q. What’s the first thing you do every day when you wake up?
I usually grab my rosary and pray. And then I orient myself to the day, thinking about what I have to do, where I need to be, and that kind of thing. And I do like having tea in the morning. I’m not a coffee drinker, never acquired the taste. I even tried it again when I had COVID and no sense of taste—and it tasted like dirty water to me!
Q. What tool or activity have you discovered that you can’t live without?
My Outlook calendar pretty much rules my day...but one of the tools I found that comes along with it is an integration that asks me if I want to schedule “focus time.” I’ve found that to be very valuable, because otherwise, I’m meeting, meeting, meeting, and not as productive as I could be. This allows me to have the time to reflect, take what I met about and do more valuable strategic things with what comes out of those meetings. And it’s allowed me to be a bit more intentional with my time.
Q. How do you and your husband (Bernie Veldman, Founder and CEO at Dienen, Inc.) manage working and living together?
We’ve been married for 35 years and have five children. So, any couple knows that you have to be good communicators in order to survive that! Our communication is really strong. We complement each other well and we appreciate learning from each other. At work, Bernie is the visionary and I’m the integrator; at home, that flips. A few years ago, we read the book Rocket Fuel, which explains that visionaries have groundbreaking ideas and integrators make those ideas a reality. We were like, “Oh, this is about us!” We appreciate each other’s gifts, and we have an executive team who really compliment us. We’ve been very lucky. We get along great. We love each other very much. And he’s my best friend; I’m his best friend. It just works for us!
Q. What new things are on the horizon for Dienen/Transcend?
We’re always looking for something new and innovative to do, and we pride ourselves on having state-of-the-art technology to work with. We’ve bought two 3D printers, and we’re looking for different ways we can serve our patients and customers better. We’ve been able to produce some devices that could be fully 3D printed, which can allow us to skip some of the fabrication processes. That’s a benefit because if you’re 3D printing, you can make software modifications to change the printed product. In traditional fabrication, making changes is much more challenging.
Technology has really come along, and we’re able to do more scanning and make more devices from scanning. We have a white light scanner, which is very sensitive (and expensive), and we can use our iPhones for scanning for multiple types of orthotic or prosthetics devices. Then we have the ability to carve them out with a 7-axis carver, which actually carves out a positive model of a specific part of the body for a leg brace, a cranial helmet, a body jacket, or something like that. These advances have really helped us better serve our patients.
Q. What do you do when you’re not working?
We have five grandchildren, so I love to have them over and enjoy time with them— that’s special for me. I do like to play around on the piano, even though I’m not very gifted! I love to read “real” books, so you actually have to turn the pages. I love podcasts. I think people are so smart, and I love hearing different perspectives on things. I’m a big fan of C.S. Lewis. I think he’s a brilliant author and I think he brought a lot of the reality of Christianity to life for many people. I find a lot of humor and comfort in his books.
To get our latest articles when they are posted, please subscribe by e-mail or RSS.
