Rebekah Kemp
Senior Director, Sales and Key Account Management, Road - UK
Rebekah, who lives in Manchester with her husband and two sons, has been working with freight forwarding for her entire career. She has been with DSV since 2008, and today, she is a part of our UK Road management team and responsible for sales, marketing and key account management.
Like so many other DSV colleagues have through the years, Rebekah originally became part of DSV through an acquisition, when DSV and her previous place of work, ABX Logistics, joined forces in 2008.
Flexibility made Rebekah able to raise a family and pursue her career
Back then, Rebekah had just returned from maternity leave to her position as general manager of the ABX Manchester branch. The DSV Management team recognised Rebekah’s potential and offered her a chance to run the DSV Leyland operation:
“It was a big challenge for me, considering the age of my children, and it was something I had to consider carefully before accepting the offer,” Rebekah recalls. “The support and flexibility I got from the management team enabled me to take on that challenge and balance bringing up two young children while progressing my career with DSV.”
Continuous development keeps you keen
What continues to motivate Rebekah about working with DSV is the ongoing development of our company:
“I think DSV is such a progressive company and there's always different challenges and initiatives going on. We're always moving with the times; we're always looking at what's happening in our environment and changing and reinventing ourselves in that respect. No day is ever the same working with DSV and it's just a very motivating place to work, which keeps you interested in staying on,” Rebekah explains.
Through team collaboration we deliver best performance
“We have a lot of people who are driven by competition and by delivering top performance. You need to be competitive within this environment, and whilst we have success, we never rest on that success,” Rebekah reflects and continues:
“Within my division, we are highly collaborative in the way we reach our results. It's really important to bring in all the experts when we're delivering a solution to the customer - bring Operations in, bring our legal people in, bring Finance in and we do so from the start so that everybody understands the expectations of the customer. So, it's a very collaborative environment and we deliver many of our results together - it's a team effort!”.
Humour, team spirit and open dialogue support the DSV values
In Rebekah’s division, the DSV values of ‘Customer first’, ‘Best Performance’ and ‘True Collaboration’ are fed by the atmosphere and communication, and in the DSV organisation as a whole:
“There's a great work ethic within the team and we have a really good, strong team spirit. We all share a strong desire to deliver a high level of customer service and to achieve organic growth. Whatever challenges come our way, the team is willing to work and to react, and if that means putting in the extra hours to accomplish what needs to be done, then people are very willing. At the same time, there is respect for a healthy work-life balance,” Rebekah explains. She continues:
“The transport and logistics industry is a challenging environment with some amount of pressure. With this, it is important that we can see the more fun side of life too; that we can laugh at ourselves and with each other during hectic times. This is common to the DSV offices that I visit in other countries: Ours is a serious environment and people are focused, but we have a good sense of humor as well. DSV employees have a very open and respectful dialogue between each other. People feel comfortable challenging situations they think are not right or don't agree with. But they also understand how to do so with respect for their colleagues. It’s very important that people feel they can speak openly, but also that we have to be respectful.”
Rebekah’s future may be a global one
15 years with DSV is by no means enough for Rebekah:
“In the future, I'd like to continue to contribute to the success of DSV. I want to see the business grow and I want to be part of that growth journey. Considering the size and global nature of the DSV organisation, I would at some point like to experience working on a global level - we have so many offices across the world in different divisions, offering you countless opportunities as a DSV employee,” she finishes our talk about what it’s like to work with DSV.
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Helle Bach, Executive Vice President,
Group HR