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Women Magazine
January 1, 2011
A hearty breakfast wasn’t the way Michelle Devine Giese used to start the day.
Alcohol was her morning tonic to stop the shakes. At work she’d drink to stay steady. At night there would be a drinking binge, and the next day the cycle would begin again.
Giese knew she had a problem. But the solution terrified her.
“Never drinking again, I knew it had to go one way or the other,” she says. “That was way too overwhelming for me, to think about not drinking for the rest of my life, because it was such a part of my life.”
At 24, Giese’s life revolved around alcohol. Sixteen years later, she has a much different focus.
Repairing reputations
Giese is president of Step Industries in Neenah, which provides packaging and assembly services to manufacturers. If a company has tampons that need to be boxed, Step has the people to do it.
More importantly, however, Step provides jobs for people recovering from alcoholism and drug addiction.
“We want to teach people how to be responsible, how to have individual accountability, how to be good employees as recovering people, because many of us have destroyed our work records,” says Giese, who has been in recovery since 1995.
Giese began to repair her reputation by being a reliable employee on the packaging line. She was consistently promoted, and by the time she became president in 2009 had done almost every job except drive the forklift.
Making a connection
It’s not only her work at Step that’s made her the right leader for the company. She connects with employees and knows exactly what they’ve been through.
“She’s the face of a success story in dealing with obstacles in her life,” says Mary Harp-Jirschele, executive director of the J.J. Keller Foundation, which has supported Step with grants. “She’s been in their shoes so she has a compassion that you can’t make up.”
Liisa Bush, the company’s human resources manager, applauds Giese’s ability to listen.
“She’s always available and never makes you feel like you’re a burden. She just gets it,” Bush says. “She’s very understanding. She doesn’t judge.”
There’s also a problem-solving component to her success. A tough economy requires creative solutions for bringing in work for Step’s 75 employees. Giese has added computer recycling services, worked with a client to purchase a new machine and made arrangements to transport employees to another location to spare workers from down time that could impact their recovery.
“She’s very open to new ideas and listens to all the options,” says Cheryl Fritz, Step’s business development manager and its only employee not in recovery. “She won’t say yes to everything but she looks at the company and covers all the bases.
“She has a passion for the mission as well as the business.”
Giese is well aware of the importance of Step’s existence.
“I want to give back what I got,” she says. “I’m a recipient of this, so now it’s my responsibility to make sure it’s here for future people in recovery.
“I would like to see the company grow,” she adds. “I want us to be able to employ 150 people at a time, not have the ups and downs and be able to offer steady employment. It would be great if we never had to have a waiting list and every recovering person who needed a job could come here.”
Downward spiral
Step wasn’t the first place Giese worked after entering recovery, but it was the first place she felt she fit in. She worked in retail after leaving inpatient treatment, but felt uncomfortable when employees would talk about going out for drinks after work.
Ashamed of her past, she did not want to admit to being an alcoholic, but there was no way she was going to allow alcohol to ruin her life again.
Giese had drunk occasionally while a student at Appleton West High School, but had kept up good grades and was pompon squad captain. In college at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, however, her drinking escalated.
“I discovered it was a lot easier to talk to people and to open up and to have fun if I was drinking,” she says. “Then once I started drinking I couldn’t stop drinking.
“I would always be the one who didn’t want the party to end, or I would be passed out.”
After she graduated with a degree in business administration and an emphasis in human resource management and fashion merchandising, her binges continued.
She got a job opening stores for retail chain Mr. Bulky, moving around the country as she trained new staff members. She was on her own a great deal, and drinking alone.
“I wasn’t with the same people for long periods of time, so if they started to get a sense that I had a problem it was about time for me to move on to the next store or location,” she recalls. “That helped me hide it.”
The end came when her world literally crashed down on her. Her finances a mess, she left her job and moved back home. Driving drunk one night, she was in an automobile accident.
A positive step
The crash, on Oct. 15, 1995, proved to be the turning point. She told a police officer she needed help and her family got her into treatment the next day.
“I knew I needed help way before I asked for it, but I just didn’t know what to do,” she says.
After completing inpatient treatment she continued to fight the urge to drink, forcing herself to stay in bed at night rather than searching for alcohol.
When she heard of Step Industries she knew it would be a place where her recovery would be supported. Because of her college degree and retail job she almost didn’t get hired, until she explained her need to work someplace where no one would ask her to go out for margaritas after work.
“It was the first place being clean and living this new life that I felt that I fit in,” she says. “Everything was fresh. This was my new beginning.”
Giese at first planned to stay for only a few months, and then for a year. Now she can’t see herself leaving.
“Right now I look at this as my challenge,” she says. “I need to focus on making sure Step is around 20 years from now for those recovering people.”
Giese no longer shies away from talking about her past, as it helps bring awareness to the positive impact Step makes. In addition, it helps her show her employees what’s possible.
“They can see I’m not any different than they are sitting there,” she says. “They can do that, too.”
Fun facts About Michelle Devine Giese
She’s the youngest of eight children, and was 3 when her first nephew was born. She has 19 nieces and nephews and 20 great nieces and nephews. Her parents were Peter and Charlotte Devine.
In her free time in winter, she likes to snowmobile with her husband, Mike Giese. The Minocqua and Phillips areas are favorite spots.
Travel is becoming one of her hobbies. She visited Ireland with one of her sisters this summer, and drove down the west coast with her husband, another sister and brother-in-law. A few years ago she visited an all-inclusive resort in Mexico and drank virgin daiquiris on the beach with her sisters.
Her family has its own Amazing Race. The Devine Amazing Race is held each summer, as family members see who will be the first to complete tasks along the race route. Michelle planned the first, which began in Almond and ended in the town of Vinland. Tasks have included chipping golf balls into a bucket held by a partner in a lake and having a photo taken with a random shopper in the mall while wearing an animal nose. A different family member acts as executive producer each year to set the course, and assistants help out along the way.
She enjoys listening to books by James Patterson and David Baldacci. She recently finished “Talking to Girls about Duran Duran” by Rob Sheffield.
In summer, she loves growing tomatoes, peppers and eggplant in her garden and walking her dogs. She has two goldendoodles and three cats.
She’s on the board of directors for Mooring Programs and Casa Clare, which help men and women in recovery.
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