Trista Anger, Regional Business Manager for BASF Automotive Refinish Canada has been appointed to the Women’s Industry Network’s (WIN) Board of Directors.

The appointment was announced at the 2019 WIN conference that was recently held in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

As a show of support for the initiative to create awareness regarding the association among Canadian customers, Anger extended invitations to two distributors and two shop customers to attend the three-day event.

“I was pleased to have been appointed to the WIN Board of Directors as the organization mission and vision tie directly in with BASF’s corporate diversity and inclusion initiatives,” said Anger on her nomination. “It will provide a unique opportunity to influence women to consider collision repair as a career, contribute to their training in the industry and provide opportunities for networking. WIN’s presence is primarily in the U.S. So, I look forward to increasing Canadian exposure and membership.”

Anger was a part of a panel discussion Women in Collision Repair, held at the conference. During the course of the discussion, panel members focused on the need to support women working in an industry where female representation is disproportionate across all the sectors. According to BASF, encouraging more women to consider automotive refinish as a career path would be helpful in addressing the issue of the technician shortage faced by collision centres throughout North America.

Workshops at the WIN conference centred around the anticipated challenges for a new generation of technicians, best communication practices during times of conflict, key collision industry updates and the annual scholarship award ceremony were some of the things included in the agenda for the 2019 conference, titled Navigating Tomorrow Together. Two hundred twenty-six women were in attendance at this year’s conference. BASF, a gold-level sponsor for 11 consecutive years, sent in 12 female representatives to the event.