Stephen Nordness graduated from Auburn University in 1981 with a degree in industrial management. After nine years working with a large transportation company, he set out to build his own business from the ground up. He moved his family to Birmingham, Al, and began researching the staffing industry. He saw a need for temporary staffing that was not currently being addressed, and in May 1990 opened the doors of Automation Personnel Services. He and his wife, Leslie, began their business in a small office space and began to learn more about the staffing industry. Their hard work paid off and they were thrilled their first-year revenue was over $200,000. Their commitment to both their customers and their employees was centered around a very simple formula … hard work, honesty and fairness. Over the years, Stephen’s passion for excellence and commitment to do the right thing has never wavered. Today, Automation employs over 250 full-time staff employees and over 30,000 temporary or contingent employees. They delivered revenue of over $180 million in 2014 and rank in the top 1 percent of staffing companies nationwide!

Leslie Nordness is the co-founder of Automation Personnel Services and provided valuable leadership and guidance in the early years that has led to the company’s current success. Prior to launching Automation Personnel, Leslie worked in various sales and sales management positions that gave her the experience necessary to create a successful sales model. She started out in the oil and gas industry along the Gulf Coast and was consistently at the top of the revenue list. She later moved into retail operations and management as her responsibility and scope increased through promotions and transfers.

In 1990, Leslie and her young family relocated to Birmingham and decided to start their own company. After extensive research and planning, Automation Temporary Services was born. Over the last 26 years, Leslie has continued to be an active part of the organization, leading marketing and sales initiatives with event planning and execution that drives the Automation sales environment. The name was changed to more accurately represent our mission and Automation Personnel Services was created.

In recent years, Leslie’s leadership role has provided critical counseling to developing managers and sales representatives. She has been a part of the executive team as they have made critical decisions leading to the company expansion to 32 branch offices in 10 states. Leslie has now taken on a more formal role as chief marketing officer. In this role, Leslie will play a key part in developing and initiating online marketing and developing corporate branding initiatives.

John Nordness graduated from Auburn University with a degree in engineering. After graduation, John worked in the aerospace industry as an integration engineer with Teledyne Brown Engineering. As a program manager for microgravity research, John was involved in the development and flight of over 40 space shuttle experiments. As the Senior Director of Enterprise System Management, John was responsible for all the networks, business systems and servers utilized in their $600 MM/year medical billing and scheduling business.

After leaving Per-Se John joined BellSouth/AT&T Convergent Services Group as a Senior Technical Director. John was responsible for the management of the software development and test environment utilized to develop and test internet products and services offered by their ISP business unit.

John joined Automation Personnel Services in 2011 to start an engineering recruiting service leveraging his 25 years of building highly successful technical teams.