Empowering Communities

Breaking the Glass Ceiling with a Crane

June 8, 2017
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Deborah M. Sawyer Community Partnership Award: Stevenson Crane Service, Inc.

donna Stevenson

Donna Stevenson, Stevenson Crane Service, Inc., accepts her company’s Supplier Diversity award.

When Donna Stevenson recalls working for a construction firm many years ago, she knew that she could run her own firm better and with much more enthusiasm.

So in 1989, she did just that by opening Stevenson Crane Service, Inc., a full-service provider of lifting equipment as well as consulting, estimating, rigging and heavy haul services. The company has offices in Bolingbrook, Ill., and South Holland, Ill.

ComEd recently honored Stevenson Crane Service, Inc., with the Deborah M. Sawyer Community Partnership Award at ComEd’s 2nd Annual Supplier Diversity Awards this spring.

The annual awards event is an opportunity for ComEd to honor and celebrate successful minority, veteran, and women-owned suppliers that are helping to drive community and economic development across northern Illinois.

“(Stevenson Crane) has worked with ComEd for 27 years and has done thousands of miles of transmission lines,” says Donna, who serves as the company’s president.

She attributes her success to all of the business and growth opportunities she received from working with ComEd and other companies along the way – something she strives to pay forward.

In 2005, Stevenson was a founder of the Chicagoland Crane Association, a not-for-profit trade association that represents the construction crane industry in metropolitan Chicago.

As a woman-owned company in a primarily male-driven business, Stevenson understands the obstacles that women face in the workplace and does her best to remedy them.

“Women who work for me earn exactly the same as men,” she says. “I also pay for their daycare fees.”

Watch the video for more information about Stevenson Crane Service, Inc.