Empowered Success: The Female Influence in Courtesy Auto’s Finance Department

(l-r) Clarissa Martinez, Sofia Faussette, Dana Miller, Misty Peckins and Dora Herrmann

Automotive dealerships are dominated by nearly 80% men, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics from 2022, and yet the finance “Dream Team” at Phoenix-based Courtesy Automotive Group is a diverse team of five disparate females. We direct finance department operations across dealerships for a $1 billion dealership group. We believe our success has as much to do with being female as the expertise we bring to our work.

Our group is multidimensional and has an average tenure at Courtesy of 12 years. One of us has degrees in applied physics and mathematics, while others have a high school education. One is an herbalist and Tarot card reader while another is a former Texas beauty queen. Another of us races Ducatis and breeds Frenchies on the side. Still another owns and operates a community ice cream truck on the weekends. How we look at credit applications and build relationships with banks, our peers and our customers is driven by our female experience — and it’s a major part of Courtesy’s success.

Many dealership organizations with multiple brands have fierce competition between finance teams to see who can generate the most profit. We have gone in a different direction. The five of us share a strong bond that allows us to put aside ego and focus on the larger team success of Courtesy Automotive Group. We share resources and leverage each team member’s strengths to develop a workflow that benefits everyone, especially our employees.

Being wives and mothers has been crucial in our roles at work. In fact, we may be finance directors, but we are also “chief nurturers.” Many functions in the organization bubble up to finance, which means we are frequently in contact with employees across the enterprise who have roles outside of finance. These are often young people learning the business. We work to understand them and teach them the “Courtesy Way” so they can be their best professionally.

Being both a professional and personal mentor to our younger team members has created opportunities for us to gain a holistic sense of our employees and helps us identify how to grow and promote them into different roles at Courtesy. This translates to success for our company as we help cultivate employees who are experienced, knowledgeable and want to make their career with us.

Given the challenges that exist for women in this industry, the fact that Courtesy’s executive team has given us their full support is remarkable and a testament to the Courtesy Way that permeates our office culture. It’s simple: We take care of our employees and they take care of our customers, resulting in a lifetime of loyalty from both.

We’ve all worked at other auto dealerships that have beat their chests about an amazing culture that ends up being mostly platitudes. Courtesy, however, has empowered us to define what the Courtesy Way means in our own roles. It’s an unspoken responsibility that we take very seriously.

A huge component of being a successful woman in this organization is not being judged for having a family. Just like the men, we are trusted to balance our personal and professional lives. Being moms and at the top of our professions also makes us role models for our children, and that makes us proud.

Courtesy Automotive Group started off as a family-owned Chevy store in 1955 and has grown to include Volvo, KIA, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, RAM and Isuzu Truck brands for individual and fleet purchasers in Arizona and California. Last year, we added Polestar to our collection with a dedicated EV store at Scottsdale’s Fashion Square Mall.

What we have seen firsthand is the power of female influence in a male-dominated industry. We’ve taken the hammer and broken through the glass ceiling, and our business is the better for it.   

The all-female Courtesy Automotive Group finance director “Dream Team” is comprised of Sofia Faussette, Dora Herrmann, Clarissa Martinez, Dana Miller and Misty Peckins, who bring their varied backgrounds and interests to their work at Courtesy Automotive Group’s diverse dealerships, as they describe in this article. Their individual tenures as finance director at Courtesy (not including previous experience elsewhere) are Faussette’s one year, Herrmann’s 29 years, Martinez’s seven years, Miller’s three years and Peckins’ six years.