Sue Godschalk didn't think the meeting was about her.

She'd been called in to learn who Federated Auto Parts had chosen to succeed outgoing CEO Larry Pavey, who had been elevated from president to CEO in 2020 when Rusty Bishop retired. Godschalk was named president that same year, replacing the role Pavey had vacated. None of that chain of succession crossed her mind as she sat in the meeting, ready to help welcome the incoming CEO—until she realized it was her.

"Are you serious?" she remembers asking. "I really was not expecting it. I just didn't have an idea that they were going to think that I could do the job."

It's a fitting reaction from someone whose 53-year career in the automotive aftermarket has been defined less by climbing the ladder and more by raising the bar. Godschalk has developed a reputation for, as comedian Steve Martin famously said, being "so good they can't ignore you." She's always done the job in front of her so well that the next one eventually found her.

Godschalk's career in the automotive aftermarket began in 1972, at Coiner Parts, the company that would later become Fisher Auto Parts. She worked a clerical position during normal business hours before switching to a newly minted night shift from 4 p.m. to 1 a.m., where she handled the company's billing, which was all done by hand, and occasionally helped the crew pick orders and load trucks, which gave her a glimpse of how warehousing worked. The second shift allowed Godschalk, an undergraduate student studying business management, to earn a living while finishing her degree.

A year later, an opportunity arose in a Fisher Auto Parts store. An incoming store manager needed someone with Godschalk's clerical skills to work on-site. She moved into a clerical role, but discovered she loved the counter. "I really like looking up parts, selling parts. I enjoyed learning the different aspects of automobiles and how everything works," she says. The store had its own machine shop and glass shop, and working alongside them gave her an early, granular education in exactly how a vehicle comes apart and goes back together. "It was just a really good learning experience and taught me what customer service is all about—and also teamwork. I also did a little bit of inventory management," Godschalk recalls. That curiosity about every aspect of how a parts store operates led to her being hired as the store's manager when her boss left for another opportunity. She held the post for several years.

Building Federated From the Ground Up

In 1985, the late Art Fisher recruited Godschalk to help him build something new and visionary: a program distribution group that would become Federated Auto Parts. "He gave me a call and said, 'I'm going to start a program distribution group, and I really need someone who has automotive knowledge to come and work at Federated,'" she recalls. "I found it very intriguing."

She was employee No. 3. There wasn't much of an organization yet to speak of—everyone wore multiple hats, and cross-trained on all aspects of the business out of necessity, learning marketing and purchasing alongside whatever they'd been hired to do.

"I learned a lot of different things, like marketing and purchasing. It helped me understand what Federated was all about," she says. "I was not only working for one WD, (but) I was working for a whole group of WDs, and of course, each WD is different, so it was a very good learning experience."

Godschalk remembers her first significant taste of the industry—AWDA. It was something of an awakening for her to see the size of the aftermarket—its scope, its infrastructure, and all of its moving parts—visible for the first time.

"I'm (was) like, 'Wow, you know, this is like a big industry.' I saw the WDs and all the manufacturers and, and I'm like, 'My goodness, this is a huge industry.' And I think that was the kind of 'aha' moment for me," Godschalk says.

Two Mentors, One Leadership Style

Over the next four decades, she moved through nearly every seat at Federated: from general manager to president, and finally, in January 2025, chief executive officer.

Along the way, she befriended a pair of coworkers who would become her contemporaries and who helped shape how she leads—eventual Federated CEOs Rusty Bishop and Larry Pavey.

Bishop gave her an early model of creative, trial-and-error leadership—permission to try something, and permission to fail at it. "We would try something. If it didn't work, we'd do something else," she says.

"You can't change the direction of the wind, but you can change the direction of your sails."

Larry Pavey brought a cerebral approach that involved asking questions that were sometimes uncomfortable, but aimed at arriving at a decision that felt genuinely right, not just convenient. Godschalk has carried a habit from Pavey's staff meetings into her own—the icebreaker question.

"He would ask you a question, and then he would really pay attention to how you answered that question," she says. "He was evaluating what our skills were from the questions that he was asking. It's very telling."

Godschalk says her leadership is an amalgamation of the two, with a lot of her own personality attached. She says her main goal is to show up every day for Federated's members. It builds trust, which matters to her, as do loyalty and integrity.

"They want me to give them guidance and make good decisions so that they can be successful," she says. "So with today's industry and how it's ever-changing, I have to be flexible, and I have to be on my toes. I have to make sure that I'm making good decisions. I'm determined that all of my members are going to be successful."

Adapting to an Industry in Motion

Ask her what's changed most about the industry itself, and she doesn't hesitate: the pace. She once assumed the aftermarket moved slowly and deliberately, the way industries with deep roots tend to. Today, she describes it as moving at lightning speed—electric vehicles, self-driving technology, a rate of change she compares, half-joking, to how quickly video chat went from novelty to necessity.

It's that new industrial-revolution-type speed that she wants newcomers to understand. Her advice to anyone starting is threefold: learn the business from the ground up, the way she did; expect the industry to keep changing and to keep up; and believe in yourself, especially if you don't look like everyone else in the room. That last piece is important to her. When Godschalk started, there were essentially no women working behind a parts counter. She was an exception, not the rule, even as recently as two decades ago.

That industry history doesn't bother her, though, and it hasn't hindered her. Sue is Sue, and a beloved source of encouragement and inspiration to people of all backgrounds in the aftermarket. In 2024, AWDA presented Godschalk with its Lifetime Achievement Award in Honor of Martin Fromm at its Annual Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

People who work with her will tell you that Godschalk is a serious, gourmet-level cook—someone who gardens, entertains, and has been known to prepare dinner for her staff. It's a small detail, but a fitting one for a woman who holds trust and loyalty as her standard. It's why she made a good store manager many moons ago—she's always taking care of the people in front of her.

It's an instinct summed up in her mantras: "You can't change the direction of the wind, but you can change the direction of your sails," paired with "Always have a Plan B."

It may never be known if the automotive aftermarket was the plan B of the undergraduate student who managed the Coiner Parts office at night while earning academic credits, but it encapsulates something true about her entire career arc. Godschalk never engineered her way into Federated's corner office. She adjusted, again and again, to whatever winds the industry blew into her sails, until one day, in a meeting she thought was about elevating someone else, the industry again found her.