Lawrence Quinn, president of Alstom Chattanooga Turbines LLC, stands at the Alstom plant.Lawrence Quinn says that the beautiful part of life is you don’t know where it’s going to take you.
“I’m the only guy I know who has a wife from Poland, a son from Hong Kong, a daughter from Richmond, Va., and I’m an Englishman with an Irish background,” he said.
Quinn, 44, five months ago took over as president of Alstom’s nearly 2-year-old, $300 million Chattanooga factory that builds steam and gas turbines for power plants and retrofits existing facilities.
He has taken a circuitous route to arrive in Chattanooga, including working in England, France, Switzerland and spending over 16 years in China.
“I’ve seen all the changes in China,” Quinn said in a recent interview at the Riverfront Parkway plant, adding he arrived in the Asian nation just after the Tiananmen Square uprising and stayed though its evolution the past two decades. “It has been quite impressive.”