Engineering Career Conversations Podcast

Christa Downey: Welcome to the Engineering Career Conversations. I'm Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University. Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I'm Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you. Christa Downey: Joining us here today is alumnus Chaz Calitri. Chaz is currently the Vice President of Operations at Kyowa-Kirin North America. Welcome, Chaz. So let's start by having you tell the listeners about your current work. Charles Calitri: Yeah, so great. Thank you. I'm currently the Vice President of Operations for Kyowa-Kirin North America. Kyowa-Kirin Corporation is a Japanese global specialty biopharma. That's a mouthful. We specialize in rare diseases. So we serve unmet medical leads in small patient populations. I'm actually designing and constructing a new biomanufacturing facility in Sanford, North Carolina. This is actually the first footprint for Kyowa-Kirin outside of Japan in manufacturing. So it's a pretty big venture for the company. We started the project about a year and a half ago. And right now we're completing the design phase and we're beginning the construction of the facility. Excellent. What does that look like day to day? Oh, boy. So no day is the same. So I have a design team that's based in Cary, North Carolina. So this is a fairly large team of engineers working on the design, all disciplines. I have a team supporting them in the office in Sanford, North Carolina. That's a temporary office that we've leased. And then I have a team at the construction site. And the site right now, if you were to go there, it's a big open field, I would say, that's been cleared with foundations and underground piping happening at the moment. So we're doing a little bit of everything at the same time just to go as fast as we can. You know, the one thing about the work that we do is that we're serving patients with unmet medical needs, So we have products that can help people. And time is life. That's what we say. Christa Downey: Yeah, I love that. So looking at your entire career, what's been your greatest challenge that you faced? And how did you overcome it? Charles Calitri: So there's been probably three, I would say three moments, three phases of my career that I would immediately think of. The first one was when I was asked to move to a manufacturing plant we had in New York State that was experiencing a lot of difficulties. This was a pharma manufacturing plant for a big company. And I was sent there as the director of engineering. I was asked to take over a project that was more than a year and a half beyond schedule and significantly over budget, and that had a lot of technical issues as well. And the difficult part of that project and that assignment was, after I landed there, realizing that I had to make a lot of changes to the project team. And that was a difficult process. And when you think about it, the technical challenges as an engineer, you know, those are, I don't want to say easy, but they're always solvable. It's the people challenges that you know become a little bit more difficult right yeah and so I, I think I learned and grew a lot in that role ultimately it took us about four years to turn that that project and that facility around but it was a tremendous learning experience from a people perspective and from a leadership perspective you know learning how to hold people accountable but at the same time having the empathy to understand that you know everybody's a unique individual and You have to really try to see things through their lens as you're making some tough decisions sometimes. You know, there was another example I would immediately come to more recently in my career. I was the plant manager for a facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan at the time of the pandemic. And the company I was working for, Pfizer, you might know them. They had a candidate for a vaccine for COVID-19, and they asked me if I could enable that site to manufacture a vaccine. We would be sort of the third leg in the relay race. There was a facility in St. Louis, one in Andover, Massachusetts, and one that I was running in Michigan. That would be the supply chain. And so in St. Louis, they take the plasma, they made it into DNA, that went to Andover, where they linearized that into mRNA, that came to us frozen in Michigan, and then we would have to formulate and fill a package of that. So I just said that in a very simple way, but I can tell you in March of 2020, when things were in lockdown and sadly, large numbers of people were dying every day globally, and we potentially had a solution at that point in time, there was a lot of pressure on us to get this done. And, you know, it was pressure we put on ourselves, too, because we knew this was a humanitarian effort. And, you know, so I immediately formed, I would call it a task team. And I handpicked a lot of engineers and scientists. And we more or less sequestered ourselves. And over the next nine months, we were able to enable that facility to run what became our COVID-19 vaccine that was launched in December of that year. So in just nine months, I was able to work with this team to get that done. And it was, there were so many technical challenges along the way and people challenges. Think about what was going on in the country. It was a time of political unrest, right? A presidential election year. It was a time of racial unrest, right? The George Floyd murder happened in May of that year. And I'm trying to run a manufacturing plan where people are afraid to come to work and launch potentially a vaccine that could help people around the world. And we always knew that even if we were able to enable manufacturing of that product, we couldn't make enough. So even when we started the project, we were thinking about how to de-bottleneck it so that we can make more and more and more. the first week we launched the vaccine, we were making one batch a week, which was 1.5 million doses. Seven months later, we were making 20 million a week. And that's just through pure engineering. So it was a fun project. It was a tough project. But it was, you know, something that I think was another defining moment in my career. And now I'm in the capstone phase of my career. I'm taking everything I learned from the 40 plus years of pharma manufacturing and engineering. And I was asked by this Japanese company to start a project to build new capability in a country they'd never done any work in. And so I was employee number one in North Carolina, and now I have a team of 30. And I'm leveraging all the experience I've had prior to build this facility, make it really special. And one of the things that's really important to me is focusing more in this role on the people. And I think that's what's going to make the difference in this project. And I want this project to be fun. And I say that to our team all the time. Christa Downey: You radiate enthusiasm. I love that. I appreciate the enthusiasm. I appreciate your persistence and leadership and getting that vaccine out. Thank you. And this validates what we're doing here in the college with engineering students, with educating them on the technical issues, and then the emphasis that we've been placing, particularly in recent years, on leadership skills. This is excellent. Thank you. Charles Calitri: Yeah. In fact, one of the things I did with this team that's very unique, I think. I early on decided that I wanted to bring in recent graduates. And you wouldn't typically do that when you're doing a design of a new facility because you're looking for skilled and experienced engineers. But I thought we had a project of three years in duration from the time we start design to the time we begin manufacturing. And in my mind, I thought that if I, got a couple of bright engineers right out of school. They could work directly for me. So they would work in their day-to-day with me. And over time, they would work on the facility design, the construction, equipment selection, startup, commissioning, validation. They would work through every phase of the project. And by the time the project was finished, they would be my production supervisors. And I thought I could get these young people ready in three years. That's what I needed. And they would be able to see the project from really from start to finish. And so far, it's working out great. So I have two engineers, chemical engineers also, and they are just bringing a lot of energy and enthusiasm. I just love working with them. So there's been a lot of other added benefits to having them on the team. And actually, I'm going to probably bring a few more recent grads on to the team. Christa Downey: Excellent. That's exciting for you, for the students, the graduates. I love it. We always ask about how our guests are making an impact in the world and particularly in alignment with the values of the College of Engineering. And you are clearly making the world a healthier place in your work. And I'm curious to know, and more equitable, it sounds, who are the collaborators in this? Charles Calitri: There's a whole ecosystem around this, as you would imagine. So even if I look at the experience with the COVID vaccine launch, right? I mean, there was an army of people, not only within the company, but we had partners and we had collaborators and we had consultants and we had regulators and we had clinicians and doctors and payers and everybody was involved. And what I've learned about that is the power of everybody working toward a common goal to solve a problem can be, you know, tremendous. And that's the reason, you know, we were able to get this done because we realized very early on that we can't do this ourselves. And if I, you know, I think back on my career and I think back on projects that have been most successful. It's always when, you know, we take a very healthy approach to, you know, what we know and what we don't know. And recognizing that sometimes to solve issues or challenges or whatever it is we're trying to do, that the answer lies from somewhere, you know, outside of our team. And so I've always been very big on networking and taking a worldview view of things. And I think that, you know, with younger people who tend to get focused technically in their various disciplines, that's something that I probably would have done differently. But you have to look at the whole ecosystem if you want to be most effective and efficient at what you're trying to do. And, you know, I think that was just a great example. And I believe we can solve other problems, Alzheimer's, cancer, et cetera, if we put that type of an effort behind. I really will. Yeah. We had so much support and it just made things happen. Christa Downey: Yeah. I love it. So speaking of efficiency, where do you see AI coming into this work? Charles Calitri: I think it's like when the internet first started to be, you know, the next thing, right, that everybody was going to jump on. And we didn't really understand it or know how it was going to change our lives or impact our work and all of that. And I think we're at the same place with AI. I mean, it's not a field that I'm an expert in, to be frank. I see things happening to us that are benefiting us in the AI world, for example, how we do engineering design. fine um but I also see that you know the human part of the work we do is still and always going to be front and center and um AI to me will be a tool it'll be a means of getting things done it may have other profound impacts but you know that's not an area that i consider myself yeah a thought leader and I'm kind of going to be a follower and and see how things go but And maybe early adapter, I don't know. But certainly as an engineer, you know, we see the benefit from a design perspective. You know, could we design things faster and more accurately, right? I mean, we do all of our work in a model, which is in a computer. And we do that with all of the trade partners who build our project. And that's, you know, 20 years ago, we didn't do that. Now, can you envision with AI where we could have a design tool that, you know, could do all this for us and do it a lot faster? That's one aspect of it. The other aspect of it, I think, in pharma and for, you know, for our field is in the clinical side of the business. So could you imagine right now when we do testing of products, we do it in humans that have safety studies and things like that. Could you imagine that we have, you know, an artificial intelligence tool that could simulate how a molecule will behave in the human body and it will know, you know, be able to tell us the efficacy, the safety, the contraindications, side effects, whatever. And that would, like, greatly accelerate clinical trials. I mean, it takes so long for us to get medications to market. And this is an area that's very sensitive to me. And, you know, my personal story, my wife died of breast cancer 15 years ago. And if she were diagnosed today with the same type of cancer, we would have had a different outcome. And it's only because of the research and development that's happened since then. So I come back to my earlier statement about time being life. And could AI help accelerate medications we have today in the pipeline so that we can save lives down the road? Yeah. So I anticipate, as you said, that's going to help a lot of people. Christa Downey: Right. And I think our students are learning about all of this and they're going to be at the cutting edge of this technology. And so thinking about lessons learned that you might share with these students, and you keep mentioning relationships and leadership, and I'm curious to know, what about these things do you wish you knew as a sophomore? Charles Calitri: Oh, boy. I mean, so many lessons learned. And I get asked that question a lot. I think there's three things that come to mind immediately that I would have done differently in my career. The first would be to go global. By that, I mean, we're in a global economy. We're in a world that's connected. And engineers need to be able to communicate effectively and collaborate effectively with people everywhere. Yeah. And for me, I didn't do my first global project until I was maybe 10 years into my career. And I think I waited too long for that. So getting connected globally, getting on assignments that where you interface with different cultures and populations and learning how to effectively communicate, that will help you throughout your entire career. I'm working now for a Japanese company. The Japanese culture is very different. I work for Pfizer, which is a New York -based company, and it's a hugely different experience in a lot of ways. Now, I've had the fortune of working in Japan prior with Pfizer, and in many different countries. When I was the head of global engineering, I worked in a number of countries, but going global. So that's the first point. Second is going deep, I say. so deep. What do I mean by that? You know, you have to be, if you want to be a technical leader or a technical person of any kind, you have to get, you know, knowledge, a knowledge base that has depth in some area of the business, right? And whatever it might be. But a lot of times what I see younger engineers trying to do is they learn something at a superficial level and then jump to something else. And at the end of, you know, a number of projects, they're really just scratching the surface in any one of the technologies or areas. And although that could make you maybe a proficient project manager, it doesn't really give you the technical acumen that you need. I have to make decisions every day, technical decisions and non -technical decisions. And The technical acumen that I've learned gives me the ability to ask the right questions, to cause people to think more about the solutions they're proposing, and that's around innovation. Point being that going deep in some field, do you have to be a thought leader? Maybe not, but certainly having proficiency in some aspect of engineering or some technical arena is important. So going global, going deep. The third one would be to get a mentor. Now, I didn't appreciate or get involved with mentorship until probably 20 years into my career. And that was a big mistake. I mean, mentors can help you so dramatically in terms of not only your leadership behaviors and your emotional intelligence and things that are really important for leaders, but also in terms of how to navigate, you know, could be, you know, a maze within a large corporation, for example, which was my example. You know, there's ways of getting things done. And then there's the real way that things happen and how things get done. And I think mentors help you shortcut that whole process. And so go global, go deep, get a mentor. Those are three things I tell all students. Christa Downey: Yes, we could do a whole episode on each of those. I'm going to jump on the mentor one because we emphasize this so much in our work with students. And I'm curious, you know, say more about how to approach a mentor or how to make the most of a mentor relationship. What would you offer there? Charles Calitri: So first of all, it's making sure you have a match, right, in terms of not only what you're trying to achieve, which means you have to have goals, right? That's important also. And there should be mutual goals. Out of every mentorship, I learn probably more than the mentee, honestly. And I look to do that and I'm deliberate about that. Setting clear objectives, making sure the chemistry is right between you and the person who's mentoring you, that's important. and then recognizing there's different levels of mentoring right the highest level being sponsorship when your mentor is actually creating pathways for you for your next role for example versus a mentor who's is very tactical and helping you solve a problem so there's different levels of mentoring so being thoughtful or mindful about what it is I'm trying to get out of this relationship. What are my objectives? How can I most effectively get to that place is really important as a first step. And then you also need to, you know, establish a cadence of meetings and just the logistics of the mentoring, right? I like structured mentor program, mentorship programs, because it forces both parties to be thoughtful about what they're doing. It's not haphazard. It's not ad hoc. It's deliberate. It's planned. There's a start and an end. I usually do one year with people, although often people ask to continue on a less formal basis. But I think that preparation for the sessions you have with your mentor and the mentor preparing for you as well is critical. I'm meeting with my mentee here on campus in the Compass Program tomorrow. And she and I, this will be our third meeting together, first time face-to-face. We're taking advantage of my being on campus. And, you know, we have a list of topics we're going to be covering. After the meetings, there's a survey we complete on what we discussed, what we learned, where we're going with the mentorship. Christa Downey: Yes. Excellent. I love that. And And thank you for being a mentor for the Compass program. That's significant. Yeah, great. So let's move into the fun part. What do you do to relax, have fun, and re-energize? Charles Calitri: I think I am relaxed in what I'm doing today. You know, I kind of went, you know, back to my future in that I like building things. I like designing things. And when I was working as the head of global engineering or running large manufacturing plants, or being the person that people who ran large manufacturing plants reported into, I was just very far removed from the engineering piece. And so now I get to tie that all together in that I've got the people part of it, in that I'm building a team, and I'm really having a lot of fun doing that. And I've got the technical part of it, where I like designing and building something so i can put my hands into any part of the project i want um which is a lot of fun but i also get to balance that with you know the team that I'm creating so so I'm having a lot of fun doing yeah and I don't even consider this work and honestly I mean I think the prior assignments would have been a lot different if we had that discussion but in this role I think I'm having the most fun so far. But outside of work, I mean, I like to spend time with my daughters and travel. That's something we like to do. So family is really important to me. And of course, the three of us are very close, just given our personal situation. I like to spend time in nature and get outside. I think that's a healthy thing to do. It's one of the things I like about being here in Ithaca, but also in North Carolina where I am currently, and even at the shore where my home is in New Jersey. So that's important to me. And then meditation. I do meditation. My day starts very early. I'm up at four usually. And that's what I do right straight up is I begin the day just relaxing, meditating on, you know, whatever topics that come into my head usually but uh I like to read um yeah I mean I I like sports so a little bit of everything. Christa Downey: Yes it sounds very fulfilling. How is this similar to or different from what you imagined for yourself as you were growing up and maybe studying here at Cornell I mean I would have never imagined the journey that I've had um I I think I knew I wanted to be in some technical feel when i was in high school but when I came here it sort of solidified that I remember- I'll tell you a funny story. I remember orientation week here on campus and walking up the stairs in Mcgraw tower for the first time all the way to the chimes and the last flight of stairs to get to the to the top graffitied on the wall of the tower was engineers build and maintain the world. And I saw that and it like hit me in the most profound way. And I remember that for my whole career. I talk about that. And I believe that. Right. I believe scientists and engineers and technical people not only create the future, but also we have an obligation to move humankind forward in all the different arenas. And yeah, engineers do build and maintain the world. So how would I have imagined my career? I never thought I'd be in pharma. But here I am in my 44th year of being in pharma, always in engineering and manufacturing. different aspects of pharma manufacturing, and in different places. I've had the fortune of building projects all over the world, China, Brazil, India, we do projects, Europe, of course, U.S. So some really fun places. That part of my job has just been really fulfilling, rewarding, and I would encourage, again, younger people to think about that, taking assignments when you have the freedom and flexibility, you learn and grow so much when you experience other cultures and ways of working. It's just so important. So I wouldn't have imagined that in my career. And that's been a real plus. And then just being part of the pharmaceutical industry, although we tend to get a black eye in some cases, maybe rightfully so with drug pricing and things that people talk about. But I would also say that research-based pharma companies are the reason that, you know, we're talking about cures for particular types of cancer, and now there's breakthroughs in Alzheimer's, and these really difficult challenges that, you know, we can't appreciate unless you're in the mix, you know, working on it. So I think that, you know, our profession is very noble, and the mission is very noble, And I think, you know, we're going to solve some of these problems. It's going to happen. And will AI be a piece of that? I think so. I think so. Christa Downey: Yes, for sure. And so where do you go to stay current on your work? And what do you recommend students listen to or read? Charles Calitri: One industry group that I promote, to be honest, that's the International Society of Pharmaceutical Engineers. I've been a longstanding member of ISPE and have made many connections there, networking there, which is really important. And whether you're part of ISPE or any other industry trade association or group, I think that's, you know, something I would highly recommend to younger people. Most of these organizations have student chapters, as does ISPE. But that's one area that, you know, I've given talks at these meetings. I've led seminars. I've just met so many great engineers, smart people that help me solve problems. So I'd reach out to them when I have problems. They reach out to me when they have problems, and we share a lot. So that's been just a tremendous organization for me and probably been a member there almost 40 years. So it's a long time. When I first worked in biopharma in 1989, I did a project in New Hampshire. It was actually affiliated with Dartmouth University at a small company that was doing research. And we were designing a fluidized bed reactor to grow cells. And it was really interesting technology. It never ended up working because we couldn't keep the tube, the bioreactor, sterile for a lot of reasons. But we learned a lot. And now everything is disposable. So the technology is very different unless you get large scale manufacturing and that's in fixed vessels. But the technology has changed dramatically there. But the other big area where I see things have changed dramatically is in the automation and digitization of, you know, the control of what we do. So, you know, biopharma manufacturing, with the exception of what I just talked about with disposables, it's really the same as it's been for a long time. But what's changed is how we monitor and control. And we can now even simulate bioreactors using digital twins, for example. That's where the big changes have happened. So if you're working in automation, computer science, anything digital, those are very hot fields. And in fact, as a team I'm building now in North Carolina, what's the hardest type of engineer for me to find? a digital or computer science or automation engineer. They're the ones in demand, and I have to pay more to get that. Just a little tip for people looking for an area that they want to land very quickly and make a lot of money, because that's not slowing down. The demand is just escalating dramatically. Christa Downey: And do you find that students tend to need a master's degree or PhD, or do you take them out of undergrad if they have some experience there? Charles Calitri: That's a great question. A lot of students have asked me that, and the short answer is no. I think, you know, having your degree without a master's is more than enough to get you started. And in fact, there's maybe even some advantage to that because then you can really experiment, explore where you might want to focus and what you might want to, you know, go back to school for. So I encourage people that, you know, to keep an open mind, right? I graduated with a degree in chemical engineering. I was being courted largely by oil companies and chemical companies. I didn't imagine anything about working at a pharmaceutical manufacturing company. And I think it's the same today. I think engineers should get out, experiment, try different things, be curious try different things and and then figure out you know what do i like what really gels for me, what where's my heart you know what do i want to do and you know there's just so much possibility and so much out there and even look at all that we don't know that's going to happen in the next five ten years with the explosion you know the rate of change they say is never going be as slow as it is today, right? So the possibilities are endless. Don't lock in at this point. Christa Downey: It is clear how much you love your work. And we work with all of these students here at the university and particularly in engineering. And really what we want for them is that they find opportunities that they are as excited about as you are every day waking up and knowing that they're making a difference. So thank you for mentoring students, for sharing your story. This has been wonderful. Thank you for listening. If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode where we will be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to the Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University. 

Traci Nathans Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans Kelly, director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you. 

Christa Downey: Today we are joined by alumnus Matthew Richwine of Telos Energy. Matt is an electrical engineer by heart and training, who is designing, testing, and analyzing thermal and renewable power generation equipment. I’m so glad to have you here today. I’m so glad to share your story with current students and any other wisdom that you want to share. Let’s do it. 

Matt Richwine: All right. Sounds great. Happy to be here. It’s always a pleasure to get to interact with the Cornell and especially the student body community in any way that I can. 

Christa Downey: Excellent. Excellent. So can you start by telling us about your current work? 

Matt Richwine: Sure. So my current work is I am a power systems engineer and co-founder of a company called Telos Energy. We specialize in modeling and analysis of the electric power grid, and largely today, that’s around the connection of renewables like wind, solar, and battery energy storage to the grid. And whether that’s economic analysis or engineering analysis, our company does both. 

Christa Downey: I love it. So what does this look like for you as the founder and CEO? What does this look like for you on a day to day basis? 

Matt Richwine: On a day to day basis, so we are engaged with a number of different clients across the industry. And so there’s a lot of touch and working with different stakeholders in the industry through their problems and helping figure out new ways to resolve those. And so on a day to day basis, we also have a team of about a dozen people now. About half with engineering backgrounds, half with economics backgrounds. And so it’s working with working in the team setting to solve those problems and to understand what the problems are, both kind of near term problems in terms of maybe connecting a particular new generation facility to an electric system to the grid or also future problems in terms of, as we know, the grid is under the energy system at large is under a large transition. And the things that we’ve done in the past, the practices from decades of experience, will they still apply in the next five, ten, 20 years? And if so, how, and if not, what new methods and processes and metrics should we be looking at to evaluate? Is the system going to work? Is it going to be stable? Is it going to be economic and reliable? 

Christa Downey: And you’ve been working in the energy industry since you were a student and you worked for some large corporations, how was your decision made to start your own company, and what did that look like? 

Matt Richwine: Yeah. You know, it’s always been something intriguing, something that I think a lot of folks have in mind in terms of, you know, what would that look like in the vision and some of the autonomy that comes with that, I think is very attractive, and that certainly was the case for me. But at the outset, I just didn’t feel that you know, I wouldn’t know where to start. And as much as I had learned upon graduation and certainly felt like I, you know, could grab the world and pull it in by the tail and things, you know, I knew that wasn’t really the case, and I really wanted to go and continue my education in a sense, but in industry and with a large company that had a lot of great people and had been doing it for a long time where I could really, really take that on and learn from others and see how it works. And I was, you know, I did that for about ten years with GE, and it was a tremendous experience, very gratifying in a lot of ways. And I was very happy to keep doing that when, you know, just the right situation came up in terms of meeting someone else who had a very complimentary skill set and really wanting to chase a certain avenue of work, that being integration of renewables in systems and electric grids around the world that we really wanted to pursue more on a full time basis. And so that is kind of one thing led to another where we decided to make the leap and try out the entrepreneurship thing. And I think, you know, we’ve been absolutely very fortunate in so many ways for things to have played out now that that was six years ago, and we’ve built a team around this. Yeah, it seems to be doing well. 

Christa Downey: So what has been one of the more significant challenges that you faced in your career? 

Matt Richwine: Well, let’s see. There’s been a lot of a lot of different challenges, and, you know, each driving towards growth. I think about there’s some of the- there’s technical challenges, I would say, and then there’s kind of more interpersonal challenges that come up. And then I think there’s also kind of my internal challenges, I would say, about managing stress, I would say is one of the things that, you know, is, I think, common to everyone and everyone has different ways to deal with that. One of the things that I’ve realized and, you know, thinking back in terms of my time as a student at Cornell, is, you know, there’s always an element of stress and the pressure, and that’s really, you know, where a lot of the growth can come from in terms of the personal growth and working to manage that. And I think I’ve caught myself a few times saying, Oh, well, you know, if I can just get through X, whether it’s this week’s problem set or next month’s prelim or this semester, then, you know, there’ll be smooth sailing. And I keep on, you know, I’ve looked back and kind of had those thoughts long enough to realize that it’s somewhat of a trap for me, I’d say, and that it’s not really it’s kind of not the right approach for me in terms of it’s not like you’re going to get to some magical paradise just over the horizon. And you certainly don’t want to kind of you know, wish your life away looking for something like that. But to just get better at handling the feeling of not everything is the way maybe I would like it to be ideally, but it’s okay. It’s not off the rails. And I think that’s certainly been magnified a bit in pursuing our own business where I think the stakes are certainly higher. Personally and professionally, it’s a relatively small industry, and so reputation matters a lot. And there’s a lot of stress that comes with having employees, for which, you know, in many ways, I feel responsible for. And I think there’s a balance of understanding, you know, a lot of times I’m thinking, okay, well, we have too much going on, and how am I going to keep up with this and stay on top of everything? And if I could just get a few more things done, if there was one extra hour in a day, you know, I could just do a little bit more than I’d be golden. And then I start thinking and realizing, well, if that were the case, I would probably be stressed out that I wasn’t doing enough. And, you know, you start realizing that you’re riding on this kind of knife edge where there is actually no kind of perfect middle ground. It doesn’t exist. It’s kind of fictitious. And so I think that’s a realization and kind of helped me to manage that challenge of stress that I’ve come to only relatively recently, I’d say, and of course, still wrestling with it. 

Christa Downey: I really appreciate that perspective and that metaphor. That’s good. You’re doing what you want to be doing. You’re making the impact you want to be making. 

Christa Downey: Okay, so along those lines, right? And this is something in the College of Engineering, we value a more sustainable, healthier, more equitable world is what we’re working toward. And so I know you are, as well. Can you speak more specifically to that? 

Matt Richwine: Sure. Yeah. You know, there’s a lot of things in terms of, you know, making the world a better place, I think, is certainly an aspiration for many of us. And, you know, the way that we’re doing it is kind of is working through the energy system to essentially help bring on new resources that are greener and have a lower environmental impact. And helping to understand ways in which the existing generation that we’ve relied upon and that have given us this incredible quality of life and level of reliability that’s, you know, just so easy to take for granted because it’s so incredibly high. You know, how do we keep the best of both worlds? And how do we work through having a reliable system and all of the benefits that go along with that, while also having it come from cleaner resources? And I think that’s for us, you know, an energy because energy is something that we all interact with on a daily basis, on a, you know, second by second basis. It’s really in our face all the time. And so I think for this, it feels very tangible for us and for our team. That we are working on the ways in which we generate and use energy all of the time, and how can we do that cleaner? I think that it feels really good also because it feels pretty tangible. But, you know, there’s so many different ways to do that. They’re almost all indirect, right? You’re working through systems and things that are existing. And I think, you know, there’s a lot of ways to have an impact, but that’s how we feel it and experience it. 

Christa Downey: Yeah, and thinking about that impact and thinking about where you are on a day to day basis, a year to year basis, and then even as you were getting started and building up this business, who are the other key partners? 

Matt Richwine: Yeah, so in terms of the key partners, you know, it’s a huge it’s like what I’ve really come to appreciate so much is the importance of relationships with people, with organizations, and especially going off and going into getting into the entrepreneurship side of things, is that that stuff can’t be understated. And so everything from mentors of folks that I have worked with at different points in my career, to customers that I had different folks that I had interacted with along the way in terms for my career, as well as some other, you know, professional organizations and also in terms of Cornell in terms of reaching back out, you know, the alumni network and kind of also participating and coming back to engage with students on campus that has played out in a really great way for us. You know, they’re all bits and pieces of it, and I think it’s hard to hard to pin down exactly all of them because that all happens in ways that I didn’t plan for or anticipate, which is kind of, you know, the beauty of, I guess, the serendipity of doing something like this, is that it kind of hits you after the fact when you think, Oh, gee, like, you know, I didn’t expect this to happen, and it turned into a really great thing. 

Matt Richwine: Yeah, there’s kind of a couple examples of that. 

Christa Downey: Yeah, can you share one or two? 

Matt Richwine: Sure. There’s a couple that jump to mind. One is really fun for the Cornell community. And if we flash back to pre pandemic in 2019, Christa had invited me out to the campus to speak and have a roundtable with some engineering students there. And of course, I jumped at the opportunity. I really enjoy those things. And I remember having, you know, coming back in the fall, it’s, of course, a great experience and the fall colors out. And I had a really nice session within an hour with a group of students, a handful of students, a lot of great questions and folks that were, you know, really engaged. And yeah, and then, you know, we spent the night in Ithaca, had a nice time and then went back. And I thought, Well, you know, okay, that was great. Really glad to do that. And then I got a couple of follow up questions from some of the students who reached out and were just interested more in asking a few more details as they’re considering their career paths. And I said, you know, okay, great, like, happy to have those conversations. And one student in particular reached out again and we kind of kept the conversation going. He said, Well, you know, I’d really like to get into this. Is this something are you guys hiring? And I said, Well, you know, we started the business less than a year ago at this point, right? So, you know, we’re not hiring yet. And even if, you know, it feels like it’d be a risk that I wouldn’t want to take if I were you given everything so new. I said, Well, hey, if you’re really interested in this, here’s a couple of folks that you might consider working with and get some experience that way and see how it goes. And so fast forward, you know, part of a year later, and he gave back to me and he said, Hey, I did an internship with, you know, who you recommended. And I thought, Gee, okay, this person is really serious about this space. And so then we started talking about, all right, well, how do we you know, we’re still a little new, but can we form an internship? And can we get creative about how to do it on really a part time basis? And we tried it out, and it worked great. And then, you know, so now here that we’re sitting in fall of 2024, he’s our longest employee, and he’s been with us for over three years now and done tremendous work and really a lot of growth. And it’s just been great to see. And it was something that I just didn’t I never would have guessed would have happened. It wasn’t my intent for going to have this conversation at all. And to see where life plays out has really been a lot of fun, especially when you’re that fortunate for something to work out in such a long term relationship. So that’s been a great one. 

Christa Downey: Love that story. I remember that conversation. I remember you coming back to campus and students being eager to follow up with you. I love any story that is about students or people getting jobs because of networking, because of curiosity, talking to people and expressing an interest in what they’re doing. And I especially love it when it’s, you know, a student alumni situation. That’s fantastic. 

Matt Richwine: Yeah, it’s really been great. And I’d say, you know, it’s a nice example, and it’s not the only one. I think one of the things that I’ve learned about, you know, another kind of funny one is that when we were just starting the business, my partner, Derek, and I, and we were a couple of weeks into it, and we had a few people reaching out really based on LinkedIn and as we’re kind of saying, Hey, we’re starting this thing up. And we got some interest and exchanged a few emails and didn’t really think too much of it. And then we got some traction with some other folks, and fast forward, literally two years later, we had one of the people that had reached out to us in the first two weeks or so emailed us back from the same thread. Like we went like, 2021, and we looked back and we were like, Yeah, like, you know, February 2019, here’s this email of where we left off and just re engaged and picked up. And we and love to laugh about this one because we wouldn’t have thought that would happen, but these things do happen, and they can really in many ways, they turn into great relationships and can even, you know, become really important to clients or a part of your career in your life. And so I think that’s, yeah, it’s fun how those can happen. 

Christa Downey: It is. Switching gears a little. In what ways do you anticipate AI impacting your work? 

Matt Richwine: Yeah, I was just having a conversation on this this morning. You know, it’s hard to say for me. I guess I get a little overwhelmed, maybe, because it’s a very broad and powerful tool, and there are all kinds of implications for that for great things and also for, you know, not so great things, which maybe I try not to dwell on. But in terms of the great things, you know, the ability to- One of the things that we do with AI is, you know, it’s like having a very, very patient assistant, if you will, where you can ask all kinds of dumb questions in slightly different ways, and it never seem to get too bothered by you. And so we use that to help us when we- One of the things that we do is program is use programming we’re in Python and developing a lot of our own tools and testing a lot of new methods with that. And it’s a way to get a jump start on some things that we haven’t done before, where we’re, for instance, using some new libraries that we haven’t used before. And it can help us get things working faster than we otherwise would have. I think that’s a nice part of it, and I think that trend is likely to continue. There’s another bit where it’ll help us to digest. So one of the things that we get involved in is large plans, documents of plans that utilities and others put forth in terms of how they’re going to operate their system in the future and plan for a new generation and retirements and new transmission. It helps us get through these kind of, you know, hundreds of pages of documents quickly and to find where we should really be focusing. And so I think it helps us cut to the chase in that way in terms of sorting through it and finding what sections are relevant. And then from there, you know, we really have to buckle down and do the digestion and figure out what it means and what we should do with it. So I think those are some of the things that I think that we’re using it for now. I think there’s a lot more to come. I mean, you can certainly imagine that scaling up more. And the electric power space, and I imagine, you know, we’re not the only industry with that, I’d say, with this characteristic, but You know, one of the I’d say, one of the core aspects of the electric power space is the reliability of the system and how that is really paramount. And someone was just mentioning to me or asking me, what is the uptime of the grid? And I say, Well, it’s so high generally that actually it’s easier to measure the downtime, and it’s a pretty small number. And so if you look at it that way, you know, achieving that reliability is no small feat, and it’s driven a bit of conservatism. And I think folks in the industry, engineers and all the way up through those organizations, there’s a conservative culture and rightly so, to achieve those kinds of levels of reliability. And so when anything new comes along, I think there is a bit of skepticism and challenge and say, Well, you know, we’ve done it this way and for good reason. And now you’re asking us to do it this way or use a different tool or a different method and you get some pushback. And rightly so. And so it’s not clear to me, you know, how our industry, how the electric power space is going to adopt AI or, you know, what level. It’s a big space. There’s of room for doing it differently. But I’d say it’s one of those where the stakes are high. And so folks are very careful to get that right and not necessarily kind of jump into and jump into that or anything else without thinking it through. 

Christa Downey: Yeah, that’s a great answer. And I love thinking about how maybe your answer would have been different a year ago and how it might be different a year from now. You know, it’s all moving so quickly or even six months from now. Who knows, right? 

Matt Richwine: Very much so, yes’s exciting. 

Christa Downey: This episode might not be published for another six months. And so, you know, maybe you’ll think, Oh, everything’s changed. 

Matt Richwine: Yeah, I’ll have to come and do the addendum, or I guess it’d be a perpetual set of addendums because it’s gonna keep changing. 

Christa Downey: Exactly. Awesome. 

Christa Downey: Good. Well, okay, then, given where you are now and given where you were when we met, I think we met when you were a sophomore, what do you wish you knew when you were a sophomore? 

Matt Richwine: Ah. It’s a great question. I love thinking back to that and the things that I knew, you know, I spent some of the morning thinking about what it would be. And I think one of the things to say is there’s not like any one thing that I would say, Oh, if I knew this, then I would do this differently, and everything would have been great. Like, I think I’ve been very fortunate with the path and the journey and making the mistakes along the way, and they help you learn and they shape, you know, where you are in the future. And for me, I feel very fortunate about that where that has placed me. I think one of the things that I was really glad to have done is taking the time to explore different things that, you know, and it sounds very generic, right, in terms of but one of the things was so engaging through the co op program and explore different industries. And, for instance, as part of Co op, I had a role in the healthcare industry, and I really enjoyed that. It was a great, you know, space, technically, I met a lot of interesting people and had a lot of good conversations that also helped me to understand, you know, the passion that the folks in that space felt. That was not what it was for me. And it helped me to see that energy was more for me. And so by having these by going out and trying new things, trying different things that I wasn’t certain about helped me to either it’s either you get lucky and you say, Hey, this really does fire me up and hit it right on and you go for it, or it helps you say, Oh, this wasn’t for me, or I really need to pivot. And it’s not like that’s a good or a bad outcome. I think it’s a win win, really, because it helps you get a little bit closer to the trajectory, you know, that does work best. The other thing about that is it helps me build a bigger perspective on things, and just talking to different folks in different industries, and different roles in those industries, and I think for me, that also comes back to talk about kind of the challenge of stress that accompanies kind of everything anyone is really doing. And one of the things is by having a broader perspective, it helps me to see the bigger picture of, you know, in the moment when you get stressed because you’re faced with a particular challenge, for instance, you have a deadline, and you’re working hard, you haven’t figured it out. It doesn’t seem like it’s on the right track. To take a step back and have that bigger perspective of saying, okay, well, this deadline is part of a bigger project, is part of a bigger role, and ultimately part of, you know, a bigger career. Similarly, when you talk with folks from different industries and help to build that perspective about your role and then your organization’s role and your industry’s role in the grand scheme of, you know, the society that we live in, I think that helps me to get my head outside of my little space and take it all in and then to draws better conclusions and insights and also, like, limit the stress that I feel in the moment. And part of that is just getting my head up and taking the time to explore and have those different conversations, even when you can’t see the benefit or of it in the short term, to just have that and kind of it almost, I guess builds up a reservoir of perspective within you that you can kind of draw on later when you need it. 

Christa Downey: That’s so important. It’s that curiosity, it’s that openness, knowing that every conversation or opportunity or experience has the potential to be a learning experience. And then figure out how it all comes together. And, you know, you’ll pull bits and pieces from that later on when you might not even expect it is what I’m hearing you say. 

Matt Richwine: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And kind of oftentimes the least anticipated ways. And it’s the benefit of hindsight that allows you to kind of see how it worked. And so, if anything, you know, one of the things that I love about this conversation is, like, you know, I guess I get to be now, the old guy talking about the hindsight for the students there and to say, you know, Trust me, like, these things in the moment sometimes seem overwhelming or, like, why would I bother doing that? But try it anyway because it’s fun to let life surprise you. 

Christa Downey: Excellent. Excellent. So again, back when you were a student, what classes had the greatest impact in preparing you for your career? 

Matt Richwine: Yeah, I had a lot of great classes. But one of the things that really jumps out was my experience with Cornell’s engineering project teams. And, you know, I was on the project team, the Cornell 100 miles per gallon plus team or the various iterations. And anyway, if you think back, it’s maybe a little passe now, but in 2007, 2008, we were trying to build a vehicle that would get 100 miles per gallon equivalent plus. And that was, you know, something that really hadn’t been done or was kind of questionably achievable at the time. And that experience was great for so many reasons. One, it was a fun and big challenge and very technically interesting and rewarding. But the other aspect of it was working on a sizable team with a lot of engineers of different disciplines, also folks from with different backgrounds like marketing and finance and working together and, again, figuring out the roles that folks play and how we can all be on the same team and bring our different skill sets to contribute to this one overarching goal. And, you know, that’s a lot of what my experience has been in industry, as well. And so it was through that experience on campus that I think was closest to mirroring what it’s like to be an industry and work on big projects where no one person can get it all done, and you’ve got to figure out how to coordinate and make the most of everyone’s different skill sets. You know, that is an experience I still think about, as well as, you know, the guidance from our advisors. This is Professor Al George from MAE at the time. And, gosh, you know, he had so many great sayings that still, like, bounce around in my head. Um, and it’s like, at the time I heard him as a student, I didn’t think that much of it, but I kind of remembered the words. And then the words stick with me and my experiences later on, think, Oh, that’s what he was talking about. When he said, for instance, you know, plans are nothing. Planning is everything. Right? And I think that’s it’s a great one that captures so much in terms of it’s the exercise of thinking it through and doing the planning process that is really valuable and making sure that through all that you’re making the right decisions today rather than just having some playbook of, Oh, what’s your five year plan? Well, it’s X Y, and Z. Well, no, that doesn’t really hold up. Like, that’s going to change. You don’t know what’s happening in five years. But the process of thinking it through is really what’s important, and I really took that away from that experience on the project team. 

Christa Downey: Such good advice. You’re right. Okay, so now we have a few fun round questions for you. What do you do to relax, have fun, or re-energize? 

Matt Richwine: So I guess on a personal note, we have my wife and three kids. They’re all pretty young. And so they are—they keep us very busy, and it’s a—but it’s really magical, just kind of watching them grow and develop and become their own person. And so that’s really been a treat for me. It’s not always relaxing, I will admit. So on the relaxing front, I think it’s being able to share some of the things that I really like to do with my children. And so one of those is I have a little catamaran sailboat. So from the days that Cornell was sailing on Cayuga, I’m lucky to sail on the lakes here in upstate New York still, and getting out and showing them kind of the love of sailing in the water and watching them have their own experience and take to it has been a lot of fun. 

Christa Downey: Yeah, we’re fortunate here in New York State with all of those lakes. 

Matt Richwine: Yeah. It’s really great to be out there and kind of, you know, some of the things that you do where they kind of demand a single-minded focus and attention, and it lets kind of the rest of the things in your head slip away for at least a couple hours at a time, which really helps with the recharging. 

Christa Downey: For sure. I love that. So what’s one place you go for information to stay current in your work? 

Matt Richwine: Where I go for information to stay current is there’s a lot of great industry press out there, and also—so specifically for those folks interested in energy, Utility Dive is a great spot, as well as some professional organizations. Again, for folks in the industry, there’s the Energy Systems Integration Group. There’s the IEEE, which evolved at Cornell when they had a chapter of it, and there’s a specific segment of that for the Power and Energy Society. Those—and then there’s also other groups that have more of an international flavor, which is really cool. One called CIGRÉ. And I mention this—they’re pretty niche and very industry-focused, but it’s cool to see that they all focus on a different thing. IEEE is a little bit more US-based, and CIGRÉ is a little bit more international-based. And while we’re all around the world trying to solve the problem of managing the evolution of the grid, we’re doing it in slightly different ways. And to see kind of the perspective of the folks from Europe or Australia or Asia versus how we’re looking at it and everyone’s electric grid is a little bit different, I think has been really valuable. And then, again, also, when they have the conferences in the industry, it’s a good chance to get together to not just kind of take in the presentations that are made, but really, I think the value there is the chance to ask questions and talk and engage and really network with people. And again, I found so many times that folks are working on a similar problem or doing it a little bit differently, and you don’t realize it at first, and one conversation leads to the next, and you find that there’s something really—there’s the real engagement behind there. And so, yeah, I think that’s kind of the way I like to approach, yeah, stay current. 

Christa Downey: Okay, final question. If you were not doing this work right now, what would you be doing? And which is closest to what you dreamed of when you were a child? 

Matt Richwine: Oh, wow. Okay. This is great. Oh, I was just thinking about that. If I wasn’t doing this, part of me would want to be an arborist. I really like trees a lot. I think they provide a lot of aesthetic value, and then of course, also atmospheric value, which may be a little bit off the beaten path, I suppose. The other thing that I think I’d like to do is being a meteorologist because I love weather. I think it’s really fun. Obviously, extreme weather can be problematic, but, you know, tying into a love for sailing and being out on the water, you can really see—you can really see the weather phenomenon happening differently when you have, again, a whole horizon to look at, and you can see the rain showers coming in in different pieces, which is fun. And neither of those actually were what I dreamed of doing as a child. It was being an electrical engineer, which sounds really, like, almost contrived, but it’s true. Yeah, I guess that’s the kind of person I am. You know, I was always fascinated with the baby monitors, with the wireless communication. And so as soon as I could take one of those things apart, I did. And early on, it was just a fascination with—yeah, with electrical engineering. 

Christa Downey: That’s fun. That’s awesome.  

Matt Richwine: Yeah, I don’t know how many people—I mean, yeah. A lot of friends would joke and they say, you’re like, the only person that knew what you wanted to do, like, in grade school, and I say, Yeah, I guess that’s—I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not, but that’s true. 

Christa Downey: Well, that’s awesome. 

Christa Downey: You have balance with the sailing and everything, so this is fantastic. I definitely see how it all comes together. And you have important work to do, so I don’t want to hold you back. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I’m eager to share it with everyone else, so thank you. 

Matt Richwine: Likewise, Christa, thank you very much. It’s always great to connect with you. And yeah, I look forward to the next time. 

Christa Downey: Alright. Sounds good. Take care. 

Christa Downey: Thank you for listening. If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode where we will be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world. 

CHRISTA DOWNEY: Welcome to the Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

TRACI NATHANS-KELLY: And I’m Tracy Nathans -Kelley, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

CHRISTA DOWNEY: Today we are speaking with alum Patrick Nichols. Patrick is a seasoned technology executive and investor, currently serving as Managing Director at Vista Equity Partners.

TRACI NATHANS-KELLY: Thank you, Patrick, so much for being with us here today. It’s really been exciting to have you come back to campus and be wandering around all of our halls and seeing all the different departments.

PATRICK NICHOLS: No, thank you for having me and appreciate the time that everyone on campus has spent with me from chairs of department to Dean Archer. It’s just been fantastic. And the amount of growth and change, I think that I could come back here every year and every year there’d be more transformation. So it’s fantastic to kind of be able to take just a quick sample as I did.

TRACI NATHANS-KELLY: We’re always trying to do new things and try out the experiments as you can see oh non-stop so we’ll start with you then uh tell us about your work what do you do day-to -day walk us through.

PATRICK NICHOLS: Sure I mean my day-to-day is not as exciting as a lot of the labs I got to walk through today so I feel like I’m going to let your audience down um in general I’m referred to as an operating managing director at a private equity firm which is Vista Equity Partners- which is headed by Robert Smith, one of the donors on campus. It’s been great, but I’m actually new to the Vista ecosystem. For the last basically 20 to 30 years, I’ve been working in a variation of private equity, but I took my computer science degree and kind of applied it as a developer and then realized that all the things you learn in computer science, just like all the things you learn in engineering, broadly apply to almost any problem that is centered on data or business analytics. So I quickly moved over to the business side and started running more and more teams, But my day today is pretty straightforward. I’m the guy behind the scenes that gets to sit down with a bunch of CEOs or executives’ teams, and it is real simple. All I do is keep saying I need more faster, which, you know, in general is the two words they don’t want to hear. But we all find kind of a strategic way to deliver more and more equity value out of all the different assets they have a chance to work with. You know it was gradual, but I also joined an organization originally when I left here in Ithaca down to Austin, Texas, that was called Trilogy at the time. it’s a small software organization that developed a product called Sales Builder and then built on top of that. And it was basically a configuration engine. You know, rationally speaking, it’s just an inference engine. So it helps solve kind of fuzzy logic problems. Part A works with part B under specific conditions and more and more rules, more and more complexity to the config space in solving that math problem. And I started as a developer and I think it was months before I then ended up, you know, leading a development team to kind of define a bigger problem that could create more commercial value and solve a more complex version of that problem, but apply it to something other than parts. And then I think it was just months after that, that we decided to kind of take the incubator mentality that we had within that organization and start trying to incubate different dot-coms back in the day, because this is obviously 97, 98, 99. And then we started launching dot-coms from within this great enterprise software company. And by launching the dot-com, building the technology, we kind of started to get very quickly exposed to every piece of what it takes to launch a business. Over the years that followed, it went from small organizations to then teaching how to launch those organizations to the next incoming set of graduates into our company, then moving from there to a very industry -focused, because I’m a car guy at heart, and so focused a lot on the automotive industry and kind of applying that to a much larger business. And then from there, kind of, again, staying on the technology side, so running development organizations, consulting organizations, then kind of dabbling and running business units. I was able to kind of look at a business unit through the lens of basically algorithms and data, kind of figure out where’s the patterns that you can see and how we sell and how we market, how we spend money in our operating expenses, how we then deliver profitability at the same time of growth and kind of measure the trade -offs of speed versus spend. And so all that just kept coming down to data problems and more math and kind of how to apply that math over time and data capture and the signal information that kind of creates disturbances that would cause a lack of correlation. And after doing that at the business unit level, we decided that our business was so profitable we needed to start buying companies. And so I rapidly, within the same enterprise software company of Trilogy, ended up taking that exact same kind of pattern recognition on the business side, looking for value dimensions. We’d apply it to all the companies that we could buy. And honestly, we were sometimes referred to as junk collectors, that our value equation was focused on those island of misfit toys, if you will, the organizations that hadn’t achieved escape velocity to kind of become the unicorns out there in the world, but that still had really great innovations. They just didn’t know how to go and sell them, or they didn’t know how to go and be profitable enough to kind of be strong. So we would go and acquire those, and we kind of plug them into this engine that we had built, that operationally was exceedingly strong and drove high profitability, all again, kind of staying with a little bit of the engineering mindset, but applying it to business. And after doing that for more years than I probably can remember, like I ended up ultimately being more on the business side because all I was doing was data analytics and business analytics on top of the stream of information that came from every function of a business and then generating profitability. And believe it or not, though I did that all within one company, that in essence is a private equity model. Being able to kind of find organizations that have growth problems or profitability problems and being able to make strategic investments in them, really bring in operational talent and strategy, be it from product design, be it from sales and marketing, be it from how we run our center for business operations, which is kind of all that finance, HR, and legal stuff, do it in an effective way to kind of clear the paths of the success of what they were really wanting to do could actually start to be brought out to the world. And that pushed me into private equity. And then from that, you know, touched on multiple different private equity firms until I’m where I’m at now, which is at Vista Equity Partners. Oh, every day is different, especially when you work in a role like mine, where on any given day, it’s not one company that I sit across multiple at any one time. Some will be in revenue management configuration problems for life sciences where the big customers are groups like Pfizer and AstraZeneca and Gilead and GSK and so forth. And then hours later, I’ll be sitting down talking about kind of the application of Agentic AI to the sales development rep and the business development rep. And is Agentic AI a displacement technology or a productivity technology? And how do you kind of amp up the capabilities of a selling motion, which is the product that’s being sold within the organization that also needs at the same time rapidly improve their profitability and then an hour later be talking about basically the banking software that’s run in every bank on the planet right now that helps you just do simple things like wire money which is a heavily regulated environment which touches governments all around the world and dealing with the complexities of both selling software in regulated environments but building it in such a way that you can have real-time payments so that you’re not just looking for fault-tolerant systems where people talk about kind of high availability you’re talking about Like if Amazon goes down a level of availability, it still needs to be able to wire money. And so on any given day, I get to task switch between technology problems, business problems, data across such a wide array of business value propositions. It always keeps me excited to kind of wake up the next day. I love it.

CHRISTA DOWNEY: So jumping right into the good stuff, you mentioned AI and you certainly mentioned efficiency is a huge part of what you do. How are you currently thinking about AI in your work?

PATRICK NICHOLS: You know, it’s interesting. Not a day goes by that we don’t look at every dimension of every flavor of artificial intelligence that’s both been online for the last five to 10 years, as well as kind of the transformer models like a ChatGPT, a Gemini, a Claude from Anthropic, and how you apply it to the world today. And, you know, being frank, it’s kind of one of the reasons I was super excited to come back to campus, that, you know, when we look at artificial intelligence from a private market perspective in a market, there’s a huge opportunity. And I’m going to stay very constrained to software companies and say, if you had to kind of build a software company from the ground up today, blank piece of paper, you wouldn’t build the safe functions that we have today. Because when you have the availability of that technology, it does create a displacement. It lets you kind of spend money or invest in areas of your business in a much heavier way that you would usually have to make room for other kind of standard kind of keep the lights on style business operations. And so we go through and look at every piece of business, from the cost of goods sold and kind of the hosting fees and all the individual customer support and technical support elements, all the way down to how can we automate kind of an accounts payable, accounts receivable, tax filings, right? So inside of that center of business operations. And then when we get even to product development, it’s not just about kind of trying to see if AI can code that. I think we all understand it’s more of a language model, so it’s a transformation model. But we look at how can you improve the productivity of the developers that we currently have, how many increased volume of story points can we generate, how many additional K-locks can we produce on a monthly basis, and that we can measure our own innovation curve and say, great, let’s invest in this innovation curve. So whether it is, I’ll say, first generation of artificial intelligence, where we talked about tensor flows, machine learning, neural nets, to kind of current generation where you’re looking at gen AI and transformer models, to kind of almost current generation of agentic AI, to then artificial general intelligence and ultimately artificial superintelligence, we look at the entire curve and we try to say, how does it apply to the products we build and how does it apply to the way we run our businesses? And we look for every opportunity under every stone to make sure that we’re kind of trying to stay ahead of the curve. because our you know my true belief is for the last 30 years we’ve all watched technology change right at a very rapid pace and you could point to kind of the advent of the commercialization of the internet between kind of 93 97 kind of late 99 or all the way to the late 90s and say that that was a revolutionary change the reality is it was a little bit more evolutionary it was very incremental in its pace right amazon was selling books at first and then started selling anymore, right? And so all that kind of moved forward. So maybe that’s not true revolutionary change. Maybe it’s SaaS computing, right? The centralization of data and software in such a way that by bringing it all together, right, that you’d be able to come deliver a higher value as well as find insights in the data that you otherwise couldn’t. It happened over more 20 years than it did over one or two. And so for the last three decades, we’ve been living in kind of a stage of evolutionary change. The difference between what that has been and the environment we find ourselves in now is because of the pace of innovation that artificial intelligence brought specifically generative AI, now agentic AI, we now are living through kind of the first and probably our generation’s revolutionary technology change. It’s more akin to the days when you saw a horse and buggy on the exact same road that you saw the first vehicles in 1904. It’s that style disruption and what we’re excited to do is kind of figure out how do you kind of not just plug it in but also how do you build responsible leaders not just on the ethical side of it but also just understanding that every time we go and tap into something else, it has a downstream effect. And so how do you measure that downstream effect to kind of make good decisions for the long term? But it’s an exciting time. It is exciting.

CHRISTA DOWNEY: Say more about that, responsible leadership and how you’re doing that within this company.

PATRICK NICHOLS: Then I’m going to give away the entire lecture tonight, but happy to. Yeah. Look, at the end of the day, it’s interesting because we balance out in the commercial markets, the concept of responsibility with numbers. And so the commercial markets very much are well-tuned to do exactly what they do, right? They’re an efficiency engine for generating innovation with a specific cost, right? They’re an efficiency engine for creating growth, right, but with a specific profitability measure. They’re an efficiency engine that when you found something that is extremely valuable, how to dramatically scale that up and continue to increase, if not profitability by percent, but profitability by total quantum. And so commercial markets do that great. What they do not do well is, well, all those things end up hitting a balance sheet or an income statement in some way, shape, or form being reported out, the reality is those other effects. So if we’re able to make our organization 20% more efficient, where does that 20% go? Does it go to the bottom line, or does it go and get reinvested in the company? More often than not, there’ll be a larger portion of it that goes to the bottom line, because that’s what commercial markets are designed to go do, is to improve their efficiency. The dilemma that I think that we all are approaching is twofold, which is, I’m going to use an analogy, or I guess more of a metaphor. If you go back in time, 300 years, 200 years even, and you ask subsistence farmers, what should they do if they could do all of their 70 hours of work that they were toiling away at to make sure that they had food to eat on the table and a roof over their head? They could do all that work that was 70 hours a week. What if you could do it all in one hour? What would they do with their time? The problem is we have to ask a farmer that question right now, and the farmer probably couldn’t answer it the same way if we ask our workforce today if you can do all of your work in not 40 hours a week but you can do it in 20 hours a week what would you do with your time for companies it’s a profit equation for the world it’s a what would you do if you displaced 500 million knowledge workers over the course of the next four to eight years and i think the question is is that’s not a question that the commercial markets are well tuned to figure out how to answer effectively and the right places likely at institutions like Cornell here right in particular the Cornell College of Engineering, the problems that you have to face are no longer, can you solve the science fast enough? Can you figure out the engineering problem? Can you get the tractor out of the mud at the right time? Or can you get the peptide docking sequence to kind of line up and achieve what you’re trying to? The problem is, is you will be able to solve that. If you have more time to go do more with, what does the world do with that time? And AI kind of brings that to bear as the front road of a question. The question is like, how do you deal with it? I think that’s the question that we have to ask and kind of educate our next generation of leaders because while people like myself are retiring we’ll watch that beginning but we won’t solve the problem right so I love being able to talk to the undergrad students the MENG students and really hear about kind of how they think about it are they excited by the future and kind of are they looking at the picture big enough knowing that this is the world that they’re entering into it’s kind of you know going from abacus to TI-81 graphing calculator overnight and so I’m excited to see kind of where it goes but I’ll be honest I don’t think I have the answer.

TRACI NATHANS-KELLY: Did you get to- Do you have any snippets to share of what you learned from these students?

PATRICK NICHOLS: Yeah, I mean, look, I’ll be honest. I’ve been super excited by each one of the undergrads. I think I’ve met five to six over the course of the day to day, you know, spanning from biomedical engineering all the way to chemical engineers, and it’s just been great to hear their excitement. They’re very, you know, hands-on with the types of undergraduate research opportunities they’ve been given, the immersion programs at the New York School of Medicine for the BMEs, right, the project teams are talking to like the iGEM, you know, ex-project leader and their sophistication of kind of how they think about, you know, biomedical engineered machines, like it’s just been exciting. Then posing the question to them, whether it was over lunch or over some of the breakfast meetings of if you had an opportunity to kind of define what you want to go do with this extra time, I think the creativity is just now starting that they are, they’re starting to recognize this is going to be something they have to do. I don’t think they have the answers yet. I think that we’re in that period of time where we’re right at the cusp of that revolutionary edge. And so teaching all the foundational principles and the tools that they’re all going to be able to use in the workforce for the next decade plus is job one. But the next is like, how do you give them the guidance around kind of educating their peers, thinking about problems in a much broader scale, because it’s not going to be the classical problems that we’ve been building on for the last 20 or 30 years. So I wasn’t asking how to get them to the answer. Really think about this, because at the end of the day, my daughter, who’s only 14, she’s going to enter the workforce based on their leadership skills that happen over the course of the next eight to 10 years. And so it’s exciting to see where they go.

TRACI NATHANS-KELLY: Yes. But one of the things that we like to ask is, what was a major problem that you encountered and then how did you overcome it?

PATRICK NICHOLS: Yeah, look, I’m turning the corner on my almost nearly third decade in the workforce. so it’s hard to pick out just one problem that stands out um but really kind of the evolutionary arc uh right that and I’ll acknowledge I’m like I don’t think I’ve lived through the revolutionary curve um going from what was a computer science you know undergrad here at Cornell where we all know that i you know especially in the late 90s it was a very theoretical education. It was fantastic I have nothing but positive memory from every day that I spent here in Ithaca including spending two years living over what was Cayuga Restaurant and 414 Eddie Street apartment- one right the building where the windows didn’t quite fit the window frame, so you put the plastic up to catch the snow. But in looking at that kind of very classical theoretical education and then getting out into the workforce and then very quickly having to have kind of the practical coding experience that required kind of, you know, thousands of hours that maybe other, you know, competitively educated, you know, students or graduates got into the marketplace was kind of the first trigger for me. I’ve got to move faster. And then recognizing that in computer science, you learn a lot about kind of symbolic systems you learn about kind of the math that’s beyond kind of your classical kind of uh sorry base 10 calculations and you learn how to do calculations in binary and you start to realize that kind of set theory and logic and discrete calculus apply to lots of problems beyond just kind of like coding or trying to do a chip design and I think there was an aha moment somewhere in that first couple three years where you could start to see business problems through that lens and see the elements of like, how do you sell a product or how do you market a product or how do you get visibility or how do you improve kind of the efficiency of a finance organization through just yet another data problem? If you could kind of in today’s vernacular, you know, pseudocode the algorithm for each of the functions and come up with a productivity measure that you wanted for each function. And then it was just an optimization problem for running through that. And if you could prove out at the individual level, employee counts, whether it’s hundreds or thousands, right, that those productivity measures apply to each function, then you can start to model the ebb and the flow of a business. And I think that that aha moment kind of helped push me and kind of get over what was honestly a very personal bias of like, Ilove being an engineer. I mean, to this day, I still probably have a bunch of coding projects that are sitting on my desktop right now, you know, waiting for me to kind of complete or touching things inside of a wood shop, including kind of laser engravers that I use for printed circuit boards and you name it still to this day. And so I love being an engineer, but overcoming that mindset of to be an engineer does not mean that you’re always just working on an engineering-only problem. And that was a big mental hurdle. And I think in my day, because I was so ingrained, it was a part of my identity, overcoming that was a challenge. Once that bit got flipped and all of a sudden I realized that everything can be looked at through the lens of data analytics, computational models, simulation coding, or simulation models that would then produce outputs that you could then measure and create kind of a flywheel of feedback curve to see whether or not it was going to correlate long term, like the world just opened up. And that’s when I kind of moved from just being a coder and developer, which I still love today, to let me just see if I can code this up in a very different kind of language or mindset with a different problem type. And even a part of what I think has kind of led to, you know, wherever it is that I am today in my career track, it’s because I do apply all those exact same disciplines and principles we learn in kind of a core education, engineering education to business problems. And so I will take huge volumes of data from new organizations that we acquire, and I’ll dump it all into mathematical models that I then kind of go and track over time to see whether or not kind of the assumptions that we’re making are correct or incorrect and question every piece of data. I think that that was a challenge to overcome, but once overcome, I’m like, I think the world became a very big open green space to go after.

TRACI NATHANS-KELLY: A while ago now, I was part of an NSF grant. And one of the things that the practicing engineers identified, that they identified, was that they were very much, like you said, attached to their engineering identity. And that was one of the struggles that they had, just like you just talked about like switching over to a business mindset or to a leadership mindset where they were asked to move up the ladder because they had had this vision of themselves being an engineer since the third grade, whatever was even just high school, and it was it was very nearing dear to their hearts. They went to school to be an engineer and sort of make that flip they said it was really wonderful opened up so many doors but it was a hard moment for them to add to what that identity meant.

PATRICK NICHOLS: 100% it is. I mean I because I think you’re right. I don’t know where in childhood development you know our identities start to form or gravitate towards the things we really love but you know whether it’s playing with computers or whether it’s working on cars and building engines or whether it was kind of building big forts that you just love to build. I’m like but something attracted everybody to that engineering kind of mindset and it became such a part of my identity I’m sure for lots of engineers that when you move over to business, yes, there was almost a stigma, right? And you’re like, oh, I’m not technical anymore. Oh, you went into business because you failed on the engineering side. I’m like, there literally was almost a stigma associated with it. Not to mention being an engineer, you carry around a little bit of a badge of honor. We all know the challenge is to get through the program and kind of be successful, right? It’s tough. And so you learn a lot of things and you feel like switching sides over to the business side mean that you’re giving up all that. And I got my eyes open and could see that you could apply the exact same principles in other areas and remain technical. But I also think that it’s an opportunity as we look at kind of the engineering education programs, like we teach innovation, we teach leadership, we teach these foundational principles on computation and data and analytics and problem solving and critical thinking, right? Like helping them understand the word engineer does not mean that you only work on one problem type, right? It may not even mean that working your specialization, it means that you are coming out with the capabilities to go and lead large problems and solve big things and use data to substantiate your points and influence others and go through the leadership novation curves of leading by example and leading through others and leading through consensus in a way that others who may not have the same kind of foundational engineering education are able to. And that makes you differentiated. And so it’s been super exciting to see kind of even just my visit today, right, how much even that culture is already starting to ebb and flow into the organization because the undergrads I’ve had the chance to experience today some of the MENG students and so forth they’ve all kind of exuded a little bit of this not just entrepreneurialism which I think is kind of common a lot of different campuses but this extra level of they’re starting to kind of separate the identity of just being an engineer from the actual degree program to something that much bigger much broader which is super important right now. I remember graduating here I had a of course being the data kid that I was I’m like I had a spreadsheet it was called my life plan spreadsheet.

CHRISTA DOWNEY: I love it right.

PATRICK NICHOLS: It was data right- I’m like literally it had milestones planned out I’m like it had you know specific dates within a couple of years when I thought it took me all the way into my 60s so if you’re asking me if I thought that I was going to be where I am now back then no way like I passed that life plan spreadsheet I think like six years after I created it and kind of continued on the exponential curve and and it’s been great but I think a lot has to do back to the Cornell education. I mean, look, great foundational principles, great opportunities, especially now to kind of get a better understanding of what the outside world is like, whether it’s emerging programs and project teams and internships. But also it’s just the branding capabilities that Cornell kind of brings to bear for undergraduates is a differentiating element out in the marketplace. And it opens a ton of doors to be able to kind of get your way and see things that you otherwise wouldn’t have seen. So it’s been fantastic.

CHRISTA DOWNEY: So in alignment with the values of the College of Engineering, we always ask, how does your work contribute to a healthier, more equitable, more sustainable world?

PATRICK NICHOLS: You know, it’s interesting because I work in high tech. And so we look at the lens in a very different way because the byproduct of a lot of what we do historically was not even measurable to a certain extent, other than the fact that it’s a large population of individuals who work in high tech, so their individual footprint was different. But over the course of, I’d say, the last five to 10 years, because of the compute power that now high -tech leverages, we do have to start measuring it, right? And so we look at kind of what that carbon footprint is. We look at kind of sustainable energy models around kind of how we go and support data centers. We look to kind of centralize. We partner with others who will kind of meet our supply chain requirements to make sure that that’s happening. I don’t think we’re the best at it. I don’t think that that nut has been cracked completely to make it so that we can kind of see the path to kind of creating a better, brighter future. But we’re kind of making a calculated bet, right, that there’s a lot of advanced technologies that are going to bring more cleaner energy kind of, you know, to the planet. And I don’t mean just a simple kind of geothermal and solar and wind, but things like fusion energy, right? And so we’ll go make investments kind of in that, you know, a technology curve trying to kind of bring it back, you know, even whether it’s five years or 10 years. So it’s kind of within a time horizon that’s much more achievable given that we think the power consumption curve is only going up from here. The other side of that is what I’ll kind of refer to as kind of, you know, people, community, and culture, right, where, you know, we are very conscientious about the fact that we truly believe that innovation doesn’t come from, like, one person, and it doesn’t come from one perspective. And so we’re constantly looking at kind of how do we bring kind of elements of unique perspectives together from all different walks of life, from all different ages and generations to kind of talk about kind of core, sometimes engineering problems, core business problems, create kind of an element of community around the problem that we’re trying to solve. and get that element where everything we’re trying to solve is being looked at from multiple different dimensions because we believe that ultimately that community is going to generate a much higher value. And again, same thing. I think the words that we use to describe those things always change based on kind of the elements of the administrations of the world and the governments of the world that kind of care one way or the other. Like in our world, we just believe that our job is to kind of go and create the best possible with the best possible people and everything else kind of falls on the wayside. And so I think that in high tech, we get to benefit from having fewer byproducts other than kind of really focusing on power consumption and carbon capture, as opposed to other industries, which I probably have less experience in.

TRACI NATHANS-KELLY: Yeah. Thank you. We like to also turn back the clock. And you’re good at that. You keep giving us all these time markers, but we’re going to take you back to when we’re a sophomore. And because that’s when you decide officially your major. At the end of your sophomore year is when you’re supposed to decide that. So given that mindset, if you can recreate it, what would you tell other students about that moment? How do you decide?

PATRICK NICHOLS: Wow, that’s a tough question. I think I can answer how I decided. Because the reality is I grew up in a suburb outside of Detroit, Michigan. And so I was a car guy at heart, as were the bulk of my family. And so I grew up in an environment where I honestly believed I was going to be a mechanical engineer. I was going to go to University of Michigan. I was going to end up working for Ford Motor Company or Chrysler, one of the two, and was going to love every minute of it. And by dumb luck, I was able to spend the last two years of my high school in a program called the Ford Academy of Manufacturing Sciences. And thankfully, it wasn’t about manufacturing science. It was actually just about science. And so I ended up with education and engineering management. I ended up in a underhood thermal demonstration team, which is basically all about the heat environment of the engine compartment, right, of a vehicle specifically at this time, a Ford Taurus. And my job was to figure out how do you go and basically create heat dissipation, remove heat from the engine compartment. And of course, everyone knows that that’s done via the radiator. And so what could you do to improve radiator design? I was 16 years old and then 17 years old exploring that problem. So wiring up thermocouples inside of the actual vehicle because the air conditioning was one of the loads that we cared about and placing all of those and then wiring up the entire engine compartment with thermocouples so I could measure every piece of where heat was going, right? And then we’re just running experiments on lots of different radiator tubes that ultimately landed on creating turbulent flow inside of a radiator tube by putting dimples in it because turbulent flow had better heat rejection and lower pressure loss across the face of the radiator tube, which then meant we had more effective heat dissipation from the radiator and removing the heat from the engine compartment. Doing all of that, you would think that I was so excited by the mechanical engineering part. But using the software and looking at the data and pushing all the buttons, and honestly pushing a lot of buttons when I was a kid, you know, in learning basic and things like that, brought me to a point of making a decision of I can turn left and end up going to Ann Arbor and spend a lot of time as a mechanical engineer for Ford Motor Company. Or I could turn right and go to computer science, and Cornell was one of the best computer science programs that kind of matched with what I was looking for out there in the ecosystem. And so I kind of, I don’t know, pre-declared my major, made my choice because ultimately what I realized was though I loved the problem that I was solving and it was mechanical in nature, the reality was is I loved the science of interpreting the information and coming up with answers and the experimentation process and the computation and then ultimately moving into a simulation model because there’s only so many Tauruses that you wanted to go and destroy to where thermocouples have been to, right? And that piece of it, I think, is part of what carried me further forward, that my passion was around kind of the data and the problem -solving with the data and the computational model, and I could apply it to almost anything. And so for those students who are still kind of trying to figure out how to decide their major, take a step back every once in a while, right? Think about, is the thing you like the end result of what you’re working on, in that case a car? Or is the thing that you like really have to be how you spend the time on achieving the result? because all of my time was being spent on basically the computer science component of the problem, the data problem. And I loved that piece. I absolutely love cars for sure, but I love that part more. So if I’m going to choose having to spend 40 to 60 hours a week, I want to make sure I enjoyed that more than just the end result. And so my advice simply would be, you got to love the process, not the end thing, and be sure you choose your major and the one that kind of is about your time and not about the end result.

CHRISTA DOWNEY: Along those lines, I’m trying to think back to what extent we covered this, but I’ll just ask it. We asked, you know, what class or classes had the greatest impact in preparing you for your career? I’m trying to guess the answer as I’m asking. So go ahead.

PATRICK NICHOLS: It’s funny. I don’t think, I think this will be a tough one to guess. I was lucky enough to take CS417 and CS418, which was a scientific visualization, right, series, and then the practicum associated with it, which was basically a lab course that let you use a software package It was called IBM Data Explorer, and then create visualizations. I want to say I took it my sophomore year, which was what was the lucky part, because it introduced me to a professor, Bruce Land, who worked in what was the Engineering and Theory Center that’s now Frank Rhodes Hall. And that class was phenomenal. Not only did I end up TAing for Bruce, I ended up working for the National Science Foundation inside the Theory Center, right, for the following two years, doing amazing things like visualizing breaking glass at the atomic level. doing peptide docking sequences of the Chagas disease, building a railroad train simulation to evaluate load on different types of liquids that were going to be flowing inside of containers on the train tracks, or working in the multi-walled virtual reality environment that was originally by EVL that was up on the, I’m going to get this wrong, eighth floor, seventh floor of the theory center at the time, and being able to build what should have been a simulated wind tunnel environment. And it was the only kind of NURB surface project that I remember failing on, but it was a great valuable lesson because instead of doing a wind tunnel that would deflect the air particles and show the simulation, I built virtual flypaper that literally every air particle would just hit my convex surfaces and stick to it. But that class was great because it kind of helped me take all the theoretical, all the math that I was doing and huge data problems. We got to use the IBM SP2 that was the 256 node supercomputer at the time to basically do all that work. So it exposed me to massive data, massive calculation problems, visualizing that so that others in fields that were not in computer science could understand what we were showing them. And I think that passion around big data, that passion around computation is a part of what continued in the theme of not just what I experienced in my internships before I got to Cornell, experienced while I was here, but kind of carried forward into the world that I’ve been working in today. But it was CS417, CS418, and Professor Bruce Land by far. I left an impact and still remember it today is a super fond memory.

CHRISTA DOWNEY: Well, it sounds like, I mean, you are the cutting edge of the work right now, but we always do like to ask people, where do you go to get new information or keep yourself updated? Oh my gosh. You know, it’s funny because I was just reading an article somewhere about, you know, the internet going dark. That at the end of the day, with the technologies that we’re looking at, right, the reality is, is, you know, before years end, a lot of the information sources that I use, I’ll use an agent to go and call through that data, create summaries for it and then kind of give me a deep link so I can go and look at the ones that I need to kind of evaluate and at a much deeper level or see the source material for, which means that even my own browsing capability or my own browsing of the web is going to change dramatically before the year’s end. And so the reality is I like to use kind of lots of different validated information sources. I like to use kind of a combination of a product called perplexity or kind of get into scientific journals and summaries of individual engineering papers. So I try to stay up on probably more things than I possibly should and kind of steer away from kind of mainstream media. I’m probably one of those weird anomalies where I don’t have a social media presence. I’m like I’m on LinkedIn for a resume, but beyond that, I have nothing. So I get all my information by going to the sources that I care most about. And usually those are academic sources, financial time sources, direct earnings reports, and so forth, rather than trying to kind of call through what I consider large amounts of opinion pieces.

CHRISTA DOWNEY: Excellent. Excellent. This has been fun. I hope students enjoy this story. You painted such a colorful picture for me of back in the day here at Cornell in the class, well, in the lab and all the things you were doing to what you’re doing now and how they all come together. So I think it’s good for students to hear that, you know, about these stories of things they might not imagine themselves doing. And who knows what will happen, right? We’re talking about advanced in technology. Who knows where students will be?

PATRICK NICHOLS: That’s great. Well, no, I appreciate you all having me. It’s been super fun. It’s been great to kind of come back to campus, see everything that’s been going on, looking forward to kind of continual visits that I continue to kind of increase my roots here back at Cornell.

CHRISTA DOWNEY: Oh, good. Thank you for listening. If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode where we will be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to the Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University. 

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Tracy Nathans Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you. 

Traci Nathans-Kelly: Robert Boehringer is the Vice President of Process Management Services for Orion Development Group. He has more than 30 years of experience helping leaders and professionals improve quality and productivity via the implementation of process improvement methodologies, such as TQM and SPC and reengineering. Along with focused automation. He facilitates process mapping, which is the de facto standard in the industry, and he has provided services to more than 40,000 professionals, both private and public sector in the last three decades. Our conversation moved through many sectors of his work over the decades, many fascinating topics, and we do hope that you find them valuable, too. Please welcome Robert to the podcast. 

Christa Downey: What’s your current work? 

 
Bob Boehringer: My current work is I’m a corporate trainer, consultant, project guy. I’m basically a process guy is my thing. My primary purpose in life, if you ask my kids, is to leave the world a better place, and I found it. And whatever that means to any organization I’m working for, whether it’s a for profit or non for profit, or it’s pro bono work, it’s basically trying to help them do what they do faster, cheaper, better. 

Traci Nathans-Kelly: On a normal day, first of all is there such a thing? 

Bob Boehringer: No 

Traci Nathans-Kelly: First of all, normal day, a typical day, a perfect day. What does this look like as it unfolds, you know, from morning until you close out?  

Bob Boehringer: Typical day in the life would be every engagement, I’m a project guy, so I don’t do a nine to five thing. Something I learned early on is that that really didn’t fit my personality. That I and this is one of the things you say, you know, professionally, you have to know yourself pretty well before you can figure out what you’re going to be really good at. And, you know, I never did nine to five. I was typically growing up working in machine shops and in manufacturing. And so, you know, we were working a graveyard shift. We were on rotating shifts throughout the day. And it gave you outside of your professional life, a standard rhythm that you could establish, which is really good when you’re trying to raise a family. But I just suffocated under that type of what I found to be kind of a ritual that leads to potential boredom. And I just find myself, I’m really good at being incredibly intense for short periods of time and then backing off. So most of the work that I do is project centric. The engagements can be anything from being hired just to teach an organization how to do what we do. So a good chunk of it is teaching people to fish. Sometimes it’s a combination of project work and teaching people how to fish. So we’re going to use a facilitated approach to working on projects that they have chosen and simultaneously teaching them how to use the tools and methodology that we’ve acquired over the years. With the intent of giving them both a return on the effort for the time that we’re there, plus we’re establishing kind of an internal consulting function for the organization as well. So there’s somebody there left when we leave that can continue to work forward. There’s also times we’re just targeted to come in and fix a problem. So you’re dropping in, you’re a SWAT team, and those are generally very high intensity, and your job is to plug the holes and stop the bleeding, whatever it might be. So there’s no standard. And honestly, you could say recession drives what clients demand during recessions. Very little money seems to be spent corporate wise to train people. They just want work to get done. And there’s generally when times are good, they’re investing more so in their staff, and so we do much, much more training and development of their staff during times that the company seems to be flush with cash. And we’ve been through four or five significant recessions in my career, so we flex back and forth, depending on what the circumstance is because the market dictates what type of work we’ll be doing. 

 
Christa Downey: If an undergraduate is listening to this and thinking, that sounds cool. I want to do that someday. What might a path look like? What are some things they could do to set themselves up for this type of work and this type of lifestyle? 

 
Bob Boehringer: There’s a caution I would offer. Many of my classmates left Cornell. Most of them were operations, ORIEs, operations research, industrial engineering. And they would go to one of the big consulting firms. Anderson was one of the bigger ones at the time, Deloitte might be this Pricewaterhouse. And they would go through the training program, and they’d become embedded and immersed in a client location on a big project, and they would learn a methodology. And the sad part would be is we often came in after those engagements were completed and have to do cleanup. And the reason I believe, I mean, there’s this cautionary tale, which is you’re learning methodology, but you don’t necessarily have the work experience and judgment. So you’re basically just following a cookbook approach to solving problems. And if you basically solve problems with the paint by numbers approach, then everything is kind of a cookie cutter solution, and everything looks a lot the same. And so if you want to go down that path, you have to, at least in my mind, develop as broad a life experience as you possibly can. You think of it as I worked in corporate America as an intern in college. I worked for DuPont and Shell. I worked for Procter and Gamble and Pepsi when I got out. At the age of 29, I quit Corporate America, and I haven’t worked a day since. And we started doing our corporate consulting and training business shortly thereafter. And, you know, in the last 40 years, probably 40,000 people that I’ve taught over those years, probably 500 different companies, every line of business out there. And you can sit there and say, the first day I was out there, other than the fact that I already had a bit of a receding hairline, you’re questioning is, I’m a 29-year-old kid. What judgment can I offer to anybody? What experience do I bring to the table? 
So go back to the original question. For you to be competent and capable, you have to be able to bring something of value. And the only way you’re going to get something of value is not by, in my mind, reading somebody’s book on how to do it, is you have to have the practical experience under your belt. And so part of what I would suggest to anybody who’s interested in getting into consulting is you’re going to have to learn multiple business languages so that you can talk to all different parts of the company. You need to understand the accountant’s perspective, the legal perspective, the market perspective. And as an engineer, yeah, you can talk the technical aspects, but can you understand the cost benefit analysis that the finance folks want? Do you understand the regulatory compliance requirements for the legal department? And if you don’t understand what’s important to them, you can’t translate their needs into some sort of solution.  

So the good news for me was I grew up in a family business. I hated it at the time because you had your normal job of school and sports, but you also were working at nights and weekends, and I started work in machine shops at the age of 13. So by the time I even showed up to Cornell, I already had five years of working in four different businesses. And the good news is I had a lot of experience. The bad news is I was pretty arrogant because I thought I knew a lot. And most of my classmates had never turned a wrench, and I already started rebuilding engines and rebuilding cars and houses and stuff. So I managed to, you know, I don’t play golf. I restore old cars. I don’t do certain things, which my friends do because I don’t find them as interesting, but partly because it doesn’t make me more valuable to the people that I’m trying to work with. You know, having a great golf swing is good if you’re a sales guy. Not so much if you’re trying to solve all technical problems.  

Traci Nathans-Kelly: We’ve touched on so many things that when I do executive ed or professional development in a company, this is exactly what they say. You have to be able to communicate, understand all these different audiences within an organization, and explore all of them in order to come up with the right multifaceted answer, right? Because there’s never just one way. And so I really appreciate your points there about you got to talk to everybody up and down and all the way through the ladder 360 to be able to solve any problem with a decent set of outcomes. 

 
Bob Boehringer: Well, and I can honestly say is that I was a horrible employee upon leaving Cornell. And a few I did recently, I found and reread my very not so pleasant performance appraisal from my leadership team at Procter and Gamble. And reflecting back on it, I can sit there and say, is the things I did not know, the things I should have known was how to be a better listener and how to ask better questions. And it really goes back to a Stephen Covey-ism of seek to understand before you seek to be understood. And I didn’t spend a whole lot of time listening. And I think, you know, it’s kind of one of those notions. The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. At the age of 29, I thought I pretty, you know, I could walk on water. And the reality is I was technically competent in the targeted area that I had to be successful at, but that limited my leverage and my influence because I did not know how to expand that beyond the space in which I did have technical competence. And Cornell gave me technical competence and built on the foundation I had acquired working growing up in a family business. Every client I work with teaches me something new still. And that’s why at 65, I’m still working. I hope I never have to retire. I mean, at most, it’ll be semi retired, but I’m always looking for the next gig that’s going to be challenging me to think differently.  

Traci Nathans-Kelly: The curiosity mindset or, you know, the lifelong learning is we’ve said that phrase way too long. It seems to not hold much truck anymore, but that’s what it is. Like, every corner you turn, like, Oh, wow, there’s a new thing. Let’s dive in. You know, it’s so, so, so important. I think that often undergrads just really get they tighten their view too much, right, in order to do good in this one class versus you know, having some skills that open up more doors and perspectives. So it’s really great. Like, the engineering leadership program does a great job of they have classes about listening right, as part of a team leader and things.  

Bob Boehringer: There’s probably there’s a cautionary element as well as curiosity is a great thing. Curiosity can be very distracting. It can take you off your mission. You have to learn, I think I think I’m getting better at it finally, being able to zoom in and out. And pan left to right to try to see what’s important. I’m always accused of basically having kind of attention deficit because I write shiny objects squirrel is always going to be a distraction. But the thing I find fascinating is I was, you know, I was hyperactive growing up, probably ADHD in today’s parlance, but that allowed me to look laterally at things because of the distraction. And for some people, that’s a disability. For other people, that became an enhanced skill set if you know how to channel it. And it wasn’t until I had a fourth grade teacher that figured out how to channel it. That I actually started becoming less disruptive in classrooms. And so, you know, looking at and he says, you know, every child that’s a problem child, he said, Well, they’re a problem for you maybe as a parent, but you just haven’t figured out how to use that force for good. And I was fortunate enough that Mrs. De Hoff, who was my fourth grade teacher, figured out how to channel it. 

Traci Nathans-Kelly- Those golden teachers who can see it, right, can change everything for us. 

Bob Boehringer: Well not all of them are so patient with me. I can I can name a few others. But she was a gem. She was a gem. 

Traci Nathans-Kelly: You’ve been telling us a lot about some of the things that you faced and challenges and different ways you’ve been working around that. Yeah. We like to ask, like, what is one of the big challenges that you faced, and how did you work your way out of it? 

Bob Boehringer: Well, I could say today, and that answer is different. There’s a different answer for different circumstances. I would say just professionally today, the hardest thing is getting people’s time. To, you know, effectively my job is I’m a professional coach. I’m a business coach. And compliance. No different than if you go to you have a personal trainer, you go to physical therapy, whatever the issue you’re trying to help improve or fix. And if the patient isn’t compliant, and if the patient doesn’t show up, you’re you’re limited. So you have to figure out how to get the engagement to the point where they want to show up. I can’t force it upon them. So and it’s not that people generally don’t want to do it. It’s they’re so strapped, and part of that’s just based on the way the workloads have worked out. Maybe it’s post COVID, maybe it’s just the nature of business today. But every client I’m working with right now, getting people’s time is the hardest thing to overcome. And I think part of the way the only way you get them to engage is to clearly identify early on what their needs are and possibly needs outside of the project that you’re working on. And then you have to figure out how to link the two and sit there and say, well, if we can make this better, does it make that better? So you get it’s not just a targeted advantage. We have a breadth here of possibilities. What might that look like for you?  

I would say professionally throughout the last few decades, it’s every time you encounter a new business that you’ve never been in, you’re starting over. I don’t know the business language. When I’m working, one of the more problematic ones during COVID was helping a international shipping company deal with how to properly do their monthly, quarterly, and end of year tax payments to all the different countries around the world. And I don’t speak taxes. I don’t understand, and it’s incredibly complex. And my job effectively, I believe, is to help people see their blind spots and then help them figure out how to resolve the issues that are held in that space. And if you don’t know what you’re looking for in that blind spot, you can’t help other people see it. So the frustrating part early on is going through the learning curve in a new industry or a new business function, and you have to become an expert very quickly. And you can’t, in my mind, you can’t do a good job of it becoming an expert that has just a surface level of knowledge. So you have to be willing to kind of dive deep. It’s easier to do that if you’re given access and you’re allowed to embed yourself. I find that’s one of the reasons why virtual is more challenging. You get the work done, but I don’t think you get as good an answer in a distance learning approach because all you see is what’s on the camera and you don’t see anything that’s off camera. 

And that you can say, even when you’re in a face-to-face environment, a lot of organizations are so siloed in how they’re structured that you can’t get access to the other—you don’t see all the dynamics and all the different pieces of the puzzle. And so you may have been hired to focus on one functional area, but the reality of it is, you say, you know, the issues here are being created by somebody who’s off camera, and they’re not part of the project scope and they’re not on the project team, and yet that means all we can do is build a better firewall and make your process more efficient without really going after what the root cause of the problem is. 

And that ties to any sort of holistic thinking in my mind. It’s in medicine, it’s like, why are you treating the symptoms? Why are—you know, you’re giving them this medicine, but you’re creating all these other problems. Yeah, but it solves today’s problem. Yeah, but it’s creating this problem five years from now because now you have a dependency or the body’s become immune to that type of treatment. And it does—the cool thing about it, and I say, one of the most important—one of the questions that was in your list was, you know, I think, what did you learn or would you take away from Cornell? Or what are the classes that were most relevant? 

There was a class that I did horribly and it was called systems engineering, which is really multivariable analysis. You have really complex systems. You’re trying to figure out what are all the different factors that are influencing, and the mathematical side of it gets really ugly, and that’s not my strength. But conceptually, that’s what I help—that’s my job is to help people see systemically, what are all the variables that are impacting the system that they’re currently trying to optimize or manage. So I can say, I don’t have the mastery of the mathematics, but I have mastery of the themes and the concepts. 

And then the good news is, and this will kind of swing into an AI question, perhaps, which is also on your list. You first have to identify what those elements are or those blind spots, and then the question is, can you get the information or data that you need to be able to show the linkages between cause and effect or if things just are correlating, but there’s no causal factors that are present. 

And if you want to ask a question about AI, I can, there.  

Traci Nathans-Kelly: I’m like you did a perfect segue there. So let’s just dive right into what your thoughts are with that. 

Bob Boehringer: I’m still—I’m a Luddite in some respects. And for the youngs who don’t know what a Luddite is, it’s basically the people who are fearful of the technology is going to replace them in the workforce, and those were folks that were in England back in the early 1800s or so. If we just had a longshoreman strike that was settled last night, possibly, one of their demands was that they would have no automation to their work so that they would have job protections. 

And so you have this kind of question that lies out there, which is, all right, so you’re going to say, legally, you can’t use technology. Guess what? Not everybody’s going to follow the same rules. You know, if you’re trading cross borders, the competitors aren’t going to have the same constraints. They’re going to become more cost efficient, they’re going to become more effective. So it’s a short-term solution to prohibit the use of technology, but it may actually be the beginning of the end of your profession if you don’t learn to adopt and adapt to it. 

So I look at AI, and I’m trying to understand how does that fit for us? I keep hearing interesting applications. The downside of it—and so I’m still—this is the skeptical side of me looking at this—is all it can do is find what’s out there digitally. The only thing that’s out there digitally is what has been harvested by use of some sensor, whether it’s optics or audio or whatever it might be. If the data is not there, AI can’t do anything for you. So the AI can’t fill in the blanks for a void of information or a void of data. 

So perhaps the way it will work is it’ll at least allow you to scrub and see what’s available so you identify what’s not there. If you’re looking at the data and you don’t know what’s not there because you don’t know what not looks like—you know, how do you define what is, you know, is a null event—then you’re not bringing anything to the table. So that means I have to be much, much better at understanding what should be there so I can identify what’s missing. And that may make it easier for me to identify the blind spots sooner. 

But it’s—so it’s the application of a tool differently than what most people probably right now are looking at is—it’s going to make my work easier for what I do currently when it comes to perhaps wordsmithing or doing research or so forth. But in terms of optimization, you have to have a model, it seems, in my mind, of what the possibilities are to be able to do a comparison between what is and what is potentially possible with a specific process. 

In the process world, we look at things from two different perspectives. When a process isn’t behaving the way it needs to behave, it’s failing either because it’s got a design that won’t allow it to work that way. You’re trying to ask the process to do something it can’t do by the laws of nature. Or the process isn’t behaving properly because of what you would characterize as a deployment failure. Deployment failure is when you give a perfectly good process less than it needs to be successful. So meaning if I don’t give you the right staffing, the right budget, the right time, the right regulations, the right leadership—if anything’s missing as an input— You compromise a really good design. And so the vast majority of companies I work with are companies that are underperforming because they’re poorly deploying the assets they have. So AI might be able to sit there and say, look, you bought this functionality. You’re not using it. 

Half the time when I have a software solution that isn’t working the way it’s supposed to, and you ask people, have you even opened up the box and looked inside and see what it’s designed to do? Because maybe you just need to turn on a couple of switches, and it provides the functionality that you’re missing. And maybe you didn’t need the functionality when it was installed or nobody took the tutorial, so they never really understood the breadth of capabilities. 

And most of us underdeploy the assets—our computers, our cell phones. We use maybe five to ten percent of the functional capabilities. 

Really looking at the problem critically and asking good questions has been a big theme in your career. It’s the organizations that have been most successful in transitioning and then sustaining it—the stickiness—is the question of, you know, did it really become embedded as a new cultural transformation? 

And there’s a couple of factors there. One of the factors, in my mind, was the organizations that made it and stuck it were those that had been led by people that had already done it before. They knew what they wanted. They knew they needed to get there. They brought resources like us to the table because they needed folks that had done it. They knew their staff inside might be willing to make the journey, given the right resources and so forth, but they didn’t have the skills. 

So our job was to role model it and then teach it and then help them do it, and then eventually back out so they can then sustain it. 

Those companies where the leadership team had read the book or had heard kind of, like, hey, let’s go do that, it’s the latest buzzword—rarely have the stickiness because they really don’t know the challenges that they’re going to face, and it’s not going to be easy. And there’s going to be times where people have hissy fits and throw up a fight for whatever reason, just because they’re uncomfortable with the change. And it’s generally human factors, not technology constraints, it seems in most of those organizations. 

One of the things I believe the second part of the change management ultimately gets down to, if you want to change people’s perspectives, quite often, you have to change the words they use to describe the circumstance. Because the words stick you in a mental model that is, you know, it’s the same old, same old. 

So if I can come up with new terminology, that language can then allow the freedom to do things differently. 

Christa Downey: What’s an example of that? 

Bob Boehringer: I would say, you know, even part of my teaching really is, you know, getting people to use new words. Some of the two new words are, you know, is your process failing because of design or failing because of deployment? It’s not a characterization that most people ask when they do root cause analysis. They’re just saying, I’ve got a problem. The process is failing. What do I do? And I can do a stop gap. 

And the question is, do you really need to buy new technology if you’re underutilizing the existing technology? And you say, well, guess what? Not a great example. It’s like, if I’m horrible in terms of how I take care of my body and I compromise an organ, a heart because of what I eat or how I behave or whatever it might be, I can give you a brand new heart, but if I don’t change my lifestyle, the new heart is going to be compromised just like the old heart. 

And so, you kind of sit there and you say, if you still think your lifestyle or the way you manage the business is going to change because you bought a new software application and slap it in, but you don’t change the way people interact with it, you’re not going to get a change in outcomes. 

And generally, I would say, a lot of the focus ends up being specifically working on improving the handoffs between each of the different functions. 

So as we were kind of alluding to earlier, if you have a failure that’s surfacing five steps down the supply chain, but the root cause started with a one percent variation four steps upstream, people don’t look at that because that’s not where the fire is surfacing as being the problem. 

And so you put the flame out, but you don’t stop the fuel that causes the flame. And that firewall that you put to put the flame out or work around, throw bodies at, wherever it might be, will eventually be breached, and then you’ll have the fire coming back again. 

So the problem solving lexicon would get into the questions, you know, there’s a design versus deployment. Is this an input, process, or an outcome failure? What’s the correlation versus the causal nature of it? 

Those are the types of things that when people do problem solving, I want to hear those words being used rather than just how do we stop the pain? 

Christa Downey: Yeah, I’m hearing this as advice for those who have employees working on their teams and also for those who are new employees. I’m thinking of the sophomores and the juniors going into internships and the student, you know, entering their first job. Do you have anything else you want to say about how someone might approach that in an early position? 

Bob Boehringer: As a new hire, as a 65-year-old, it’s no different than as a 20-year-old. I’m going into a business environment where I either have knowledge or I don’t. I know the lay of the land or I don’t, and I have to figure out how to quickly get through the learning curve. 

And I can say everything that I learned how to do from a process perspective, because once again, I can’t take weeks to figure out why an organization is not performing as well as they should. I need to be able to know, and it may not be hours, but I need to know fairly quickly. 

And the only way I can do that is by embedding myself and watching and learning and doing as much background work before I even show up to understand, you know, the company, the industry, the competition. It’s basically really knowing the lay of the land. 

So if you show up on day one and you really don’t understand the business and who their customers or their competitors are, you’re not ready to go to work. 

And so I have to, you know, the easiest way to be viewed as competent is probably based on the type of questions you ask. And if you don’t know what those questions are, then you need to go back and do some deep diving. 

And a lot of it could be as simple as read the annual report, if there is one, if it’s a public company, you know. Reach out to people before you show up that are your peers. Ask if you can meet with your manager before you show up on day one. It’s really the pre work, and honestly, I find most people are willing to invest their time in you if you’re curious about what’s important to them. 

Yeah. Mmm. And, you know, like any other kind of stakeholder analysis, day one, you got to find out what success look like for them. And then you got to figure out how do I fit into that so I can contribute to their success. You know, it can’t be what’s in it for me. That’s a byproduct. 

Traci Nathans-Kelly: So we’re talking about, you know, early things that we’re doing in our careers right now. And that sophomore mark, we were talking a bit before we turned on the microphones here about the sophomore year being the year that you kind of declare we’re going to be for the next couple of years. So do you have any advice for those people hitting that sophomore mark where they’re making their decisions? 

Bob Boehringer: I would I would even take it two steps back further prior to even upon entering what school you choose to apply to and what school you eventually are accepted to and which one you commit to go to because The breadth of experience, I guess one of the things you have to know about yourself is are you incredibly focused, as a 14-year-old kid, do you know you want to be a doctor? Do you know you want to be an astronaut? And are you passionate about it and what you do on a day to day basis? Have you already proven that based on the work you do, the books you read, you know, the shows that you go to, whatever it might be? Are you that focused? If yes, then You know before your sophomore year what you’re going to be doing. You’re on track. If you don’t know what you’re doing, then I would sit there and say, and this is really kind of more of a message to the parents, is, I hope that you’ve given your kids the breadth of exposure to all the possibilities so that they have some sense of judgment as to what those options might be. 

You know, if you’re one of the questions I was asked over dinner last night with some of the master’s engineering students was, you know, why mechanical engineering? And I’m like, which is what my undergraduate was. So I wanted to be an architect, but I didn’t think I could be creative enough to be an architect. I love, you know, one of my summer jobs was being a laborer on a construction site. So I moved lumber and I learned how to build houses, and I love building stuff. I always have. But I also liked turning wrenches. And somewhere along the lines, I talk to an architect about what the profession was like. And what I heard most was it’s incredibly fulfilling, but it’s incredibly hard, and it’s not necessarily very well paying, at least not early on. And even to become licensed, it takes five years or so to be an apprentice working for a licensed architect, and it sounds like you’re trying to become a doctor. And even those people don’t necessarily, you know, succeed because you have to build the clientele and so forth. And I just like, Oh, I’m not creative enough. And I’m not, you know, it’s like, what can I do right now that’s going to allow me to do what seems to be something I’m good at? And what I found early on was, and this is kind of one of those, you know, to thine own self be true is, you know, do you know enough about what makes you excited? You can call it passionate, I guess, but, you know, in your idle moments, what do you do? What do you spend your time doing? And it’s hard for me to look at someone who’s a gamer and say, Oh, you’re going to be really, really good at gaming until all of a sudden you say, No, I’m a drone pilot, and I’m basically able to do things, you know, or I’m now, you know, I’m a surgeon using a DaVinci robot, and I can do things remotely. And I’ve tried that. I was able to play with a Da Vinci earlier this year and try to learn how to sew a pig stomach. And I’m a really good seamstress. I sewed sales and stuff growing up, but I suck it showing. There’s so much skill that I just, you know, it really takes time to get it. But it’s like I would hope, and I was blessed with exposure to so many different professions growing up, that I knew I love fixing broken things, and I knew electrons in me didn’t get along, so electrical engineering was not it. If I can’t see it and I can’t touch it, it’s not going to work for me. So mathematical stuff, not going to work, but cams and pistons and things that I could touch was something I’m a visual learner. So if you’re a visual learner, higher probability that something where you actually can physically do it. You know, chemistry can be physical because you can blow things up and you create reactions. But if it’s all inside a reaction vessel, it’s not quite as interesting to me. So It’s a long way around to the final question, which is, if you’re if you haven’t figured it out by the time you’re a sophomore, I would hope like heck, you’ve been exploring the dark corners of the possible professions that you might be interested in. And that means literally going to places that you would not normally go and seeing what’s going on there. That’s part of the curiosity piece. I found myself always wanting to talk to people that were kind of on the fringe, the people that didn’t look like me, that didn’t talk like me, that came from different places. And that provided me a perspective that I did not have you know, prior to those engagements. And that opened the doors to a whole bunch of things that I would have never considered as possible professions. You know, looking back 45 years ago, as a sophomore, all I knew is that I knew I enjoyed taking something that was broken and making it work the way it was supposed to work. I didn’t know that would be a mechanical engineering degree, but the reality is I don’t do mechanical engineering. I’m not very good at design, but I’m pretty good at fixing broken stuff. So I probably should have been in operations research, but that would require me to be really good at math and I’m not particularly good at math. So sounds like you found the window. But you didn’t make it work. I mean, once again, my disability of not being able to stay focused on one thing for long periods of time was a liability in terms of trying to really master something that was hard. But the strength that came out of that was I was able to see things much more broadly than those people that were very focused. Yeah, I always liken that now to what we’ve lost by searching for books or articles online because it’ll serve us the exact article 0R book. But we missed that step of, like, going to the library, pulling that book off the shelf, and we see everything else around it, what’s related to this. And so the electronic delivery of information has really cut down on us being able to see the relationships with all the other studies or areas or professions. And even, I mean, whether it’s swiping left or right. It’s like, you know, a newspaper, you have 20 headlines. Flip the page, 20 no headlines. Yes. So you’re getting a really high level scan, which is really you’re waiting for the screens to refresh or it’s just pretty small that you can’t. But the pictures are distracting, but, you know, so you’re losing that. And so effectively, this is the part that, you know, I find once again fascinating as we ebb and flow in terms of the advantages and disadvantages of technology. A digital world which allows you to see through a periscope, to see a small field division, and unless you rotate the periscope to see the breadth of it. And if you don’t have the ability to zoom in and zoom out quickly, it limits the amount of information that you have coming into you. And in my mind, it’s very similar to the difference between having a conversation with somebody and you go back 150 years ago and you say, when Morse code was the only mechanism for sending information, you know, you’re listening to dots and dashes and then you’re slowly and so we’re communicating through the straw, and the bandwidth of information that’s being shared is so small by comparison to what’s available. And virtual does the same dang thing. And the question is, how much of that blindness on either side of the span of vision that you have in front of you is going to become a liability? And I suspect it’ll get better. I mean, virtual reality allows that probably to occur, but it’s still limited in terms of the people have access. So There’s an us and them kind of segregation of those that will have access to that type of capability. But for the time being, everybody else is sucking their information through a straw. Yeah. And it means you’re going to be slower and it’s less data rich. And you’re probably going to make not as good decisions because you don’t have as much information as you would like to have. 

Christa Downey: We talked about how you got here in your career. If you weren’t doing this, what might you be doing? And which of that is closest to what you thought about when you were a child, if you thought about this at all? 

Bob Boehringer: I didn’t know I was going to be a teacher. And I suspect that if If I wasn’t a teacher, you know, I started looking at, what are the things that I seem to do best? I feel I’m rather creative at taking what’s been presented to you or what you’ve been given and optimizing it to the best of your ability. So when there’s a crisis, I like to believe that I can come up with usually a fairly efficient stopgap response to at least stabilize the situation. It won’t permanently fix things. But I’ve been fortunate enough to been exposed to enough of the different sciences and the technology and the different type of systems that govern what’s going on out there that I can cobble together, you know, stopgap measures. So that could have been me being an emergency responder. It could have been part of FEMA. I still think if I was younger, I’d love to be on the SWAT team that parachutes and basically stabilizes a region after a natural disaster or stabilizes the person that you’ve just pulled out of the car wreck. So and it’s, I’m unusual, I think, in some respects, or at least amongst my graduating class. My dad was an engineer by training. My mom studied psychology. She also was the accountant, the treasurer of the family business that kept us afloat during lean times. But I have a technical dimension, and then I have a human psychological kind of side. So I have a scent for whatever reason. I I have this kind of yin and yang kind of combination. And that combined with curiosity allows you to probably do a lot of things that I’m not that specialized. I’m a generalist. And you go back and you kind of say, as, well, once you start thinking process, it’s really hard to stop thinking that way. And everybody that does anything has some way they do what they do. And that involves some sort of set of transactions. That’s a process. And for whatever reason, I may have been that way always, but I think I would have been just a fixer of broken things because that’s what I, you know. Always took in the birds that had broken wings or, you know, the turtle that didn’t belong where it is. And now I have a pet turtle a while. You know, animals were a common, you know, fixed broken animals was early on in my life as well. So maybe a vet. Yeah, yeah. Any of those possibilities. 

Traci Nathans-Kelly: We’ve got that too at Cornell. 

Bob Boehringer: Yeah. Yeah. Also another really hard school to get into. 

Christa Downey: Exactly. Yes. Thank you so much. There has been a lot of insight and wisdom, I think, for all the ages. And so I hope our listeners appreciate this, and it’s been a pleasure. 

Bob Boehringer: Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for listening. 

Christa Downey: If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite platform. 

Join us for the next episode where we will be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world. 

Christa Downey: Welcome to the Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University. Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you. We had the delightful experience of interviewing Gigi Boehringer, class of 2018 ISST major. She currently works for Amazon Web Services as a senior technical product manager. Her time at Cornell was full of amazing classes and supportive professors, engaged project teams, and she was on the university sailing team too. We hope that you enjoy learning about her fascinating work at AWS and how her Cornell experience shaped that work. Christa Downey: Good to have you here today. Maybe start by telling us more about your current work. Gigi Boehringer: Yeah. So, currently, I am a senior product manager at Amazon Web Services. I am a technical product manager, which means that I work directly on one of the AWS services. As for me, currently, it’s a one particular product that I own called Amazon Workspaces Core. It’s a third party integration API for virtual desktops. So AWS, I think, about ten years ago, released Amazon Workspaces, which is a fully managed virtual desktop offering. And a couple of years ago, we released what I call a baby out of it, that is the everything, but I call it like the Lego head of the virtual desktops. So not only are you able to have fully managed desktops through AWS, but now you can bring whatever your preferred virtual desktop offering is, whether that’s Citrix or Horizon 8 or Workspot, Leostream, a few others that are third parties that are very similar to our native offering, but you can run that third party on top of the back end and the managed APIs that AWS offers. So at times, it can be very technical. At times, we’re very go to market focused because it is a newer product. So as a PM, it’s a balance between the two, at this point in time. But normally the PM role that I’m in would be almost entirely focused on just the product features and development. Traci Nathans-Kelly: I really find it interesting because so many of our students want to become product managers, just like what you’re doing. I mean, they talk about it constantly. And so I think it would be super helpful for them to get a view of, like, what I don’t know if there is such a thing as a normal day, but what does a day look like for you trying to balance all these demands? Gigi Boehringer: Yeah, so I think that’s the root of what being a product manager is balancing all the different pieces more than it is just one skill set. So a normal day as a PM at AWS consists of meeting with your engineering teams, meeting with legal potentially on some sort of new licensing thing you might be working on, leading or meeting with your business development and go to market team if it’s a newer product and seeing how that’s going. Um, for me, because my product integrates with other technology providers, I meet with at least one of them every single day to talk about our integration and talk about features that they need in order to offer the end customer what the customers asking for, but also features that maybe could be improved on that already exists today. And so it’s a range, definitely. Some people say being a PM is like being a mini CEO. I think of it sometimes as kind of like herding cats. Like, everybody is going in the same direction generally, but there’s a lot of competing tension between all the different PMs, especially at a company like AWS, where there’s about ten of us focused on this larger orgs product, making sure that engineering is able to prioritize and keep moving forward on the pieces that impact your features. But then also as a team, lately it’s been in addition to that roadmapping for 2025. And so you get to work with those other PMs, but simultaneously, want to make sure that your features that you’ve identified are the ones that are moving forward. Traci Nathans-Kelly: Thank you for that. So as a PM, do you typically just look forward, nine, 12, 18, 36 months? How does that work out for you? Gigi Boehringer: It depends on the company. At AWS, specifically, we really like to only set a roadmap for nine to 12 months out, and it’s constantly changing. Some companies that maybe are smaller are looking at an even shorter duration because it’s very much meant to be a reactive, “We have a customer asking for something. We can do it in a few weeks. Let’s get it out.”, and then you’re able to onboard that new customer to your product. For AWS, we have kind of a massive backlog of requests from customers because we have so many. And so a lot of times we are ranking things based on how many customers have asked for something, and it’s a version of if you’ve heard of RICE scoring, that’s what we use. So it’s partially a judgment call and product sense call, but then partially using the data that we’ve collected from those customers to plan ahead. I think what’s interesting, particularly about the way AWS does it is right now, we’re planning for the first half of 2025. And we’re making a long list that we are currently ranking and people are kind of pitching each other on why we should be ranking one thing over another, with the data that we’ve collected. But then at some point, there’s a cut off on that list, and it might be number 45 out of 65 that we’ve listed for the first half of next year, and those items then can be considered for the second half of next year with the, you know, understanding that a lot of things do kind of extend out longer than you might expect when you are solving new problems with the engineers. So it’s definitely an interesting time, but it’s what I’ve been told is it’s a peculiar process. I’ve only ever been a PM at AWS, but I think the fact that it is quite malleable throughout the year, based on customer needs is peculiar to us, and one of the ways that we stay customer obsessed is kind of our slogans. It’s quite fun, but definitely ever changing. Christa Downey: Excellent. Great opportunity. What’s been the most significant challenge you faced in your work, and how did you overcome it? Gigi Boehringer: Yeah, so I think for me, the most significant challenge has been helping launch this new product over the past few years and making sure we are continuously iterating on the initial idea of the product and how we could continue to bring it to life over the next five to ten years, because it’s not a product that’s going to be exactly the same the day it’s launched. A lot of times all of the larger tech companies are releasing something, and they call it minimum lovable product, minimum viable product. But the idea is that you have a lot of room to grow into being more loved than minimum. And so we have all these we have a laundry list of features that different partners have requested. We’ve seen the way that customers have interacted with it now in production environments and are now getting really good data on how to improve the product. So it is truly an enterprise grade product that more customers can launch into their production environments without necessarily needing us to be right alongside them and kind of get that flywheel going of onboarding that comes with a little bit of time and love. Traci Nathans-Kelly: You all are pulled in a lot of different directions. With all the best, with really great outcome. I like your word malleable there for, you know, like how responsive you are to what the customers are asking for. And so I just kind of wanted to link that up to how does this work then? Going through all of these phases and all this input, what do you do as a team to keep contributing to a healthier or sustainable, more equitable sort of workspace or outcome or product features, whatever it might be. How do you frame that up with AWS? Gigi Boehringer: Yeah, I think when it comes to the root of it all, having the customer be the absolute primary focus helps a lot with how equitable it is when maybe you’re going through that healthy tension of trying to figure out which features to do next, but also the idea that those customers are giving us a lot of feedback on how things are going. And so we all are tasked with listening to the customers, and it’s not necessarily an environment of one person has an idea, they run with it. They get to be the star. It’s more like, I don’t really care where the idea comes from. I just want the customers to be happy. And I just want to see that positive feedback. And so I think having a lot of people on that same page focused on the end goal being the customer and not necessarily other potential variables to focus on, you end up with a much more equitable environment because of the way that the customer’s driving the decision making versus it being personal decisions. So it’s very data driven. I love it. I love the level of data data driven decisions that are being made because it makes it much more clear and concise and it’s less about preference and it’s more about, well the data is saying this, so we’re going to move forward here. And it’s easier to, I think, put everything on the table, and people are not looking at you for your idea. They’re looking at your writing and your data that you brought to the table to make the decision on whether or not it’s the best path forward. Christa Downey: Can you give a little more insight into what people and organizations are important collaborators for the work that you do? Gigi Boehringer: Yeah, so it’s pretty amazing. I don’t, it’s hard, I think, at times, to understand how large the organizations are, especially at AWS on the service team side. It’s truly amazing how many people we have focusing on different pieces of these products. And my product is not even close to being one of the largest ones at the company. But the collaboration comes from, right? We have solutions architects that are speaking to customers every day, understanding their feedback, helping them solve problems, helping them solve around their own requirements within the customer’s organization for maybe IT requirements that have been put in place that might be old, might be new, might be based on, you know, concerns, security wise, or it might be based on the way that networking was done 15 years ago, and they just haven’t been updated. You do have to work within those bounds. So those solutions architects are the forefront of all customer facing interactions. They work with account managers and sales teams, but they truly are meant to be a technical advisor to the customer. They are one of the best places to get customer feedback because they can speak to me about what they’re hearing. They can have opinions because they see lots of different customers, not just one person that they’re speaking to for the product use, um they also are able to then share with the customer what’s happening on the service team side and what they’ve been told on the roadmap. And it builds this relationship bridge, the customer that makes a really big impact, I think, on the level of trust that we earn. So I think solutions architects are one that I collaborate with every single day, and I talk to them on Slack every single day. In addition to that, it’s my business development team, so I have two that are focused on my product alone. And so they are like, business partners to me, and we’re talking about onboarding either new managed service partners or we’re talking about customer feedback that they heard during some maybe executive level conversation. In addition to that, we have sales specialists that own the entire orgs products that they sell, and they get a lot of feedback from the field as well in a slightly more sales focused way than from the solutions architects. And then once you go inside of the actual service team, that’s when you have engineering and within engineering project managers and program managers that are, you know, seasoned in ways that only I can continue to work towards being because, you know, I am earlier in my career than a lot of people. But they have really, I think, strong sense of product sense and judgment when it comes to the way that, you know, either launches have gone based on the way that we’re sharing this pricing with a customer or based on just engineering hiccups that can happen and delay things. And the way that I should be communicating that to customers, they’re really helpful. In addition to solving problems that I really lean on them to help me solve with new feature ideas. So the collaboration spans, I think, quite a range of types of people and types of backgrounds, but it all feeds into this kind of flywheel of feature development that I try to keep pushing forward for my product. Christa Downey: So, Tracy mentioned we have so many students who expressed an interest in this work. I’m not sure how many of them fully know what they’re getting into when they say this on paper, maybe it makes sense or maybe they manage a product here on campus. And as I hear you speak, I’m reminded of how much responsibility you have and how much you’re working with people who have so much depth of knowledge and experience in their particular field. And so I’m curious to know what prepared you for this level of responsibility and coordination? And what might you recommend for others, either to build up that type of experience or to evaluate, you know, whether or not this is a good fit for them? What would you say to that? Gigi Boehringer: Yeah, so I think one of one of my favorite experiences, especially at Cornell was being on a project team. It was something that when I was 5-years-old, I wanted to do at Cornell. It was something that when I got to Cornell, I was excited to do the when the chance, when it was time, to start looking into that. And it really did help, I think, build those muscles with communicating with different types of engineers around me and different types of people around me in a way that was very collaborative and mission driven on a singular a path towards success. It was very clear where we all wanted to go, but we all had very different brains with different experiences, maybe different internship experiences as well that we’re bringing to the table. And it was, I think, one of the best things that I did just to build those muscles early on. I was able to be business development lead for Cornell Hyperloop junior year, and then I was team late of Cornell Hyperloop senior year with two close friends. And we each had very different skill sets, but the management experience of the people and of engineers that we knew as we had gone through during freshman sophomore, junior year, how difficult it can be at times, going into senior year, you’re a little more comfortable. But understanding the workload and understanding the balance that everyone was trying to keep. And so the people management skills, I think, were really developed in that type of situation where you’re trying to take into account that people have, you know, this big life that they’re living and your team’s goal is just one piece of a lot going on in everybody’s life. Oh, so I think that helped a lot with just interacting with different types of people and understanding the way that product development can occur through agile workflows. And that was helpful, especially when I started interviewing at different companies. I also think internship experience helped a lot going into the full time work. I interned at an AppDev agency my sophomore year, and then interned at a block chain financial technology company going into senior year and spend junior summer up at Cornell. And through those internships, plus Hyperloop it felt like I had a pretty clear picture of what I wanted to do and knew the skills I needed to keep building in order to do it. And so that, for me, I think, was really helpful in understanding. I wanted to do maybe an APM program, the associate product manager programs at a tech company, if possible, after senior year of college. But I ended up really falling in love with the solutions architect role during my internship summer at R3, the distributed ledger finance platform. And I thought, Okay, I’m going to do this. This is what I want to do. And so I was lucky enough AWS had a program at the time for Solutions Architect entry level roles where you would do training program and then get placed on a team. So I did that, and as a solutions architect, I really leaned into being as deep as possible on the technology, knowing that every year after college, it’s harder to stay as deep as you were when your only job was to learn about new technology. And so I really leaned into that. I loved it. And then when the opportunity surfaced to move over to product manager, that was the time I was like, Okay, I did the work. I understand the role. It’s going to be really hard, and it was really hard to transition, but all the different experiences balanced out, I think a lot of skills that were needed. So I could really focus on the tactical PM work that I needed to learn when I moved over to the product manager role. Traci Nathans-Kelly: So many moving pieces, right? And so, of course, we’re asking this of everybody as of late, but what about AI? What’s going on with your work is AI having an effect there at all right now? Gigi Boehringer: Yeah, I think with my work, the way that it’s having effect is it’s definitely of interest. It definitely gets a lot more marketing budget towards it at any tech company right now. The question is, how can you use it and be effective and how can it truly make an impact on the customer? And so ways that we’ve looked into doing that, and I think we just released it a few weeks ago was partnering our product with other AWS products that are AI focused, like Amazon Q developer, which is, like, a chat bot to help you code. Where you can ask it to build snippets for you or larger code bases, and it will give you drafts that you can then use. And so I think that’s a really good example of it’s not necessarily replacing anyone, but it is making it a lot easier if you’re not as adept at some pieces of code or if you want to learn more or are pushing yourself more into an area that maybe you don’t have the schooling in or haven’t you know, you’re spending a couple days researching it before being able to do it. This is a tool that can help you get moving a little bit faster, save some time. A handful of cycles of getting errors, and it’s something that as our product moves forward, we say, Okay, well, maybe this is something people might want offered inside a desktop. And maybe this is something that we can integrate with in that format and not just have it be a paired sales offering. Um, so I think there’s a lot of room for play there. I love the democratization of artificial intelligence, tooling and the way that every company right now is looking to, you know, ride this wave of excitement and benefit from it and also, you know, bring it to a larger audience in a way that, you know, when we were in college, we were learning about it, we were using it, but we weren’t necessarily talking to our friends that were in other colleges on campus about it. And so now it’s definitely a level of democratization that I think is going to help everyone and is a lot of fun to play around with. Christa Downey: What do you wish you knew when you were a sophomore? Gigi Boehringer: So when I was a sophomore, I was trying to figure out still not well how to balance being on the varsity sailing team and being in engineering, seeing how freshman year went, which was not easy for me. I, you know, I struggled many times throughout my engineering career. And I think that for me, I just wish that I had used every resource possible. I think a lot of times, it’s a hard tension, especially as a student athlete to get to practice and be at practice all afternoon and schedule your classes around it, and then go to morning workout and not fall asleep during class after waking up at 5:00 A.M. For workout. Right. It’s a hard balance, and it’s a hard balance. It’s very different than being an athlete in high school. So for me, I just wish that I think I had trusted that I could do it all. But instead of prioritizing practice every day, maybe prioritize office hours a little bit more and use those tools on campus to make sure that I was really getting the most out of my studies as a strong base for the future that I would then have to pay for by making sure I studied more by not going to it. So I think for me, I came in really prioritizing trying to do both perfectly, and I ended up slipping. And so prioritizing time on campus with professors that are amazing, and with office hours, with friends and TAs that are so helpful, being in that environment is the most important thing you can do while you’re on campus. Athletics it feels really important, but for me, I think it quickly was clear that engineering was my future profession and not being an Olympic sailor. So, once I accepted that, then it was time to move towards engineering a little bit more and sailing a little bit less. But I think it’s a really hard balance, and it’s hard to be a freshman and a sophomore on any team when you’re you’re trying to figure out where you fit in. You’re trying to figure out what your future looks like in this sport. Maybe it is something that you want to take full on after college. And those years feel really important to see whether or not you’re going to be able to do that. But there’s nothing better truly than the friends and the hard work that pays off in engineering school. I think it’s just such a special environment that I loved soaking in once I made that reprioritization. Traci Nathans-Kelly: Like you, I had a first year that was a little bit rough, so I completely identify with that memory. Absolutely. So thinking back to all of that, you were just mentioning the professors and making friends and doing all these things together. Are there any classes in particular that you enjoy not necessarily even engineering, but something else that you absolutely enjoyed and would recommend? Gigi Boehringer: Yeah, actually I would say all my favorite classes were definitely in engineering. I really enjoyed rapid prototyping. I think that was senior year. We made a cocktail making robot for our final project, which was a real hit at parties afterwards and lived a good life until it was left on the sidewalk in College Ave for the garbage trucks to pick up. But that was a really, really fun class that I think expanded the hands on work in engineering that being an engineering Infosci major did not give me and was kind of something from growing up that was the reason why I wanted to be an engineer in the first place. I also really enjoyed what was it? Text Mining in Python with I think it was with Mimno, Professor Mimno. And then he had one other course that I really enjoyed, which is a data visualization course. Um, I really think though junior and senior year, every class is just so much fun. And that’s the best part of college. All those classes where you feel like you’re starting to dive in, it’s actually not as hard as you thought because you have a good base, and you can just lean into learning a lot of really cool things and really take advantage of all the resources engineering school has to offer. There’s not a lot of places like it when it comes to the level of resources given to students, for project teams, for research labs, the devotion to the, I think, the diversity and offerings in engineering school really is just so special. It’s amazing. Christa Downey: I love the picture that you’re painting. You know, how to prioritize, how to piece this together, how to make sense of all that’s available and the possibilities here. I think students will appreciate this. We now have sort of a fun or speed round, and the first question is, where do you go for information to stay current in your work? Gigi Boehringer: Honestly, internal resources, I think there’s a lot of really cool service teams at AWS that I don’t get to hang out with every day and don’t get to work with that I love. But also, I’m actually a host on AWS on Air, which is a Twitch channel that we have. And during those sessions, that’s where I learn the most. So on Fridays, we interview product managers that have released a new product in the past week or two, and I get to ask them all the stupid questions I ever want for the sake of everyone else, of course, and not myself. Um, and so we get to do a live streamed Twitch episode on Fridays where we just learn about new cool technology. And it’s like my favorite format. It’s so much fun. We get viewers interacting in the chat, asking questions for their own AWS environments, and it’s just such, I think, a pleasant way to consume new technology information. I could read, but my eyes staring at a computer for another couple hours during the day is unlikely at this point in time, as they get worse with age, but I can watch a twitch live stream about new technology any day. Live demos are amazing and so much fun, and you really feel connected to, like, either that feature or that product at that PM worked much longer than probably anyone knows on getting out, which is cool. Christa Downey: Excellent. Is that an internal channel? Gigi Boehringer: It’s external audience. Yes, you should absolutely share it with your audience. It’s external. It’s on Twitch. We’re on the AWS main Twitch channel, and then also AWS on air, which is featured on Twitch, YouTube, sometimes LinkedIn and other social platforms. Christa Downey: Great. We’ll have to get that link from you. Thank you. Traci Nathans-Kelly: Yeah. And if you weren’t doing this work, now, you said early on, you were already thinking about project teams when you were five. Gigi Boehringer: Yes. Traci Nathans-Kelly: But what else was in the mix when you were a kid that you thought you might pursue? Gigi Boehringer: So there was a strong pull towards chemical engineering that was quickly redirected by my grades in chemistry for engineers in freshman year. So there was a strong pull towards that. I loved chemistry in high school. I loved AP Chem. I just I was really enjoyable for me. So that was one. I did have a dream for a while of going to the Olympics for sailing that has not happened, but I’m so excited for all the people that showed up at the Olympics this year for the sailors. It’s just so awesome to see the US sailing team doing really well. Seeing familiar faces from college athletics and growing up. That’s just amazing. What else? 1 second. Let me think. I can think of something. Probably the last one would be something within the mechanical engineering range. The focus was engineering, and it wasn’t necessarily anything else. So, it was always going to be engineering. It just was which kind. And for me, I really ended up enjoying the balance of the operations research with the computer science classes that at the time ISST offered. Traci Nathans-Kelly: Really great. Great combination, right? Gigi Boehringer: It is. Yeah, it’s been really helpful, actually, in my career, which is amazing that I found a path that at the time, felt kind of hard to identify, but it worked out the way it’s supposed to, as it always does. And I think if I could spend more time hosting live streaming or TV shows or something, that is, like, a newfound passion that I just love it so much. So we shall see in time. Christa Downey: Excellent. Good. I look forward to following along. So, along those lines, hosting TV shows, sailing, building robots. Tell us what you do these days to relax, have fun, or re energize. Gigi Boehringer: Yeah, so these days, outside of work, I have gotten into the classic college athlete looking for endurance sports to fill the need. So I’ve been, I guess, dipping my toe into triathlons, which has been a lot of fun as a very different world that I had to retake swim lessons because I had no idea how to swim laps the way that I might have on swim team when I was ten, and learned how to ride a bike in a way that is, like, true road cycling and not just around the neighborhood. So it’s been a lot of fun to lean into. I ski a lot and try to get out into mountains whenever I can, outside of New York City just to get a little bit of reprieve from the pace of the city. And then I also spend a lot of my time doing charity work through the New York Junior League. And so that’s something that I’m really passionate about. I’m on the fundraising side, and it just brings me a lot of joy to support different charities in New York City that are focused on women and children. Christa Downey: That’s great. Thank you so much, Gigi, for joining us today. We really appreciate your time and insights. Thank you for listening. If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode where we will be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to the Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University. Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you. Christa Downey: Today, we’re joined by Daniel Morgan, a research portfolio manager for Mission Cure. This is a patient research organization dedicated to finding therapies for chronic pancreatitis. Daniel shares how his research background helps his team make informed decisions about allocating research dollars to discovering life altering therapies for this painful, rare disease with no cure. Traci Nathans-Kelly: Daniel, thank you so much for being with us today. We always like to start with our guests asking about where are you now and what are you doing? So can you fill us in on the context of where you’re working right now? Daniel Morgan: Yeah, my pleasure to be here. So right now, I am the research portfolio manager for Mission Cure, and Mission Cure is a nonprofit using an impact investment model to improve outcomes for pancreatitis, ultimately going for a cure. And essentially, this means the money used on these projects are invested on an outcome basis, and profit is more of a secondary priority for these things. Chronic pancreatitis is a devastating disease. It affects the pancreas, which is responsible for both insulin and digestive enzymes. Without it, you become diabetic and need to take replacement enzymes before every meal. Its characteristic symptom is really, really intense pain and many claim this to be the worst pain someone can feel. My role as the portfolio manager means I’m in charge of finding new partners for chronic pancreatitis research and accelerating the science toward patient use. This means a lot of different things ranging from helping to recruit for clinical trials to even developing a wearable device to better track and understand symptoms of the disease. Christa Downey: I love it. How did you get there? Daniel Morgan: I actually interned for them in high school back in 2017, and we stayed in contact. Traci Nathans-Kelly: Oh, wow. Daniel Morgan: So when they asked if I wanted to work for them part time during my masters, I said, Are you looking for a full time scientist? And they said, Yes. So, you know, they did a brief interview, and I’m back with them now, and I’m loving it. Christa Downey: I’m so glad to hear that. So you’re a scientist with a lot of interaction with clients and people in general. Can you tell us more about your day today? Daniel Morgan: Yeah, totally. The day to day looks very different depending on what projects have more urgent needs than others depending on deadlines. Sometimes I’m looking for new partners through surveying scientific papers, pitching to life sciences companies to take on pancreatitis, or attending conferences to present or see new research. Right now actually, I’m working on submitting an abstract to the Digestive Disease Week conference on clinical trials that have already occurred for chronic pancreatitis and recurrent acute pancreatitis. This will be very helpful in proving the viability of how we can approach clinical trials for these diseases and different endpoints that can be used for measuring interventions’ usefulness. Yeah, so I’m looking forward to seeing that go through. Traci Nathans-Kelly: It sounds like so many different factors have to come into play, right, to make a set of successful practices. And so we ask everybody, like, what’s a significant challenge that you faced at work? And how did you overcome it? It sounds like you’re doing that well, but walk us through an example, maybe. Daniel Morgan: Definitely. So I’ve been here for about a year now, and early on into starting here, there was a change in management, which meant I was taking on more responsibilities in my role, which was both exciting but also a little nerve wracking since this is my first full time job out of education. And I didn’t want to make too many mistakes. You know, a little nervous. But I stuck close by with the CEO who has been working at this for a couple of years and continuously asking questions before making mistakes, I think, has led me to be able to excel in this role and continue to improve with the more projects I take on. Traci Nathans-Kelly: I appreciate your point about not being afraid to ask questions, right? I think so many people think they just have to know or figure it out on their own. Daniel Morgan: Yeah, and taking over large projects, it’s a lot of project management, making sure that people are on track and hitting their milestones. Definitely had some experience at Cornell, but working with both small and large biotech companies, it’s very different and you need to understand there will be different responsibilities, different levels of information that they’ll give you to be able to actually make an impact, and making sure that you’re not stepping on too many toes is also important. Traci Nathans-Kelly: That’s a great point. Christa Downey: So in the day today, I mean, certainly, so you mentioned some of these challenges with relationships and the skills needed. Can you talk more about the skill sets that you’re using in this role? Daniel Morgan: Yeah, so for project management specifically? Christa Downey: Across General, right, like when you talk about investments, I think, you know, are you doing using some financial knowledge and skills? Or are you using more the scientific, you know, knowledge and skills? And then, yes, project management. Daniel Morgan: There’s a something I’ve really enjoyed in this role is the combination of needing to understand the science and being able to parse out what is you know, maybe a little more exaggerated versus what is legit? What is actually going to be the difference maker in this field. And I’ve definitely learned that through Cornell, many classes having us analyze different research papers that one would expect to be very professional, but there are ways to figure out that, the overlapping error bars makes you less confident or the way that this molecule interacts with other parts of the body might make it not suitable for a cure. And also being people-facing and using my people skills is very important as well because not everyone I interact with is a PhD in the pancreas. I need to work out how to best explain to them why something might be better than a different molecule and really work on listening so that I can best tailor the work that I’m doing to them. Christa Downey: Yes. Excellent. So then I started to think about so many students across the board and BME, in particular, you know, ask about, do I need an M.Eng.? How does that help me? What does that look like? Can you speak to that? Daniel Morgan: Yeah, I think the M.Eng, was great for me. Specifically Professor ed Faria’s class, innovation and design of biomedical technologies, was very helpful in learning the ins and outs of taking a molecule or a device from start to finish. What do you need to hit? What do you need to take into account? Different stakeholders, different payers, and ensuring that everyone’s on board so it can actually get to market and actually help the people it needs to help. Traci Nathans-Kelly: So it sounds like you have so many partners and collaborators. So will you talk to us more about which people or organizations, you know, you hold in that collaboration environment that you have? Daniel Morgan: I think the most important has to be the patients. This is all for them, so we want them along our side and closest to us. But beyond them, we also work closely with academics across the country, actually across the world, from India to Denmark to Alabama. We are finding the professionals and try to rope them into our community to create something bigger. But something that’s really important for further collaboration is working closely with life sciences companies. And this is because funding is a major issue in rare disease research. There’s just never enough and many academics are not geared towards creating a business out of their science. They’ll take it to the clinical trial stage and then have to pass it off. But if there’s no one to pass it off to, it’ll start collecting dust, even if it is a good cure. So by working closer with life sciences companies, convincing them to take on pancreatitis, getting more investors willing to fund these projects, we’ll be able to get closer to a cure. Christa Downey: This is such an interesting model, and you know, I’m not sure how common this type of model is if this exists everywhere, and I’m just not familiar. I’m fascinated. You know, I guess I never spent a lot of time thinking about this as a possibility, and I work with so many students interested in healthcare. And so I’m just thinking through if I have a student who listens to this podcast perhaps and comes to chat with me more or who doesn’t, and they’re wondering about how to get involved, how to make an impact with a particular disease, perhaps, but I guess could be anything in healthcare, maybe beyond you know, what are some possibilities? Like, what does that look like? What does it look like for someone to maybe get a similar position to you, or, you know, what it might look like from here? What are some other roles in this field? Can you talk more about just this space in general? Daniel Morgan: Yeah. So I think academics, the training is very important. Getting both the understanding of the sciences side of things, but also understanding the business regulatory works, the background that you don’t always hear about is important to focus on. But also, if there is an organ you’re interested in, a disease that you’re interested in, there might be a nonprofit associated with that. And a lot of these places, including Mission Cure takes interns every year. I just had two lovely interns, Julian Morales and Lisa Colbert from the CUNY system. And they really helped me put together work, the research on the clinical trials actually because it’s all unstructured data. It was so much to parse through. There were huge helps with that. And I kept them involved in every single thing I did. So they were able to basically be my understudy, and I think that helped them and they’re definitely ready to take on a position similar to mine if they chose to. So I think looking for non profit, many of them do pay as well. So if that’s a concern, you can be getting a salary for this as an intern. And that’s definitely a way to pursue both this people facing but science-y side of the STEM career path. Traci Nathans-Kelly: I love the shout out to your interns. Daniel Morgan: Yeah, they’re awesome, so I had to. Traci Nathans-Kelly: That’s a wonderful wonderful thing to note when you can also be so proud of your interns as an organization, that’s really a remarkable thing. Daniel Morgan: Yeah. It was definitely a great experience taking on the leadership role of working alongside them, educating them, but also learning from them, too. Traci Nathans-Kelly: Right? All those fresh perspectives that they walk in the door with. Daniel Morgan: Exactly. Traci Nathans-Kelly: So I just came out of teaching a class 10 minutes before we logged on here, and we were talking about AI. For us, specifically, it was about presentations, but AI in general, became the conversation for several different things. But we were wondering, also, how is AI having an impact in the space where you work? Daniel Morgan: Yeah. It’s definitely early stages. It’s still in development, needs to be improved. And aside from climate concerns and energy impact, I’m really looking forward to the way it can contribute to this field. I think it’ll be huge for finding new potential molecules because AI will be much faster than I could ever be at looking up what these molecules interact with, their mechanism of action, and how they could potentially treat the disease. So that would just give us probably hundreds of new targets to pursue. And work with new collaborators to get it into market. We like to take multiple shots on goal and this would be the perfect path to increase our shots. Traci Nathans-Kelly: I like that explanation. Multiple shots to get on goal. That’s a great description of that. Might steal it from you, Daniel. Daniel Morgan: Please do. Traci Nathans-Kelly: So also one of the things that we like to ask is that you dial back to being sophomore. And because that’s the year where you start to get a good sense of, you know, which kind of engineering you might want to do. And most students at the end of their sophomore years matriculate into one of the majors. And so with that in mind, what do you wish you knew that you can send out into the world right now as a sophomore? Daniel Morgan: I think it can be difficult to see and know at first, but there are so many different ways to use an engineering degree. At its core, an engineering degree helps you become a better problem solver, and that’s what I try to do day to day, figure out how we can best solve the problem of pancreatitis. I used to think that the only way to use an engineering degree would be working at a research bench or get a PhD, and I’ve been proven wrong, and I’m really enjoying this alternative path, not to say that I might get a PhD later in life, but as of now, I’m enjoying this interacting with patients, people. I feel like I’m really making an impact. They’re very appreciative and we’re taking these steps together. Still using the critical thinking and problem analysis skills I gained from my biological engineering degree, reshaping the approach that we’re taking to cure this disease. Christa Downey: I love this. I can’t wait to tell students about this example. And, you know, I don’t know that I’ve spoken with any other alumni who are doing this type of work, and I think a lot of people would be interested, so it’s exciting. Okay, so again, back to when you were a student thinking back to when you were a student, what class or classes had the greatest impact in preparing you for your career? Daniel Morgan: Mm hmm. I already touched on Professor de Faria’s class, so I won’t repeat that, but two other classes that come to mind would be Professor Datta’s Heat and Mass Transfer in Biological Engineering, which is very niche and might only apply to you if you’re a bio engineering major. But also Professor Brito’s Advanced Microbiome Engineering class. Starting with Professor Datta’s class, he really taught us how to break down problems into their most basic pieces, which really helps me every day in determining how to achieve the best outcomes for any problem. Break it down to the building blocks, tackle each one individually, and it all comes together to be a great end result. Then in Professor Brito’s class, this is really where I think I learned how to be appropriately skeptical of scientific work, which is immensely helpful to me determining which projects need to be prioritized. Traci Nathans-Kelly: I love that phrase appropriately skeptical. Right? Like, that’s the scientific method down to its basic, down to its skeleton. That’s really wonderful. And what wonderful professors to be able to work with? Christa Downey: Yeah. Traci Nathans-Kelly: So I mean, you’re absolutely out there in the mix of everything as it’s developing, right? And so how do you keep on top of things? Where do you get information that keeps you the most current? Daniel Morgan: Yeah, it’s really convenient, actually. You can set up alerts from different sources from Google to PubMed and more, and they’ll send you emails with the new science or mentions of keywords like PRSS1 is one of the genes that can contribute to pancreatitis. I have an alert set up for that, but also just even pancreatitis and chronic pancreatitis, I have alerts set up for. And so every other week or so, I go through the news articles, the new research papers posted, and determine if they’re relevant, depending on stage of research, credibility, and its results, determining how to prioritize it. Traci Nathans-Kelly: That’s really cool. I need to learn to set up more alerts for myself. I have a few, but I need to do more. Daniel Morgan: It’s worth it. Christa Downey: Yeah, great way to organize things and to keep track of things that is relevant. Students could be using that for their career exploration as well, you know, as they’re thinking about what they’re interested in. Yeah, fantastic. So, Daniel, what do you do to relax, have fun, and re-energize? Daniel Morgan: Well, I love to cook with friends and family. You know, science and engineering can be so exact a lot of the time, and it’s nice to have an activity where going off script can actually make things better. And, you know, even with that, I do try to incorporate this attitude into my own work, analyze things from different perspectives of stakeholders. It’s important to understand, you know, needs of patients, but also researchers, investors, and anyone else who’s involved to ensure that this cure actually gets to patients in the best way possible. Christa Downey: Excellent. This is fantastic. I really appreciate your time, and I truly am excited to share this story with students. Thank you. Daniel Morgan: Glad to join. Traci Nathans-Kelly: Absolutely. Thank you for your time today. It’s been really great to explore some of these, like Christa said, we need to fold in more BME students along the way, but this has been a wonderful window into not only a specific disease that you’re trying to cure, but also a very specific, right, the nonprofit part of it, which is something that is well, so many organizations work this way hand in hand with research organizations and for profit entities, as you said. And so it’s really this intersection has been interesting for us to explore. Thank you. Daniel Morgan: Thank you. Christa Downey: Thank you for listening. If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode where we will be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to the Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University. Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you. Christa Downey: So, Jason, it’s so good to have you here today. Jason Wright: Yeah, thanks for having me. Christa Downey: Awesome. Let’s start by just telling the listeners about your current work. Jason Wright: Yeah, so I work at a company called Synchron. It’s a brain-computer interface startup based out of Brooklyn, New York. We’re developing an implantable system for people with severe paralysis, like people living with ALS, for example, who have lost some or all of their critical motor functions. The main goal is to restore their ability to interact with digital devices, right? So instead of physically tapping on a screen, if you’ve lost that ability, you can generate those control events by thought alone. So you think about something like tapping your foot or moving your leg to generate that control signal. That then enhances their ability to do things like communicate with loved ones, caregivers, medical professionals, or to perform activities of daily living, things like checking email, shopping, banking, Netflix, that sort of thing that otherwise becomes so much more difficult when you’re living with paralysis. So the overall goal is to provide autonomy, enhance quality of life for those individuals, and Synchrons got a kind of unique approach to that problem. We’re going with a minimally invasive strategy. So rather than put electronics in the brain, we use blood vessels that sit just outside the brain as kind of the natural highways of information to capture the neural signal. We also are leveraging a lot of existing technology that’s been out in the medical world for many decades. So our surgical procedure, the design of our implant, it looks a lot like cardiac stint procedures and pacemakers, which have been around for many years and are known to be safe and effective. That’s kind of the company in a nutshell. And my role within Synchron is mainly focused on our implantable electronics. We have a component that gets implanted in the chest, which is connected up to electrodes in those blood vessels outside the brain through a lead. It’s got a rechargeable battery and a bluetooth antenna, and its job is primarily to amplify and filter that neural signal that’s coming in through that lead and then transmit it outside the body. So I’m very focused on the design and development of that chest implant and how it integrates into our larger product, which includes external components and software applications, things of that nature. Christa Downey: It’s such important work. So talk to us more about what does your day today look like? Jason Wright: Yeah, so my role is really kind of a hybrid of hardware engineering, firmware engineering and systems engineering to some degree. Some of my days are mainly spent in the lab, working at the bench, things like prototyping circuits or testing that functionality. Some are spent more on CAD. Some are spent kind of purely as a firmware engineer, where I’m writing code that runs on the implant, and kind of the nature of a startup is typically wearing many hats like that. We’ve got a pretty big team. We’ve got outside partners, too. So a lot of the times, you know, my job can look more like systems integration where the challenge is getting all these different parts to work together and smoothing out issues that come up. I would also say, typically for a startup, there’s not always a clear division between design and manufacturing. So at a larger company, you might have a setup where you have engineers that are kind of purely working on design and then handing off their designs to another team. But at a startup like ours, almost every engineer has some interaction with the manufacturing side. So for me, that’s meant many days on site at our manufacturing partner as well, thinking through how our manufacturing processes and test procedures are going to work out. Christa Downey: Excellent. So what’s the most significant challenge you faced in your work? Jason Wright: Yeah, my mind actually goes to my previous job. So Synchron is my second medical device startup adventure. And in my first company, we faced a junction where we had a product out in the field that patients were using, and we wanted to release an updated version of that product, kind of a next gen system. And while developing that, we encountered a number of issues during development and eventually kind of realized we needed to try a pretty fundamentally new approach. Essentially like a redesign of the redesign. And yeah, it’s obviously pretty painful to do that. So just weighing the pros and cons of that as a team, that was pretty gut wrenching. Kind of felt like trying to predict the future. You know, you’re a year or two out from development and trying to assess what’s going to be the least risky path that leads to the best product at the end of the day. So I think a lesson I took away from that it’s really up to engineers to be advocates. There’s always going to be pressure from the business side to get things done quickly to go with the shortest, most economical path. And, you know, very often, that is the right answer, but if it’s not, it’s really up to the engineers that have the technical knowledge to be the best equipped to see that and to be the ones to push for it. Something that is definitely not easy. Stress kind of soft skills in the workplace, but absolutely needed. Christa Downey: So I’m thinking this work sounds fascinating. And there are going to be a number of our engineering students who listen to this and think, Oh, I want to get involved in something like that. That’s so cool. So what might be a path? What are some particular majors or, you know, can you speak to maybe graduate programs or experiences that students might, you know, aim for to try if they wanted to get themselves either, not necessarily in your position, but on a team like yours doing that type of important work? Jason Wright: Yeah. So I did ECE undergrad and stayed for my M.Eng. at Cornell. And I remember when picking a major, you know, hearing one of the talking points for ECE being that, you know, it’s a very flexible field and gives you the ability to kind of transition, move in many different areas because you’re starting out with this pretty broad base of technical knowledge, and you’re gaining a lot of skills that are really, highly employable. And I feel like my personal career journey really lived up to that. It took a couple of years for me to discover the world of neurotech and medical devices, and I think ECE prepared me well for making that transition, kind of discovering I have that interest in being able to work at a place like Synchron even without, you know, having studied neuroscience or biomedical engineering because I have the skills to make a valuable contribution, and then learn the other stuff, you know, in the field in the workplace. I think looking back on my time at Cornell. I’m really happy with that major choice. At the same time, I do wish I explored it a little more and kind of found that possibility earlier too, maybe taking some classes in different departments, could have accelerated things a little bit. I think also undergrad research is something to look into. It’s interesting, like, the way the academic job market has changed. If you’re looking at, you know, potentially doing a PhD down the road. You know, when I was an undergrad, it was, I think, seen more as a route towards academia and tenure track positions and now in bringing in computer interfaces and neurotech broadly. You see a lot of PhDs working in the industry, and, you know, in a way, where that PhD gave them a solid technical background and let them jump into a really interesting career that involves a lot of scientific contributions as well as, you know, real life, like product development as well. Christa Downey: This feels like an obvious question, but let’s just talk a little bit about how your work contributes to a healthier, more equitable, more sustainable world. Jason Wright: Yeah. At Synchron we’re not trying to develop a cure. We’re not trying to solve ALS. We’re developing assistive technology, and to me, that is a really strong equity issue. We have smartphones that are by and large designed for able bodied people. As you know, our world continues to move more and more communication and just daily life into the digital realm, it’s just so important that assistive technologies ensure that people with physical disabilities aren’t left behind. And obviously, Synchron is not the only company working on that. There’s many different approaches, including lower tech solutions, as well. But, you know, as we have more and more digital communication that need to be, like, technologically equipped to be able to communicate in a quick and rich manner is just so, so important. Christa Downey: Yes. That is important. Thank you. So then what other people and organizations are important collaborators towards this brighter future? Who does your organization collaborate with? Jason Wright: So there’s a lot that comes from academia in brain-computer interfaces, you know, in particular, a lot of the companies out there, Synchron and other folks in the field, you know, are building on innovation that was developed at universities and research labs over the last, you know, two plus decades. And we still have, you know, constant academic collaboration along the way. And, you know, I mentioned trying to leverage a lot of existing medical technology, and what’s been huge for us is having development partners and manufacturers who are really well equipped, have been making implants for decades. Especially as a startup, we couldn’t invent all that from scratch. It’s a huge undertaking to develop a Class 3 medical device and go through FDA approval. So we rely heavily on a big industry that has been doing this for many, many decades. Christa Downey: Yeah. And what ways do you anticipate AI impacting your work or your industry in the future, your field. Jason Wright: I would say that for Synchron and brain-computer interfaces and even assistive technology generally, it’s so helpful, if you think about someone living with paralysis, trying to fill in the gap between their limited ability to control inputs and trying to form rich communication, right? So if you think about trying to type a sentence using an eye tracker, it’s like a really common assistive technology where, you know, you’re using your eye gaze to, you know, focus on a letter on a keyboard and gradually type out a sentence that way. It works most of the time, but it’s very slow. That can be okay if you’re trying to write, yes or no or help or glass of water, please, or something like that, but it really inhibits your ability to express yourself and communicate nuanced thoughts and you know, so users of eyerackers rely pretty heavily on, like, predictive text, right? So you don’t have to type out every character of every word. And I think AI has the potential to help bridge that gap between, you know, simple slow sentences and more rich nuanced thoughts, even if it’s just, you know, suggesting, Hey, you might be trying to, you know, express this thought, you know, fill in some of that gap. And then, yeah, on the engineering side, I think AI is definitely already impacting the field. If you’re writing code, you’re probably already using AI tools to maximize your productivity or at least you should be. I don’t know if it’s really hit electrical engineering in the same way quite yet, but I think that’s coming and I’m pretty optimistic that AI will not replace engineers, but it will definitely change their job function, probably force more specialization as AI tools kind of provide this baseline of knowledge and capability. It’s going to press engineers to focus on one area where they can contribute on top of that. Be that, you know, through a subject matter expert that can find the gaps of AI or even working on AI tool development itself. Christa Downey: Yeah. So many possibilities. I can see how that is really going to move things along more quickly with your work. Yeah. Wonderful. Okay, so what do you wish you knew when you were a sophomore? Jason Wright: Definitely a lot of things. I certainly wish I had more contacts, like in industry, like, people to talk to about what life after college would be like, what the working world is like, or what it could be like. So I I hope this podcast series is helping in that regard. And yeah, like I mentioned, I wish I explored a little bit more outside my department. I was kind of more aware of other, you know, classes that, you know, even if it’s not, you’re taking the knowledge from that class and directly applying it to a career, just exposing yourself to other ideas and different career paths. I certainly remember how hard it was choosing a major and even thinking about getting a job after graduation. So I don’t think I would try to solve that, but just expose yourself to as much as you can, and get a sense of what’s out there. Christa Downey: I love that you say that. So the primary thing that we were aiming to do with this podcast when we started out was to expose students to some different possibilities and, you know, share the stories and experiences of alumni who are doing really exciting work like you are. And then we realized as we were figuring out the format that what made sense to us was showing students what it looks like to do an informational interview. If a student were to reach out to you or to another alum because they find you on the Internet and they think, Oh, you know, on LinkedIn, probably. And they think, Wow, this is such a fascinating career path. Want to get some time with that person, I want to chat with them or they meet someone in real life and want some additional time to go through and learn a little bit more about what they’re doing. The types of questions we are asking are the types of questions that a sophomore or junior might ask an alum who’s doing something that they’re curious about. So we’re trying to role model that, and it is our hope that more students will become comfortable with reaching out to alumni and learning about their experiences. Yeah, absolutely. Jason Wright: Yeah, that’s huge. Christa Downey: Good. Well, thank you. What class or classes had the greatest impact in preparing you for your career? Jason Wright: I think for ECE alumni, there’s probably only one correct answer. That’s 4760 formerly taught by Professor Bruce Land. And that’s just, you know, it’s a class where you’re forced to get a working solution, kind of, by any means necessary, right? So, like many classes, you’re taught concepts, and you apply them during the exam. But ultimately, like, the professor, or the course material has given you like, all the tools to ace that. But in 4760 and other project-driven type of courses, you’ve got some of the tools and some of it you just have to figure out on your own or as a team. And that is really what the working world is about. That kind of describes just about every engineering job. There’s not necessarily going to be one correct solution. It’s just a matter of finding the best solution that you can deliver and making choices along the way without 100% certainty. Christa Downey: I appreciate you reinforcing that message, as well. Okay. So a little bit of a fun round. What do you do to relax, have fun, and re-energize? Jason Wright: Yeah, I love sports and music, staying active, I’m really into tennis and basketball and love playing piano. Jazz pianos kind of my go-to to relax and unwind. Christa Downey: What’s one place you go for information to stay current in your work? Jason Wright: Hmm. I would I would shout out the iFixit Teardown blog. I’ve always been a huge fan of that. I remember reading it in college and still to this day. I think, stuff like that, just seeing how products out there get made, electronic devices. You can learn a ton about what’s industry standard, you know, what tools, what chips are people using? And what does engineering look like in practice? You know, the smartphone is the culmination of many years of engineering, and it’s really exciting and interesting to see the end result. Christa Downey: Okay, final question. If you were not doing this work right now, what would you be doing? And which is closest to what you dreamed of when you were a child? Jason Wright: Yeah, it’s kind of a tough question. But I remember when I was in middle school and high school, I wanted to study political science and then run for Congress. That was, like, my life plan. And obviously, I didn’t do that. But still to this day, I think it’s definitely a viable path for engineers to go into communication, law, government, that sort of thing. I really wish we had more people with science and engineering backgrounds in government. I think we have a really dire need for policies that are advancing technical innovation, recognizing, you know, the role of science and technology in society and dealing with stuff like climate change and pandemics and AI. So yeah, if weren’t doing that, if I weren’t doing what I do now, that’s probably where I’d be or where I’d try to be. Christa Downey: Excellent. We could have a whole other podcast conversation about that. I love it. So you have a long career ahead of you if you choose it, and I, you know, could see this in your future. That’s amazing. I’ll be following you, following your path and seeing what happens with that. That would be great. Jason Wright: I appreciate that. Thanks so much. Christa Downey: Yeah, thank you so much for your time. You’re doing important work. I appreciate that. And I appreciate you taking time away from that to speak with us and share your story. Thank you for listening. If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode where we will be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to the Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University. Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum, where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you. Thank you so much for being here with us today, Garrett. We’re really excited to learn more about everything that you’re doing. As I was reading the pre-show notes, I just kept saying, Oh, my gosh, there’s so much to talk about, so we’re real happy that you’re here. So, let’s get us all started. What are you doing right now? What’s your current work? What are you up to? Garrett Lang: So my 60-80 hours a week is with PlateRate. And what we do is we help people earn up to a 60% credit to try top rated menu items at restaurants that we work with. You never pay more than the price ordering directly from the restaurant. Unlike the expense of third party delivery systems, which costs up to 35% more on average than you would normally pay if you went directly to the restaurant. Whereas with us, you trybetter tasting food, you get free food. It’s just better than the way that everybody else orders, and we don’t cost the restaurant anything, and we don’t cost the diner anything. It’s a very interesting win-win business model. I’m aspiring to be the most innovative player in the food tech space, basically being better for both sides of the two sided marketplace, for both diners and restaurants, for even wine stores and other people who sell food and drink. Traci Nathans-Kelly: So is there a definition of what a food tech company is or isn’t? Garrett Lang: I don’t know that there’s a firm definition of that. It’s a little bit, it’s probably a little bit grey, but pretty much anything with food and drink that’s using technology to enable the path. Anywhere from where food is grown all the way to people consuming food and drink, you know, is kind of what I see as the food tech landscape from the founders that I’ve met in the food tech space. Traci Nathans-Kelly: Excellent. That’s a big space. So I just wanted to be sure that I was getting my head around around the right thing. Garrett Lang: If you get into the growing of food crops and stuff, that’s AgTech. So, you know, there’s a, you know, there’s probably a fuzzy gray line between AgTech and food tech sometimes, but, yeah, food tech is more the eating of the food side, but, you know, it can be pretty broad. TNK; Thank you for that. Garrett Lang: Sure. Christa Downey: Okay, Garrett, what does this look like for you day to day? Well, 80% of my time is spent on execution, experimenting, learning and improving until things fit into place. Once they do, it’s more a matter of scaling up, and we’re starting to be at the beginning stages of that. I read this book that said the best entrepreneurs are like scientists running experiments from them, and I might be biased, but that’s how I work. So I hope that I will be a good entrepreneur as I grow the company. I’m trying to do the best I can, and I like to tell people, don’t stress just do your best and accept the rest. You can’t expect more of yourself than your best. Experimenting and learning is actually why we’re here on this Earth, that’s to learn, right? You know, learning knowledge and wisdom. And so I’ve thought about that question since I was about 12. I spent I spent about, probably less than 20% of my time on strategy. That’s kind of the most fun part for me. And hopefully someday that’ll be my over 80% when I can pay other people to do all the execution stuff. But, you know, this is where I’m trying to create a value proposition that’s so good and someone’s got to feel like they’re crazy to say no to me. And I think we have that with Plate Rate, like for both the diner and the restaurant, which I can explain. You know, we are more profitable. We’re more loyalty inducing, and we’re as efficient or more efficient than everyone else for the restaurant. And for the diner, you don’t pay more than you would ordering directly from the restaurant. You get the convenience of online ordering. And you can get up to a 60, and believe it or not, the early adopters can even get up to a ridiculous 110% credit in free food. I can explain how that works, if you want. It’s only for the very early adopters at a restaurant. So that’s that’s kind of the day to day. You know, I also have some side gigs. As, like a fractional CTO CPO and, you know, some other stuff. But this is PlateRate is my majority of my time. Traci Nathans-Kelly: And so how does it work? The PlateRate system? Garrett Lang: So, basically, the diner can order food from their phone. We just had launched an app yesterday, so we’re an app that can use Apple Pay and Google Pay now, which is much more convenient than how we used to accept payment, which is PayPal. But basically, you order food from your phone like you would from Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grub Hub. And right now, we do pick up and delivery, but probably next month or the month after, we’re going to do dine in as well. So you can be sitting at your table. You can have 20 people at the table, and everybody can order their food simultaneously, and everybody get separate checks. Everybody, if you try the top rated menu items at a new restaurant, and you get a 60% credits come back. When you come back, you try new top rated menu items, you get 30% to come back after that. And once those credits run out, then you just get a more convenient way of ordering, and you never end up paying more than the price at the restaurant because you get at least as much free food as you’d pay in a convenience fee. So you never really actually end up paying for it. Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m really, it’s such an interesting model, right? I’m like, I’m fascinated by this. How does this not impact the bottom line for the restaurant then? Garrett Lang: It does, positively. So the way that it works is the restaurant offers $10 in free food for every hundred dollars fed. Over 75% of the time, that’s profitable because the diner spends more money. And so it’s profitable for the restaurant to do that. But that fee is our 10% convenience fee. And so the diner never ends up paying more than they would ordering directly from the restaurant. And then the restaurant only pays a 2% credit card fee, which is below cost like restaurant, you know, for online orders. And so the restaurant ends up making more money when we sell their food than when they sell their own food. Plus, we’ve proven with our pilot restaurant that we get 69% more orders per customer over a five month time period. So it’s drastically higher loyalty. It’s not a little bit. It’s a ton, like I just a huge amount, more loyalty. And we do that at no cost to the restaurant. And you know, that’s what I call you’ll be more generous for the diner and the restaurant is what I call generous capitalism. And we also share more money with our team members than most companies do. And we give equity to all our team members. So generous capitalism is where in the free markets the most generous company is the one that’s gonna win, because let’s face it, would you rather do business with a greedy company that gives you less and costs more, or would you rather do business with a generous company that costs less than gives you more? So with that said, I think generous capitalism should be the next stage of capitalism. And I call what we’re in now greedy capitalism, where the companies take everything they can for themselves. And I’m trying to create a generous capitalist business, and my dream is, you know, five years from now to get written up in the Harvard Business Review. That generous capitalism is the future of capitalism, and that companies can actually serve society and their employees and, you know, the community all together. And use their profit to do that rather than to just hoard it. Christa Downey: Love it. So, can you talk about how this compares to conscious capitalism? Garrett Lang: Yeah, so there’s a lot of parallels between conscientious capitalism and generous capitalism. Like, similar philosophy. The difference is using generosity as a competitive advantage is part of generous capitalism. Conscientious capitalism is still you make the money, be thoughtful about everybody, which is definitely a step forward. But I think being generous is another step forward beyond that, where you’re literally giving a better offer to everybody involved, like employees, suppliers, customers. And so by being more generous, you actually win more market share. Because, again, people would rather do business for the generous company. And by winning more market share at a lower margin, you end up doing just fine. And you can, you know, it’s very compatible with conscientious capitalism. You know, a generous capitalist business should be a conscientious capitalist business. It should be a core mission. It should practice stakeholder, I think it’s stakeholder capitalism was the other one that is also aligned. The difference is the generosity and putting all of the business partners forward and giving them more. But they all kind of go hand in hand. So it’s complimentary. Traci Nathans-Kelly: It’s really such a great model that it’s not relying on something after the fact, like a donation. Right? The generosity is built in from the moment you move forward at all. Garrett Lang: Right. It’s part of the business model. The business model is based on generosity. That’s exactly, right. Traci Nathans-Kelly: And generosity boiled all the way through, not just oh, for a tax break, we give some money away, right? Garrett Lang: And that’s the other thing. It doesn’t rely on regulation, right, which I don’t think we should have to regulate this type of stuff. We should do it in the free markets. I think the free markets will bring about a better world if we use them correctly, but we need to get entrepreneurs starting generous capitalist businesses and proving that this is a viable business model. And if we can prove it’s a viable business model, which I think very much that we can, you know, you look at companies like, you know, Adobe has, like, a 90% profit margin, right? Like, there’s plenty of money that could be shared with other stakeholders if they wanted to. So software has very high margins, and if some of that profit is just shared with all the stakeholders, you know, you can be very generous. And so, you know, I think there’s a lot of opportunity. Traci Nathans-Kelly: So, as you’ve been building this, or conceptualizing it and then fine tuning it, because it’s out there. I was out on the website, poking around, having a good time. What were some of the challenges that you faced or are still facing? And how are you working to overcome those? Garrett Lang: Yeah, I mean, so I’m bootstrapped. So that’s probably one of the biggest challenges. You know, I can only spend so much money, you know, per month and be able to sustain it. And so, you know, getting really motivated sales people is probably my biggest challenge now. In the beginning, my biggest challenge was figuring out B to C software. You know, I was overconfident in how really I could figure that out because in my corporate career, I would always, like, go into a new industry or something like that, and then I would ask lots of awful questions to experts. And then within six months, I was considered an expert, and I had people with a dozen years of experience asking me questions that I could answer. So I was probably overconfident from those experiences, thinking, oh, I’ll figure out B to C software really quickly. It took me, like, three years to figure out how to build B to C software and I’m not sure that I’m where I want to be. I want to be at a place where our UX is better than DoorDash, but they have a lot more money than me. So that’s probably pretty aspirational. But we have gotten feedback that we are from some of the people in UX interviews with our mobile app. Um that just came out this week. But, you know, and that probably was my biggest challenge before. Now the biggest challenge is getting into restaurants. I just need to get, we have conversations with restaurant owners, usually the ones that are financially based and, you know, think logically about it. Like, it’s a pretty good deal, right? You need to get 69% more orders per customer. Why would someone not want that? There’s no downside to them. There’s no risk to them. As long as they put us as their preferred ordering system, they get a free ordering system, actually one that pays them. We actually pay restaurants revenue shares, which I can’t go into in detail, but we share with, you know, our revenue with restaurants as well, and I think we’re the only one in the industry to do that. Traci Nathans-Kelly: That’s great. But those are a lot of problems to solve all at once, by yourself. Garrett Lang: I am a glutton for punishment, right? I’m going up against billion dollar competitors, so, you know, that’s okay. Like, we have a great team, and I think we’re very capable of doing very well in this industry. Christa Downey: So I noticed Traci, you started PlateRate by yourself, and, you know, you say, right now, you’re one person. I also know that when you put yourself out there and you start talking to people about what’s important to you, eventually, you’re going to find people who share the same vision or an aligned vision, right? And so I’m curious to know who have you come across so far? You know, are you at that place yet where you’ve found others who are in a similar or related space or you know, I’d love to hear a story of, you know, someone with an aligned vision, you know, a partner, a coconspirator, maybe even a restaurant owner who said, yes, this is exactly what we need. Garrett Lang: Yeah, believe it or not, I actually, I get a lot of those. Like, a lot of people really get it. And it’s interesting because when I talk to restaurant owners, there’s only two camps. There’s the people who get it and the people who don’t. And the ones that go, wow, I know I have some great menu items, and I know if people try those, they’re gonna come back over and over again. And I know that there’s some menu items that not everybody likes, and if they try those, they’re not gonna come back. If I give them a reason to try the best ones, of course, they’re gonna come back, right? That’s pretty logical right? Get people to try the best food. I like to say, good restaurants have some bad food, and bad restaurants all have some good food or they wouldn’t be in business. So everyone’s got some good food. The question is, how do you find what’s the good food, and we’re the way to do that. Because, you know, customers are eating the food. And when you ask a wait staff, you know, what’s a order, they’re trained to tell you two things. They’re trained to tell you what’s about to go bad? Oh, the chicken’s about to go bad. The chicken Parmesan is the best thing on the menu. Or, what’s the most expensive, right? The filet mignon Oscar is, like, absolutely the best thing. It’s, you know, $80. Because that gives them the biggest tip. But as far as finding kindred spirits, I’ve found a lot of them, and we have them on the team as well. And those are the best team members because they see the vision, and they see that we’re really doing right by all our business partners, and they’re motivated to do it. And I have people that are highly, highly motivated to make this company, you know, what it can turn into, which is, you know, we want to be a unicorn someday. You know, that’s the goal. And so the level of loyalty and effort that you get from people who are bought into the vision, the philosophical vision of generous capitalism, as well as the innovative vision of getting people to try the top rated menu items. And we have something called flavor rash with some people out as well. And, you know, it creates a lot of motivation for both team members and partners because partners realize, oh, if I introduce this guy to someone, I’m doing the person a favor. You know, it’s not like I’m sending someone who’s selling snake oil to my friend. I’m selling someone who’s like, giving away the farm to my friend, right? Why would I not want to do that? So it makes it much easier for people to make introductions for me. And again, that’s part of generous capitalism. Traci Nathans-Kelly: That whole model of asking, you know, What’s the best thing here tonight or whatever? Like, my favorite version of that is I always asked the wait staff, what’s your favorite thing, right? Because what things have they tasted? And even just last night, my wait staff person noticed that I was eating all the spicy things cause I do like the spicy things. And she brought over this little container of chili oil infused honey. She goes, you like the spicy stuff. You got to try this. And I have tried hot honey before, but she was spot on it. And so what did we do? We gave her a much bigger tip. Right? So it’s just like this really localized example. I was just resonating with some of the things that you were saying. Garrett Lang: That’s great. And actually, that’s what flavor match is about, is in flavor match we we let customers rate how sweet, salty, spicy, savory, sour, and bitter the food is. How nice does it look, how healthy is it and how big is the portion size, right? How much food are you gonna get? Wouldn’t it be nice to know that stuff before you get it, you can look at something and see how spicy it is from like a zero to 100 scale, and then you know what to get. And the other thing is the type of service you got is awesome, right? Like, that’s a great wait staff, so she deserves a better tip. And the problem is, like, Wait staff are often so busy doing the routine stuff, like writing down your order and typing it into the POS. They can’t provide that kind of service. Whereas with the PlateRate, they don’t have to do those routine things. They can focus on providing the kind of service you got. And that’s what we want to do. We don’t want to get rid of wait staff. Some people want to use a system like PlateRate to get rid of wait staff. And that’s not what I recommend. Like, maybe in a casual place like an area you could do that. But most of the time, that’s not the idea. The idea is to give better service to more people. Get better tips for the wait staff. You turn tables faster so they can serve more people at the same number of tables. You know, people don’t have to wait for their check at the end of the night because you just pay on your phone and walk out. Traci Nathans-Kelly: That part I love. Garrett Lang: One of my people, one of my users, said that was his fever part of the app. He’s like, Garrett, I felt like it was free. She’s like, I know I paid for it, but I never got a check, so it felt free. Christa Downey: Like you’re at a resort, and you just take your rest. Traci Nathans-Kelly: With your degree in computer science from Cornell, and you’ve obviously just used the heck out of that degree. Of course, you know, the elephant in the room right now is AI. And so what is your, like, relationship with AI? With your company? Is there one? How do you see it affecting the work that you do? Garrett Lang: Great question. So this does get into roadmap issues. I can’t share too much about it, but I can’t say my specialization in Cornell was AI. And so I have a lot of ideas of how to use AI. I don’t see the AI use cases as being the major differentiator for us right now. So I’m not focusing on doing those things immediately. But when I start to have spare budget, they’re definitely going to be really cool features that I can implement. And, you know, I have ideas that will use AI that will transform the way that people do orders from restaurants. You know, I can’t go into it in too much detail. Unfortunately, like, I’ve had over a dozen times where I shared stuff without an NDA. That idea suddenly popped up. And there were ideas that I had had for years that no one had ever done. And then as soon as I shared it publicly within a year, there was a company doing just that. So since that’s happened to me over a dozen times, I’ve become much quieter about roadmap stuff. Christa Downey: Garrett, you mentioned that you’ve been I think you said you’ve been thinking like this, maybe as an entrepreneur since you were 12. I’m curious to know what you wish you knew when you were maybe not 12, but maybe when you were a sophomore at Cornell. Garrett Lang: Yeah, I actually, my mom gave me a letter that I wrote my grandparents when I was in middle school saying how I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And I already was kind of an entrepreneur in middle school. I would sell Gobstoppers for that cost me $0.50 for a package. I’d sell them for a quarter per Gobstopper, so I actually had a better profit margin with my Gobstopper sales than I do with PlateRate. But the volume was much lower. Three or $4 a day, something like that, but I made good candy money out of it. And so I had always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I also wanted to know that I had a good chance of success and I wanted to know what I was doing. So that’s why I went into Corporate America first, and I really learned how to a lot of the best companies do business. But as far as what I wish I knew when I was a sophomore, Um, I wish I had known this before I went to Cornell is that I recommend this every student you should choose at ten classes per semester, not four to five that you want, if you have an interest in. You sign up for the four to five that are the hardest to get into, so you can definitely get into them. And then you have five or six that you could audit that during open enrollment, you pick out of the ten classes you’re auditing for that you’re attending, which are the professors that are the most interesting, the most engaging? And you drop any classes that are part of those professors, and you sign up for the ones that are the professors that are great. And I started doing that in my junior year, and the quality of my classes was so much, I remind you, my first two years was mostly requirements. So I didn’t have a lot of choice to to do that, but for people who were in, and I was an engineer, but I would take, you know, a lot of credits. I had to petition the dean a bunch of times to take the credits that I was taking because I just loved learning, you know. And and so, you know, that signing on for, you know, auditing extra classes and just taking the best ones was, like, it just improved the quality of my education so much. It improved it so much that there’s a class that I still wish I could have taken on like, Ancient Egyptian and Chinese or Asian philosophy. That was like, really cool. I learned stuff that I still remember to this day and tell people the stories about, like, the books of the dead from the Egyptians passing on their knowledge to their kids. And so I’m going to create a book of the dead for my kids, where I try to pass on my knowledge to them. A lot of my philosophy essays will be part of that. So yeah. Traci Nathans-Kelly: Yeah, that’s really cool. As somebody who has to work a lot with a required course that everybody tries to get into, I wish they would follow your methodology, right? So get all those things that you have to do, and then have some of those things that you want to do. It’s a really great philosophy, and then you end up, yeah, with a really nice balance in the end. Garrett Lang: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I took I was like, half way to minors in Spanish lit, economics, history and business. So, you know, I just I loved those courses. But I also loved my CS. Like, CS, like, I actually applied to Cornell. Arts and Sciences undecided anything but CS because I did so much technology when I was young. Like, I was working for an ISP. I was a programmer, you know, starting in middle school professionally. And so I just had so much technology that I was overloaded. But then I actually ended up deferring Cornell for a year and going to Spain as an exchange student. And I wasn’t that tech focused there, right? Because they weren’t very tech focused. I did do some tech consulting with my school and helped them out a little bit, but, like, I wasn’t as deep in technology. So by the time I got into Cornell, like, oh, let me try a CS class, and man, I was just hooked right away. I just loved it. Like, I looked forward to my homework assignments and a lot of my classes. Not all of them, but most of them. Traci Nathans-Kelly: Well, that leads us to a question we also like to follow up on the heels. It’s like, what were those favorite classes? You’ve already given us some of them. Garrett Lang: Algorithms with John Kleinberg was so much fun. That was one that I really looked forward every week to my homework sets. And, you know, I would, you know, like, I would just have so much fun trying to, like, puzzle through how to create an algorithm that solved whatever problem he had. And it’s really served me well in my career, ’cause I created I’ve created all my own AI algorithms throughout my career. I actually created ad tech algorithm that, like basically made obsolete and advanced on the last five years of development in just one algorithm, and ended up doubling click through rates for advertising. And I used to say, like, I want ads to be a value add. I don’t want to show someone the ad that they’re not interested in. And what this did is it showed ads to people that were more likely to be interested in the ad. So, you know, I’ve also found that in my career, every year of my career, like, without fail, my developers will come to me and be like, Garrett, what you’re asking us to do is impossible. My response is always, well, before we give up on it, can we dive into the details together? Yeah. And so, like, one example, they were like, Oh, we ran this query for three days and it didn’t come back. And so I said, well, before we give up, let’s look at the query. And so I worked with our DBA. We looked at the query. I looked at the algorithm the query was using. And I said, All right, we’re going to create an index here, here, here, here and here, like, on these particular fields. And then boom, some sector response times, like, no problem. And that’s been, you know, that’s just one example, but every year in my career, that’s happened and where people said something was impossible. Maybe a little less often when I managed my own development team, but when it was other people managing the development team, they were very often like, Oh, this is impossible. And I’ve always been able with, you know, that Cornell just has an outstanding, theory based program, and they teach us how to solve problems, not syntax, but problems, technically. Traci Nathans-Kelly: I like that differentiation there between solving the problems and the syntax. Garrett Lang: Yeah, Syntax, you know, I’m not good at it anymore. Like, my developers are way better at syntax for problem solving. I can do that, like nobody’s business. Like, Cornell taught me to do that. I was already doing, like, lawyer problems for fun in high school. So, you know, I have a natural aptitude and desire to do that type of stuff, but Cornell taught me to do it even better. And that’s also where I learned about Godel’s Completeness Theorem, which was my second philosophical essay defending free will, using Godel’s Completeness Theorem. But that’s another tangent that goes into my not for profit if you want to go into that later. Traci Nathans-Kelly: That seems like a whole other interview. Christa Downey: Wow. I’m learning a lot from you, Garrett, and I’m thinking if there are students who want to learn more about this, who want to learn from you. Maybe they want to get involved in PlateRate, work with you, learn from you that way. What would that look like? Garrett Lang: I would love to get students on board, especially, you know, in Ithaca, because, you know, why would students want to get all their friends and family the opportunity to get a 60% credit and free food when they try the top rated menu items, the restaurants. And not only do they get to be a good friend by getting everyone that 60% credit. They get paid every time their friends get it. And it never costs their friends a dime. So you know, why would a student not want to do that? When I was at Cornell, I created something called the College Town Community card, where I got discounts of, like, five or 10% from local businesses if someone had the card, and I sold the card so that we could get fund raising for running communities. I didn’t compete anything for that. But if someone does this, they could make $50,000 a year, potentially, you know, getting a bunch of high volume restaurants on board that have become really popular with college students. And we also you know, and you never pay more than you would at the restaurant after the free food that you earn, and you’re supporting the local restaurants by making them more money than they would make if you were ordering any other way. You’re not paying the 35% extra that Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grub Hub charge. We get 29% more spend per customer compared to the average pickup and delivery order, so they you know, the restaurants making more money there. So people can e mail me resumes if they’re interested at Garrett@PlateRate.com if they’re interested in getting involved. We have other opportunities as well. I like to say I hire people, not people into roles. And so I have people to come in. I have a guy that came in recently. He’s doing sales, customer solutions, and marketing. And he within his second week, not only sold two restaurants, but because he followed my onboarding really well, he onboarded those two restaurants, and now next week, those restaurants should be promoting us, and he starts to make money. So he’s also learning how to do SEO from, like, a real SEO expert. So I really like to follow what I call the modified platinum rule. The platinum rule is to treat other people the way that they want to be treated. And my modification is, as long as there’s so good reason not to, because you could abuse that, right, like, oh, I want you to do everything, you know, do my laundry, right? Well, no, like, let’s be reasonable here. So, but I do, really, when I, you know, bring people on, you know, right now, it’s all equity based and revenue share based in the US. And so I really want people to have a good experience. I want to make sure that they’re learning from other team members, including myself. That they’re working on the things that they want to work on and that they’re getting experienced in different areas, which I think is especially good for college students. You know, I wasn’t so sure what I wanted to do coming out of Cornell. And I think a lot of college students may have that question is, well, would I like this? Would I like that? Well, come to PlateRate, dabble in marketing, dabble in sales, dabble in customer solutions, and see what you like. And then, hey, now you’ve learned what job roles you like and what you don’t, and you know what it’s like to work in a start up. And you’ll know whether you like that or you want to be in a big more structured environment, cause, as you can tell, We’re actually fairly structured in terms of, like, our onboarding is very structured. But in terms of how we work together, we’re very fluid, and we just collaborate with each other. It’s very, very flat organization. Traci Nathans-Kelly: It’s really interesting. We’ll have, just so that nobody gets nervous, we’ll have all the information that you’ve given available in the show notes as well. But one of the one of the questions we like to ask ’cause you’re in a space that’s moving and evolving really quickly. So, how do you stay on top of things? How do you get new information and stay atop of what’s happening? Garrett Lang: So, I actually use Google alerts, and what Google Alerts does is you put key phrases in, and it scours the news every day and sends me a summary of, you know, what food tech companies are doing around the globe. And doing that, I’ve been able to keep really close track, which is how I’ve seen my thesis, you know, from, like, when I shared menu and level reviews with someone, I saw, you know, I shared it with someone, and then a small company in India let out a press release, that they were going to start doing it. And then Zomato in India, which is one of the big food tech companies ended up copying that. So they you know, I could watch that I and then Door Dash ended up copying it from them. So you can sort of see when you watch the news really carefully, you can see ideas spread from company to company. And, you know, Google alerts really keeps me on top of what’s going on, because most people when they implement something new and interesting, they do a press release, or something is written about it in the news. Traci Nathans-Kelly: That’s such an interesting strategy, and then being able to, like, map it and watch it move through development. I actually keep a Google doc of every news article I read, and, like, what my takeaways were of the Google the news. Sometimes I read news that says, hey, maybe I want to do something similar to this someday in the future. And I keep track of those things. And then when I’m looking for roadmap items, I go back to my news list, and I’ll say, here are the ideas that I wanted to look at. In addition to a roadmap that I have with hundreds of ideas, you know, I can use some of those ideas because, you know, ideas are not copyrightable and or they’re not defendable now, personally, I think they probably should be sometimes. You know, the idea of one time incentives for repeat business the patent office agreed is novel, but they just said it’s not patentable material. I’m still arguing with them about that and hoping that I can get a patent, but the problem is they say anything in software is not patentable. Although there’s one caveat that I found, which patent lawyers have agreed with me on. If you can confuse the heck out of the patent office, you can get it patented. So you just have to make it, like, so complicated that they can’t understand what’s going on, and then you can get and defend a patent. Traci Nathans-Kelly: The patent thing is really interesting there is this mess with software. Some people are trying to patent it under process, right? Like this relative process. And so it’s really kind of a wild ride. The patent office, they’re flummoxed. Garrett Lang: They don’t understand technology, and that’s the problem, they have to learn technology. You’re right. They’re confused. And their confusion is coming out loud and clear with a lot of unclear legal cases and, like, not a clear, the line that I just drew, as funny as it is, is the best that I’ve come up with after talking for many hours to many, you know, litigators and patent lawyers, and, you know, and they’ve all agreed that that’s pretty much how it works today. And that’s not how it should work, right, but that’s how it does work. Traci Nathans-Kelly: Well, that’s your big next career move, right? You can go to the patent office and get everything. Garrett Lang: I did get told when I was a kid, you’re likely to be a lawyer, so ’cause I like to argue a lot and I have no problem in confrontation or having a confrontation, although I always tried to do it politely. And I tried to listen first now, but when I was younger, I didn’t so much, and people were like, You should be a lawyer. So, which wasn’t always a compliment, but I took it as one anyway. Christa Downey: So if you were not doing this right now, what else would you be doing? Garrett Lang: So innovating software somewhere. Like, if it wasn’t in food tech, it would be somewhere else. I have a list of no joke over 50 businesses that I want to start. So, you know, I’d be inventing something, you know, something that blows away the rest of the industry. Like, I want to innovate in industries and transform the industries to be different than they are today and much better and much more efficient and much more beneficial to everybody involved. So, for me, it’s about using innovation to serve society. And there was a friend of mine that recently sent me a quote, and it talked about how I’m just going to paraphrase it, but it talked about how when some people in society are suffering and other people are doing really well, society is not healthy, and, you know, you end up with problems. They were like, Well, this sounds like a quote from today, doesn’t it? Well, it was actually from Pericles in the four hundreds. And so, like, this has been known for a long time. And I think more of us have to be serving society in general rather than just doing the best for ourselves and letting everything else go to hell. Traci Nathans-Kelly: And you’re carrying a lot on your shoulders. You have all of this work to do, all this inspiration, but then we have to ask what you like to do for fun. Recharge. What do you do? Garrett Lang: I have a saying, which may be helpful to people. I’ve had some friends that like to repeat it when they get stressed out. I don’t stress, do your best and accept the rest. And I live my life that way. So do I have a lot on my shoulders? Maybe, maybe not. Like, a lot of people won’t expect me to change the world, but I still want to, so I’m going to try to. And I have another saying that goes along with that, which is keep your hopes high and your disappointment low. It’s the only way to go. And I try to do that every day, too. And with that, I’m highly motivated every day. As far as how to relax, it may sound odd, but philosophy with good company, over wine and spirits is my way of relaxing. And I host events where we talk about philosophy in New York City through my not for profit, the Free Thinker Institute. We discuss everything, you know, from whether or not we have free will, which I mentioned earlier, I think I have a pretty solid logical argument that we do have free will. If I’m right, then it will be very interesting. But I’m not a PhD in philosophy, so I don’t know that anyone would academic will want to read it, but if they do, I would love to share with them. And then from that then, how do we do the most good in the world? How do we live a happier, more fulfilling life? We’ve also talked about politics. And despite the amount of negativity around a lot of the political things that we’ve talked about, we’ve talked about the Israeli Palestinian complex. We’ve talked about the you know, Russia and Ukraine war, where we talked about abortion, you know, very, like, incendiary topics, but we have very polite conversations because I announce at every meeting that the only rule we have is to be polite. And so if someone is not polite, they get warned, we’re very strict with that. And so people keep more, calm cool and collected, and I think that we all learn more when we’re calm. When we start to get emotional, we make bad decisions. And so I try to keep everyone in the logical part of the brain. The cerebrum, rather than in the mammalian emotional part of the brain or the fighting flight reptilian part of the brain, And, you know, it’s been really fun doing that. I’m also lucky to live in a community where my neighbors like to talk about this stuff. And so we have each other over having a wine club, our first wine club meeting tomorrow, actually, with my neighbors and we’ll meet and we’ll just talk about intellectually interesting things over food and, you know, appetizers and wine. Traci Nathans-Kelly: Sounds like a best life. Sorry for the pun. Recipe. Right? It can’t be helped. Christa Downey: Someone suggested this morning that I throw in a question one of those, like, coffee or tea, chocolate or vanilla type questions. And the one I came up with, hopefully, you feel okay answering. It’s OK if you don’t, but the one that I came up with that I wanted to throw out there is Michelin Star Restaurant or food truck. Garrett Lang: So, Christa, I like to say, when I’m given two good choices, I like to choose both. So it depends on my mood. Like, I love Michelin Star restaurants, but I’ve had some amazing food at food trucks. And I am not a high brow. You know, I’m not gonna eat at a food truck kind of guy. Like, I love food trucks. And the question is, am I ordering the best thing at the food trot or am I going to order the thing that nobody likes but they’re still selling because it sounds good, but it doesn’t taste good, right? And so even volume doesn’t tell you whether or not it’s good or not. But if I find the best food somewhere, which I’m looking forward to PlateRate getting into more restaurants and then trying the best food at each restaurant, which is what I really want to try. And then I’m just getting the best of the best from the places that I frequent. But yeah, I like both. Christa Downey: I can’t wait to get on PlateRate. Garrett Lang: Cool. We’d love to have you there. Hopefully we can get some restaurants near you. If you know any commission-based salespeople, have them reach out to me. Traci Nathans-Kelly: We just wanted to thank you so much for spending this time with us today and walking us through these wonderful ideas. I explored earlier on the website. Now I’m even more excited because I understand the structure and the philosophy, the generous capitalism is a real eye opener. And I hope it becomes a framework that more and more people can come to willingly and with some great energy. So thank you for bringing that to our attention. Garrett Lang: My pleasure, and I’m hoping it catches on, as well. I think it’ll be good for everybody. And thank you so much for having me on the show. I know you guys do a lot you’ve had a lot of distinguished guests, so it’s an honor to be amongst them, and I really appreciate it and enjoyed our time together. Christa Downey: Thank you for listening. If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode, where we will be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

We had the wonderful opportunity to visit with Jarvis Sulcer, who is the co-founder and COO at Lingo Solutions Incorporated. He earned both his master’s and his PhD in nuclear science and engineering at Cornell. Join us as we learn about his educational journey, his path to being an entrepreneur, and how he gives back to his communities each and every day.

Christa: Jarvis, hi. It’s great to see you here.

Jarvis: Yes, glad to be here. Looking forward to this opportunity to share a little of my story.

Christa: I’m excited to share your story. I love what you are building, and I think we’d like to start with you telling us about your current work. And then also, what does that look like day-to-day and perhaps what motivates you day-to-day?

Jarvis: Great question. I’m currently the co-founder and COO of Lingo Solutions, Inc., an AdTech startup that develops a coding kit that empowers students to build at home or in the classroom. It comes not only with a coding kit, the hardware piece, but also with step-by-step instructional videos that allow students who have no prior experience—or even teachers who have no prior experience in coding electronics—to get introduced through hands-on, real-life applications of different technology.

So day to day, even though my title is co-founder and COO, as you know, at a startup of any type, you wear multiple hats. For me, the biggest hat I wear is B2B sales and business development. My title doesn’t reflect what I’m primarily responsible for, which is driving revenue and new business opportunities from a B2B standpoint.

My day looks like following up with customers, engaging new partners that align with our mission and values, leading my small but powerful sales team, and having ongoing communication with my founder and CEO, Aisha Bowe, on a day-to-day basis. And then, of course, engaging with our customers. That’s what drives any business—customer engagement, follow-up, and ensuring they’re having a great experience. I also make sure my team has what they need to be successful—and then get out of the way.

Traci: That sounds like you have a lot going on all the time.

Jarvis: Yeah, and it’s fun. I didn’t say what motivates me, right? I left that part out. For me, what motivates me more than anything is the impact on the lives of the students we serve through our partners.

Our partners include corporations that want to do community engagement, schools and school districts that want to engage their teachers and students, and nonprofits that may not have a STEM component or may want to add Lingo to their portfolio of offerings. For me, it’s the opportunity to play a role in transforming a student’s life—putting them on a different trajectory.

They may have been intimidated by coding, computer science, or tech, and then they get a chance to build something from scratch with no prior experience. Then they see the backup sensor for a car beeping and working, and they say, I did that. Three hours ago, they had no idea what a conditional loop was in coding or what an ultrasonic sensor is, but now they’ve built something, tested it, and made it work.

That aha moment is what drives me every day. And it’s not just for students—teachers experience the same thing. They may be intimidated by tech, but we help turn that around. That’s what keeps me moving forward despite all the challenges that come with my role.

Traci: It sounds like so much fun. I coached a Lego robotics team at my kids’ grade school, and a lot of what you’re saying resonates—kids saying, Oh, I’ve never done this before and then diving in. I really get a sense that that’s what you’re trying to help people do here.

Jarvis: Yes, it is. That’s at the core of why we started Lingo. We wanted to provide students—especially those who may not have access to these opportunities—with hands-on experience in both hardware and software. Everything today is driven by the combination of those two.

People don’t always think about it, but when they back up a car and hear that beeping sound, it’s not just hardware. That little dot on the bumper is part of a system where software plays a critical role. So, we want students to make those connections and realize, I can do this.

Traci: That aha moment is what keeps so many educators going. Since you’re working with businesses, schools, and nonprofits, I imagine your day is never really the same. What does a normal day look like—if there is such a thing?

Jarvis: A normal day starts with looking at my calendar and following up with customers. That’s a constant—checking in, following up, and engaging with leads. I go through the normal sales motions, but at the core, I see my role as solving problems.

Many of our partners are looking for solutions to challenges they face. I believe what we offer isn’t just a vitamin—it’s a painkiller. A vitamin is something you should take, but a painkiller is something you need.

For many organizations, students, and teachers, Lingo is a painkiller. Schools need ways to engage students in STEM, teachers need support, and corporations want to give back to the community in meaningful ways. My job is to ensure we position Lingo in a way that meets those needs.

Beyond sales, I handle operational tasks, work with my team to ensure they have what they need, and deal with challenges as they arise. It’s a lot of work, but it’s fun. This isn’t just a gig for me—it’s my passion.

Christa: We spoke a few weeks ago, and I learned more about what you’re building. I wish every student had access to something like this. You’re working through different channels to get this out there. What’s been the most significant challenge you’ve faced?

Jarvis: That’s a great question. On the student side, one of the biggest challenges is getting them to believe that they can. Many students have experienced failures or challenges that make them hesitant to try something new. Building their confidence is critical.

The same goes for teachers. They have so much on their plates already, and now we’re asking them to add a coding kit? We have to convince them that this is a value-add and that we will support them so that it doesn’t become just another unused tool.

On the business side, the biggest challenge is scaling a startup. I’ve worked in Silicon Valley, Fortune 500 companies, and nonprofits, but this is different. I feel a responsibility to ensure that our investors see a return on their belief in us. That’s a challenge—delivering 10x or 100x their investment. There are no guarantees, but I wake up every day doing my best to make that happen.

Traci: That’s a big responsibility. It’s inspiring to hear how passionate you are about making a real impact.

Christa: Absolutely. You’ve had such a fascinating journey. If you weren’t doing this right now, what would you be doing instead?

Jarvis: If I had it my way, and if I had grown taller, I would have been in the NBA! Growing up in Louisiana, I had a basketball court in my backyard, and that was my dream.

Realistically, though, I think I would be teaching. I’ve been tutoring since I was in undergrad—helping students in math and science. Even if I weren’t in a formal classroom, I’d still be involved in education in some way.

Traci: That makes perfect sense given your passion for mentorship. Thank you so much for your time today—it’s been amazing to hear your journey and how you’re paying it forward.

Christa: Thank you for sharing your story. I know it will inspire so many students.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum, where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Tamir Lance is RD&D Module Product Development Manager at Maxeon Solar Technologies. He’s currently based out of Singapore. He completed his bachelor’s degree at Cornell in mechanical engineering in 2004 and went on to do his master’s at Cornell in 2005. We had a fascinating conversation with him covering how teams work globally, working in the renewable energy field, looking for jobs and internships while you’re still a student, networking, the positive impacts of a diverse workforce, and how AI is impacting his industry. Stay tuned for this wonderful conversation.

Christa: All right, Tamir, good to see you here. Can you tell us a little bit about your current work?

Tamir Lance: Sure. I’m a senior engineering manager at Maxeon Solar, based out of the Singapore office right now, but I manage a team both in Singapore and in San Jose. My group is responsible for designing all of the solar panels that Maxeon produces in one of our product lines.

Christa: Excellent. Did you set out to have an international career?

Tamir: I did not. After I graduated from Cornell, I knew I wanted to head over to the West Coast. I was following my girlfriend, now wife, at the time—or girlfriend at the time, now wife. And I did want to work in the renewable space, but at the time, wind energy was big, but that was more in the Midwest, and solar hadn’t quite taken off yet.

I didn’t get started in solar renewables until about 2008. I joined a startup, actually, that had a founder from Cornell. That’s how I met him, at a Cornell event. Since then, I was working out of the San Jose office, and this opportunity to move to Singapore kind of fell into my lap, which was great because my wife was wanting to do something international. So it was a great opportunity, and our daughter was young enough—at a good age to travel. So that’s how it ended up, and I’ve found myself in Singapore for three years so far.

Traci: So I’m gonna have a two-part question here because I have a follow-up about working in engineering teams internationally. But I just wanted to start with, what does your day look like—a normal day, if there is such a thing?

Tamir: Well, I probably wake up earlier than my wife would want me to. The problem with working internationally is obviously dealing with time zones. I think a lot of industries have changed because of COVID and working remotely, so we got a flavor of this even before I left for Singapore.

We have teams in Europe, California, and Mexico, and we have factories in Asia. So there’s this pressure to always be on, even though we try to set boundaries. Typically, my first meetings in the morning start around seven or so. I just get up and take them on the porch or something. I don’t try to be at the office before seven. I’m usually taking calls while getting my daughter ready for school—getting her breakfast, brushing her hair, and being on conference calls.

There’s a limited window every day when it’s not too late on the West Coast and not too early in Asia. So you try to get those meetings out of the way between 7 and 9 AM. I’m usually on the phone while commuting to work. Then there’s a break to deal with colleagues in Asia. By the late afternoon, Europe comes online, and I start taking those meetings.

I also try to balance family life—picking up my daughter after school and making sure I’m present at home. There are a lot of tools that allow for asynchronous work, like Teams, so you don’t always have to be on the phone. If something urgent happens, though, the West Coast starts waking up around 10 PM my time. But I try to keep normal business hours because if you’re always on, you start making bad decisions due to lack of sleep.

Traci: That’s a really good point, Tamir. People think it’s so admirable to be available 24/7, but I see what you see—you start making bad decisions when you’re tired or irritated at the end of the day.

Tamir: Yeah, you send the email you shouldn’t have, or you’re a little more curt than you wanted to be. You might set the wrong tone in a text. You have to be careful about that.

Traci: Absolutely.

Tamir: Stay healthy.

Traci: And I know that you also have some interesting work with mentoring younger engineers and supporting global teams. Can you walk us through some of that?

Tamir: Yeah, that’s a good point. My team is fairly young. I’m only in my early 40s, and most of my team is in their early 30s. Some came from different industries, and others are fresh out of grad school. I’m not just responsible for the products but also for their career development.

Maxeon puts a lot of emphasis on individual development plans. Outside of yearly or quarterly goals aligned with company objectives, we set additional career development goals. We follow a 70/20/10 rule—70% hands-on work, 20% formal education, and 10% research or conferences.

It’s crucial for young engineers to get hands-on experience. Since my research team isn’t located near our factories, we make time for them to visit and see firsthand how their designs get built. It helps bridge the gap between research and manufacturing.

A challenge with mentoring today is that so much work is remote. You don’t just walk over to a coworker’s desk anymore. You have to make a concerted effort to ensure people don’t get lost and stay motivated. We put a lot of stock in mentoring young engineers because if we don’t continuously renew the talent pool, we lose valuable knowledge as experienced engineers retire.

Christa: I appreciate that you put that effort into mentoring. It’s huge and needed. What would you say to sophomores and juniors just starting internships, especially on hybrid or remote teams? How can they best position themselves for learning and contribution?

Tamir: That’s a great question. The most important thing you can do is find a mentor. Whether or not your company has a formal mentorship program, you have to advocate for yourself. Be curious, ask questions, and seek out people who can help.

If you’re lucky, the person who hired you will guide you. But often, hiring managers are busy and don’t think about internships again until the interns arrive. Some companies set up structured programs, so during interviews, ask if they do and what’s expected of you.

Once you’re there, don’t assume people will do things for you. Everyone is overworked. You might have to fight for attention, but most people are happy to talk about their work. If you’re introverted, you can ask questions via email or text. The method doesn’t matter as much as making the effort.

Traci: As an extreme introvert, I appreciate that answer so much. We live in an extrovert’s world, and it’s great to acknowledge that different approaches work.

Tamir: Exactly. I wouldn’t hold it against someone for emailing instead of walking up to me, but you still have to make the effort. Most people will respond.

Traci: Absolutely.

Christa: Tamir, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you for sharing your insights.

Tamir: Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed talking to both of you and reflecting on my career.

Traci: Thank you so much for your time today. It’s been fascinating to hear about your experience working internationally and balancing family and work.

Tamir: Thanks, thanks.

Christa: Thank you for listening. If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode, where we will be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to the Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum, where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you. We are very excited to welcome to our studios today, Howie Singer, who’s an expert on the implications of new technology in the music industry. In 15 years at Warner Music Group, he served as SVP and chief strategic technologist, analyzing services and companies that could enhance or threaten Warner Music Groups businesses. As a strategic consultant to Universal Music Group, MQA Limited, and other startups, he currently advises on products, services, technologies related to high-res music, artificial intelligence, podcasts, and streaming data analysis. We welcome Howie to the studios. Thank you so much, thank you so much for being with us here today. We’re so glad to meet you. And we like to start off each of these interviews about, where are you at now? What kind of work are you invested in right now? And then we’ll work backwards in time as we go forward through this interview.

Howie Singer: Well, I guess it’s appropriate that we’re doing this from the campus of Cornell, because after many years in business, I’m back being an academic. Not that I ever really was, I was a student, certainly, but I am an adjunct faculty member in the NYU Music Business program, teaching data analytics, which is a required class, if you want to get a degree in music business at NYU. Data is part of every role just about in the music business, which is a change from when I joined the industry. In addition, I do consulting work. These days, it’s all about AI. No great surprise because I can’t even keep up with the Google alerts each day with the stories about AI, and I’m just focusing on the effect on the creative industries—music, books, movies, et cetera. And that’s a long list to just keep up with these days. And then the third thing, and it’s part of the reason that I’m here is when we locked down for COVID, I guess that still counts for current history, it seems like just yesterday and not four years ago, I started working on a book based on the things I had learned in the music business, and also a bunch of other research going back in time to the start of the recorded music business. So I’m an author as well.

Traci: Well, I like that, trifecta of abilities, where you are.

Howie: And I like to say I’m semi retired, so that I’m busy, as well as not trying to work full time.

Traci: It’s a great way to organize your days, right? To be partially retired. You don’t have to do anything.

Howie: Other than showing up for the class where my students are at NYU, that is true.

Christa: So maybe let’s talk about your book then. Do you want to tell the audience about it?

Howie: Sure. Be happy to. The name of the book is Key Changes: The Ten Times Technology Transformed the Music Industry. And sort of the conventional wisdom that I lived through was, you know, the music industry was humming along profitably, ever so profitably, because of the compact disc, which was introduced in the 80s and hit peak revenues in 1999. And something else happened in 1999, some students on campus at Northeastern introduced Napster, which caused this enormous shockwave through the industry, and very large declines in revenue. And the story was, you know, that’s kind of, this was unique at a point in time, and it really wasn’t. The music industry has always lived on the knife’s edge of technology and business, and often was disrupted when new technologies came along. And like many businesses, not just music, had trouble adapting to the new things. So that’s the book that my co author Bill Rosenblatt and I put together that in a series of chapters about the different formats in the industry, the phonograph, a vinyl, tapes, downloads, streaming and artificial intelligence. There’s a chapter on artificial intelligence in the book, how each of those formats came to be. So we give some lessons on how the technologies coalesce to become the new format, and then how that change affected the rest of the business. Just to pick one small example, songs are shorter today, and the chorus comes earlier. And that’s because the way payments and streaming works, which is the bulk of the revenue for the music business today, payments happen at the 30 second mark. If you listen to a song for 15 seconds and skip, it doesn’t count towards the money. So you want people to listen for at least 30 seconds. At 31 seconds, the meter ticks, and it becomes a play in the calculations of Apple music and Amazon and Spotify. So if you want somebody to listen, you don’t put a very long intro with instruments at the start of the song. You put the hook. You put the chorus at the beginning. And many short songs, therefore, each one can count. On an album with many songs, let’s look at Beyonce’s new record that just came out and it’s number one. Shorter songs, many songs on the project or record, if we can call it that, even though she will release a vinyl, of course, but we still call it a record matches that pattern. So there’s one small example, but this has happened time and again, whether we’re talking about how you record on the initial phonograph cylinders and records or what you did for MTV or what you do today for streaming.

Traci: I’m completely taken in by the 15 second thing that you just told us about. Because, you know, I think a lot of people think, oh, songs are shorter, are they getting to the chorus? People talk about songs being shorter now. I would have never made that connection in a million years with the pay structure, right?

Howie: Right. And, you know, that’s the point that we look at all the other factors, whether it’s the distribution channels, how the industry makes money, how creators change what they’re doing, how fans engage with the music. Often, the new format also comes with new genres because the younger fans move to the new thing faster than people like me who were in the baby boomers, and then how law and regulations change, for example, Napster got sued. And today, we have lawsuits against certain AI companies, whether that’s the New York Times or the music publishers suing over their material being used without permission to train AI models. So, all those things, every time there’s a new format, there’s a story to be told about each one of those elements of the business.

Traci: It’s really fascinating to me. We wanted to ask you too about the biggest challenge that you’re finding right now in this intersection of work that you have, you know, three big things and your partial retirement. But what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way to get you where you are here today?

Howie: I mean, I think the biggest challenge I faced was just making this transition from sort of a traditional engineer to being a music industry executive. That was a big change. If you had told me the day I walked onto this campus to enter the PhD program in the School of Operations Research and Industrial Engineering, as it was known then. Today, it’s Information Engineering, which is a reflection of our times, that I would someday be talking to Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin about file sharing, I would have said, you’re crazy. That’s not in my future. That’s not happening. And it was a gradual kind of thing. I started out once I had my PhD, working on very conventional operations research projects, things like routing robots in factories that were semi-automated at that point in time. Algorithms to schedule employees at a call center to minimize the length of time waiting for pickup, but maximizing the profitability of the organization and meeting all the union rules for things like breaks and lunch and all those kinds of things that employees were required to have. So it’s very traditional, and I had nothing whatsoever to do with music. I was a music fan, but didn’t expect to be in the music business. But in the mid-90s, some of those technologies started to come together to enable the distribution of music over networks. I was at Bell Labs and AT&T, a logical place to look at businesses that can be conducted over networks. In fact, AT&T and Bell Labs have a history of inventing things that ended up playing into the music industry, whether that was better microphones or sound movies, sound talkies, sound pictures. So there were lots of times that Bell Labs had technologies that played a role—audio compression, which became the heart of the MP3, which was part of that Napster revolution. And so we were sorting out what could be a business that we could build using these technologies from AT&T. And we had audio compression. We had security technology from people who had designed the secure telephone on the president’s desk, so they really understood security. And we could build a software system that protected the music we were distributing over networks. We were too early in part because those networks were slow. Right? Today, we’d get annoyed if a song took longer than a few fractions of a second to play. We’d go, what’s wrong with this? It’s not playing fast enough, right? It was 15 minutes, given the state of networks in the mid-90s. But it was clear this was coming. And we talked to the music companies about this. They were not enamored of the idea. Why? Those CDs were so profitable. They weren’t interested in making that change at that point in time. No business wants to change from a really profitable business to a nascent one that maybe someday could make a lot of money, but doesn’t appear right now to be a meaningful revenue stream. So that got me in the music business. That startup eventually went away for lots of reasons. We were too early. 9/11 happened. We were unable to close additional funding, but that background gave me the credentials and experience to apply for a job in the music business. And so when Warner Music went looking for somebody to run their sort of future team of technologists that worried about these new things, I was able to get the job. And, you know, that was the start of that phase of my career.

Traci: I have to say I’m a little jealous. I am absolutely a little jealous.

Christa: As someone who gets excited about change, what I love about your book is it’s a slice. It’s one industry, and just how technology is influencing. And I love that you say that in the beginning that this is something that could appeal to and be beneficial to people in any industry. And to put a time stamp on this particular recording, this week is the entrepreneurship celebration at Cornell, where there are entrepreneurs coming back to campus, to celebrate, share ideas, meet with students, hear what they’re working on, and we have many students on campus who are entrepreneurs, who are aspiring entrepreneurs. And I’d love to hear what you would say to them, what particular insight you would offer in terms of thinking about technology and what’s on the horizon and how they might incorporate that into their business.

Howie: Change is hard for everybody. My wife’s a psychologist, and working with kids—change is hard for them, too. Although you might think they’d be more flexible at being young, they’re not. But change is always hard. And it’s always difficult particularly if you’re finding a new way of doing something to convince the people that are benefiting from the current system to make that change. And that was what was hard. And you could argue that it wasn’t until the current business model, at whatever point in time, starts to fray. So there’s a person I’ve known for decades in the music business, he was the Chief Technology Officer at Geffen Records. He famously sent a song over CompuServe in 1994, I think it was. He might have been the first one to do that—Jim Griffin—and he talks about Tarzan Economics. And think about it as Tarzan swinging on the vine. Happy through the jungle, things are fine, but at some point, you’ve got to let go and grab the next vine. And that’s a big risk. And remembering that when you’re talking to the people that are on that vine, and how do you get them to take that risk often? They don’t make the change until they look up and see their current vine is starting to fray a bit. And that’s been true, not just for the music business, but for many businesses. It wasn’t the movie studios that started Netflix. It was some guys from outside. And then they all started their own streaming services to try and catch up to Netflix. They weren’t the first ones, and it often comes from outside. And you know, it was difficult. It was obvious to us that music distribution was coming over networks. It was obvious to us that there were going to be new music players. We had a prototype with no moving parts. Think of it as—well, the iPod had a tiny disc drive, so it did have some moving parts, but it didn’t skip the way a CD skipped, right? And so, you know, we were telling them this was coming, and it was hard for them to accept. And I think now knowing all that and looking back, you know, trying to find a way to get that message across better, rather than walking out of the room and saying, they just don’t get it, and they’re never going to get it. You know, we should have thought a little bit more about—this is on us, because if they’re not getting it, it’s something about how we’re explaining it, right? And it’s still going to be hard for them to accept it because of that change. But you know, could we get them to dip their toe in the water a little bit deeper than they might have otherwise? Because that’s what they did. They experimented, and they dipped their toe in the water, but they didn’t go all-in, in the phraseology we’d use today. And to make a business a success, as any entrepreneur knows, you have to go all-in.

Traci: Thank you. I’m feeling that we’re dancing towards my area of interest, which is helping engineers communicate. And you just brought up a point that maybe we weren’t creating the message quite right to get them to dive in and everything. And this is something I talk quite a bit about with the undergraduates that I work with here—that you can have the best idea in the world, but if you can’t sell it, it’s not going to go anywhere. And it doesn’t matter if it’s solid rocket fuel regression rates or streaming services or whatever it might be, right? That communication piece is so important. So I always say thank you for bringing up these things.

Howie: You know, I’m often asked—because let’s face it, operations research PhD to, you know, working with Spotify and YouTube doesn’t seem like a natural career. Although today it would be much more natural because every one of those companies has a data team. They didn’t when I started in the music industry. When I went to the head of IT and said, great news, we have data on every Apple download sale—which meant we had billions of records coming. Today, we have trillions of records in streaming—we have billions of records coming, we’re going to be able to use this information. He said, can you aggregate it? I don’t have a database big enough to hold all of that, right? So that was the nature of the business. And when people ask me, well, how did you end up doing that? Because this is not the typical career path. And I say, really, if I had to focus on—one was the training I got in engineering and in operations research gave me a way to think about problems. And even if I wasn’t using specific OR tools like queuing theory or linear programming, that discipline gave me a way to think about things. But the other thing—and, you know, this is something that I was not as good at in graduate school, and people helped me get better at it, particularly when I started at Bell Labs—was explaining things. And the fact that I could explain to the people whose whole background in music was signing artists and in a recording studio how things worked at YouTube or Spotify and make them understand it was the thing that got me where I was. It was being able to take engineering and technical stuff and speak English, right? And so that was a skill, and it was something that I had to work at. I mean, Bell Laboratories had classes. I didn’t take business classes when I was here at Cornell—mistake on my part. Probably the only mistake I made at Cornell—because you had a minor outside the department, and I chose civil engineering. Not a smart move on my part. Should have minored in business, right? Because I ended up having to deal with business people all the time, and that would have been better if I knew their language and their terminology, and how do you put things in a way that they care about? And, you know, that’s a skill that I developed, and, you know, you wouldn’t be able to write a book of 400 pages about the history of the music business and expect anybody to read it if you couldn’t explain things clearly—how the technology worked, how the business changed. So it is something that I think helped me quite a bit and wasn’t the normal thing that people did.

Traci: You brought it up earlier, and I think it’s just such a fascinating part of your work, like adding on AI, you know, in the last couple of years to this mix of technologies that you’ve been working with the whole time. So we just wanted to pick your brain a little bit about where that’s at right now. It’s a moving target. We understand, it’ll be different tomorrow.

Howie: It was one of the frustrating things writing a book that exists on dead trees—that it gets locked in at some point. And every time our publisher, Oxford Press, gave us back material for editing or we’d add stuff—and they’d yell at us for adding things because you were just supposed to correct the commas and the spelling errors this time—we’d add stuff because the thing was changing so fast. So it has been difficult to keep up because it is moving so quickly. For the creative industries, it is a huge issue. You know, it was at the heart of the Hollywood strikes last year—for the writers and the actors. So it’s not just a music thing. The New York Times is suing OpenAI over the training material that gets used. And you know, these companies commonly say, well, we’re just training on publicly available information. But what does that mean? They don’t say exactly what’s publicly available. And in particular, if you’re a musician or a writer at the Times, that publicly available information may be copyrighted. And they in some cases don’t believe that they need permission or should compensate the creators for, in essence, the fuel that is powering this engine. Right? And it is of great concern, which is why we’re seeing lawsuits. One of the things that is true, though—again, if history repeats itself, and I wrote a whole book saying that—this is going to take time. We’re just at the start of the lawsuits. You know, Napster was shut down quickly, but its follow-on services that followed in their footsteps and avoided the legal minefields that Napster triggered, they were around longer. It took ten years from the date of Napster’s launch until the last of the big file sharing networks was found guilty of copyright infringement and shut down. So the law takes a long time. You know, at the end of the book, we talk about the themes across time. And one of the themes is how slow the legal system works. And so it’s hard to say how this is all going to pan out. Somebody asked me recently, what am I worried about most about AI, and I said that the creators lose six lawsuits in a row. And that’s because that will prevent the tech companies from believing they need to come to the table and make a deal. And ultimately, this will be decided in conference rooms and not courtrooms, and there will be deals made. But deals are always based on who’s got the leverage and who doesn’t, and how much do I need to pay? And I’m hoping it’s even handed. And if the AI companies win several cases that say that they do not have to get permission or pay for training material, that negotiation—some may still decide to pay just because it’s convenient—but it won’t be a settlement that the artists and writers and graphic artists find very palatable.

Christa: I’m sitting here thinking about—there’s so much ethics tied up in all of this and so much opportunity for people to use data for good, right? And to use data analysis for good and machine learning and AI. And we have so many students that go into OR or similar majors and they’re not sure what to do with it. They like the idea, they like the work. You know, they’re good at it, and they don’t know where they want to go and make an impact in the world. And to some extent, that can be sorted out by just going and trying some things, right? Sort of fall into something like you did. And then I’m thinking about the students that are looking for some ideas, some inspiration. Do you have some suggestions on, you know, places that young people might explore further as they’re thinking about where can I use this for good?

Howie: Well, we tended to focus on the negatives. You know, was it Debbie Downer of Saturday Night Live? We talk about AI, and I focus on the negatives. We should talk about the positives, and you mentioned some of those. And, you know, one example—and it’s already happening—some estates of deceased artists are working with AI to create new music with that artist’s voice. Now, it’s done with permission. It’s done with compensation. But the example I like to use is, you know, there’s going to be a next Adele album, right? And wouldn’t a duet with Whitney Houston be wonderful? If the estate approved it. And in the world of streaming and the way the money gets paid—even if it’s not a great song, and by the way, Adele writes a pretty good song, so the chances are in her favor—but even if it’s not deemed a great song or people find it objectionable, even if the estate said it’s okay to use Whitney’s voice, they don’t like it, okay. But there’ll be a whole bunch of people who had never heard any Whitney Houston music who will discover Whitney Houston and then go back and listen to “I Will Always Love You,” and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” and “The Greatest Love of All,” and every one of those plays—unlike when I was a kid, when the old Whitney Houston records would have the sticker of the lower price in the record store, the price would migrate downwards as the records got older—today, those plays are worth the exact same amount of money. And there’s lots of complaints about how many fractions of a penny get paid, and is it enough? And I get all of those questions. But it is a statement of fact that that play is worth just as much as the new song. So if Olivia Rodrigo’s new album comes out—and it came out this year—or you don’t like Beyoncé’s country album, but it reminds you how much you loved Lemonade, and you go back and listen—every play of Lemonade is worth just as much as “Texas Hold ‘Em” is, if you listen today. So the way streaming works, this is a wonderful thing in terms of the positive uses.

The thing that I would say—and I think this is true for music, it’s true in hospitality, you have the Hotel School here, it’s true at the airlines—there is no business that operates at scale that is not using data to make their decisions. So having those skills is really valuable. I had a guest speaker from Spotify, who’s the head of Content Analytics for the entire company, speak to my class. And he goes over, what are the skills I look for on my team? Now, this is not the people that are working with the artists or with the labels on ingesting content into their service, but the people building—they just announced an AI-based beta to build playlists with text prompts: I want to hear songs that are happy about the summer that sound like this—and he needs people to go build those things. That’s not necessarily somebody who’s a musician. They probably want somebody who’s passionate about music, but they need to know SQL, they need to know Python. They need to know all the things that you’re teaching here to your students. So those jobs exist at Spotify. Those jobs exist at American Airlines. Those jobs exist at, you know, a hotel chain. It doesn’t matter what we pick. The exhaust of data—and we can have complaints about how much privacy have we sacrificed to create all this data—but, you know, there are conveniences. We all like getting that Amazon box the day after we put in the order, and it shows up on your doorstep. And so they know which products to keep close to you because of what patterns have been purchased in the past. So my sense—and I tell this not just to my students taking my data class; they don’t have a choice, it’s a requirement, so I don’t really have to defend it—but when people come to me and say, well, you’ve had a good career, what would you recommend studying? I say: data science. And learning—even if you can’t be the person who builds the models—being literate in data is such an essential skill. And it’s almost like, well, pick the thing you like working on, whether it’s analyzing movie ticket sales or concert ticket sales or airline ticket sales or shopping patterns on Amazon—that’s what’s driving all these industries.

Christa: I love it.

Traci: Absolutely. Now, this one might be hard because it seems like you’ve done everything, but if you weren’t doing this work that you’re doing right now, what might it have been?

Howie: I probably would have just been a professor the whole time and not worked in the industry. Part of the reason I went to work at Bell Labs was that the job offers that I had to be a professor paid far less than Bell Labs was willing to pay at the time. And so after being a poor, semi-starving graduate student for a long time—because we were both going to graduate school together—the idea of making a little bit of money and saving for a house and things like that mattered. And it was clearly, you know, the right choice. Bell Labs is a prestigious place to work because of the kind of people that I mentioned. But, you know, I could have seen myself doing that. I certainly enjoy teaching now. Not having to commute into New York City every day from where I live in New Jersey to do that teaching, however, is a real plus.

Traci: Yes, I would not be a good commuter at all. So I’m with you on that point.

Howie: I did it for 20 years—every day from New Jersey into New York. And a lot of other travel too, but my kids were somewhat older by then, so it wasn’t as much of a burden.

Christa: Final question. Feels important. What’s your favorite album or project?

Howie: That is a tough one. I’m trying to think of what turns up—data-related problem. Spotify—I use Spotify mainly, although I use many other services. They do produce Spotify Wrapped at the end of the year that tells you what you listen to the most. And I don’t think it’s so much album anymore because it’s more the collection of stuff that I like from an artist, and it’s stuff from different albums. Probably what I listen to the most myself is Bruce Springsteen. As a favorite artist, Jackson Browne is another. If I had to really pick an album though, I would have to go through and think about it. It might be Let It Be from the Beatles—the unplugged version, the one they redid without all the Spector big orchestrations, very simple orchestration that they redid. So that one I love. And I’ve been to Abbey Road Studios, which is a cool thing to get to go do. So there’s that one. I’d have to think about which—maybe the Bridge Over Troubled Water album from Simon & Garfunkel. And the cast—I’m a big Broadway fan. My wife and I have done this since we first started going out. We go see lots of shows. If I had to pick one album, it might be Hamilton.

Traci: Yes. I think that one’s high on a lot of people’s lists.

Howie: So it’s interesting. You know, when you work at a music company, everybody thinks, well, you must get to see so many artists—and, you know, that’s not true, of course. I did, on occasion, get to meet them. But I remember going in our building in New York—Atlantic Records, which is the label that released the Hamilton cast album—two floors down, and I was down there on a Friday and they had set up their space, their performance space, differently, and had all these chairs. And I said, what’s going on? to the person that worked there. And he says, oh, the cast of Hamilton is coming in tomorrow to listen for the first time to the entire recording of the album. And I went, gasp! And he said, you can’t come.

Traci: Don’t even ask. Don’t even ask. Right. Right. Bummer.

Howie: Bummer. Exactly. Exactly. But, you know, that’s the kind of thing you don’t get to necessarily do. But then again, sometimes you do get to meet—I got to work with Neil Young on a project. And so there were times that we’d go to things or go to showcases. One of the best examples—you were talking about giving presentations and engaging the audience, we could close, it’s a fun story to close with, perhaps. We would have meetings of the senior management of the company in the city. In one year—London—we were going to have a big conference, the top people from all the labels, the top people from the strategy group where I worked. The company at that point in time was run by Edgar Bronfman Jr. So you’ve got a room of 100 or 120 executives from around the world. They’re all sitting there, and Edgar stands up at the front, and he says, I really think it’s important for us to dig into the financials of the company. So I’m going to do that now. And, you know, it’s 48 slides with a lot of numbers. But, you know, I think it’s important for you all to understand this. And they put up the first slide and he looked at it and said, forget that. And they raised the curtain and Bruno Mars sang four songs.

Traci: So Bruno Mars is always better than a slide deck.

Howie: Exactly. Much better communicator. And so those are the kinds of cool things you get to see when you work for a music company.

Christa: I love it. Very cool.

Traci: I love that he set it up—“It’s 48 slides, it’s numbers”—and everybody’s going for the misery.

Howie: And it’s the head of the company. You’ve got to be sitting there going, oh, great! I’m happy to see it! You can’t be going, oh my god, this is gonna be boring, it’s gonna be deadly. He’s the CEO. You’ve got to look enthused.

Traci: We’re all here for the glory of the company. Bruno Mars is much better.

Howie: Much. Bruno Mars is much better.

Traci: I’m never gonna have a Bruno Mars moment, I think. But that’s okay. The CEO can have that. That was awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you’re having a good time while you are here.

Howie: My pleasure, absolutely.

Christa: Thank you for listening. If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode, where we will be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to the Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum, where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you. Welcome, everybody to Engineering Career Conversations. We are so happy to be talking today to Jessie Yee, who graduated in 2020, majoring in Information Science and minoring in both film and game design. She is currently a producer at Archetype Entertainment for the Game Play team on Exodus, which is a new triple-A sci-fi action-adventure role playing game. If you want to know more about these projects and others that Jessie’s worked on, click on the link below in the show notes. Let’s get started. Well, Jessie, we’re so glad that you’re here with us today. And just to get a sense of what your work is and what it is that you’re up to, can you let us know about your current work, where you’re at? What does your day look like?

Jessie Yee: Yeah, for sure. So currently, I’m a producer for the gameplay team at my studio. So when I say gameplay, because our game is a triple-A Sci Fi action adventure role playing game, gameplay includes anything that the player has the ability to do, things that our enemies and our companions can do and how the fights are set up with the player, the enemies, and the companions, just as an example. So I get to work with people in disciplines across the company, so everyone from design, engineering, animation, audio, UI, character art, like the list really goes on.

Traci: How do you wrangle so many different people and experts? That seems hard to me.

Jessie: Yeah, I think a big part of the producer role really is, helping to facilitate conversation. So a lot of what I do is, you know, there’s a lot of meetings because I’m working fully remote. There’s a lot of messages that I have to go through, constantly, you know, switching between different types of conversations with different disciplines and different features. So there’s a lot of context switching in my job, but I think part of it is being very well organized, keeping track of, like, who is doing what, who is talking about what and who needs to be included in which conversations. So a lot of the time, you know, I kind of feel like an octopus. You just kind of have to manage a lot of stuff at once. I think part of it comes with just experience on the job. Some of it is just people who go into production, I think have a better tendency or have a tendency to enjoy that type of thing and to be able to keep many things spinning at once.

Traci: And so outline the difference for us between like a producer and like a project lead.

Jessie: Yeah. So I think when you think of the traditional roles like what is a project lead, a project manager, a product manager do versus a producer, the fun answer is that within game development, the term producer can kind of mean anything depending on the team and the specific project that you’re working on. So I tend to think of game producers specifically, which are different from like TV, film, or music producers. I think of game producers as either working generally with the developer or with the publisher. So the publisher producers, they could be doing things like working with platforms. So like Playstation or Xbox, they could be working with marketing teams, with localization. So if you’re going to publish a game in multiple different countries, you’ll have to translate text. You’ll have to maybe arrange things a little bit differently for the suitable audience in that area. But what I think most people will probably think of with game producers is working with the developer, which is what I do. So this is a lot closer to what I think people will think of when they hear the term like project manager, where there is an element of, you know, task tracking, road mapping, communicating with the team, kind of seeing what the status of the work is. But I think the difference is that for producers, you’re kind of more like what I would describe a deliverable lead or at least in most cases. It does still vary a bit studio a studio. But you’re more responsible, at least, like in my past experience for making sure the game gets out the door, so the company can keep the lights on and that you hit, you know, deadlines as you need to, but also really being like a servant leader and a supporter for the team. So, the interesting part about being a producer is that nobody actually reports to me, and I don’t actually manage anybody, but I have a responsibility to my team to help them work in like the healthiest and the most effective way possible.

Traci: Well, I like that you said the word healthiest or the phrase healthiest way possible. What does that mean for you?

Jessie: Yeah, so there is a common term that’s used in game development, which is crunch. So crunch is typically where, you know, you’re getting close to a deadline. People are working overtime. Sometimes it’s a lot of overtime in, you know, the span of a couple of days, sometimes it’s, you know, on the weekends. It depends a lot on the project and the team and how big the company is. There’s a lot of factors that can go into, you know, when and why a crunch happens. But typically when it happens throughout the industry, it’s close to a deadline like releasing of a game or releasing, like, a big expansion for a game. So when I think of healthy game development, a lot of it is, you know, there’s no way to predict the perfect roadmap for how everything is going to lay out, which I think a lot of people can relate to. But particularly with games, it’s harder because games as a product, you know, you can hit all of the beats that you lay out on paper, and you can achieve those goals on paper. But if you play it and it doesn’t feel good or it doesn’t feel fun, you have to keep iterating and you have to keep going. So there’s that component of, you know, like, if I’m sitting in a project manager role, and I say, we have A B and C done just as we had planned. It may not feel fun, and so we may have to keep working on the game if we want it to hit a certain quality bar. So, in general, I think that’s kind of what happens. There’s a lot of reasons that can contribute to a crunch. But my job in trying to help keep the team as healthy as possible is, you know, we can try to foresee as many of those things as possible. We can try to build in time for additional iteration. And just in case it doesn’t feel good, we need to have some more time to work things out. But it is a lot of constant problem solving to make sure that, you know, we’re not signing ourselves up for goals that are too lofty or too unachievable or that we’re not just constantly getting bombarded with feedback because it is a creative industry, and everybody has a lot of opinions.

Traci: Right, right, right. Thank you for that thorough answer. I love it. Love it.

Christa: Jessie, I love hearing all of this, and I’m curious to know how did you get there? I imagine we have many students who would love to learn more about a career, would love to explore a career in video game production. What advice do you have and what was your path?

Jessie: Yeah, that’s a great question. So for me personally, I always knew that I was interested in entertainment media. So I came into Cornell knowing that I wanted to pursue at least a film minor just because that was the main type of media that I was exposed to in an academic setting before college. And I had always loved playing video games, and, you know, you come to the end of a video game, and you’ll watch the credits roll, and sometimes there’s one name, sometimes there’s hundreds of names, similar to a movie. But I never really sat down to think, you know, there’s all these people who have jobs and careers that are working to put this, you know, product into the box that I ended up playing. So when I was at Cornell, you know, I took a bunch of film classes, but I actually had heard from a bunch of my friends who were all CS majors that they were taking this interesting elective that was about game development, which was not something that I think I had even realized was a course until I heard about it from my friends. So I decided to take the class. There’s the intro and the advanced class that I took each of. And in those roles, I was the design lead and the project lead. So I was very focused on doing the design and the art myself. And I didn’t really have a word for what I wanted to do. I didn’t really understand what production was. So in my senior year, as I was trying to figure out, you know, what do I want to do? I knew that I really loved the game development classes, but I actually didn’t want to be a designer or an artist. But I loved working with the team. I loved working with people who were doing those roles other than me, and I knew that I wanted to continue doing that. So I reached out to a lot of Cornell alumni, I think, mostly on LinkedIn, and I just asked them what they did in games and to try to see like what kind of career paths were out there. So I talked to everybody from marketing to narrative writing, to level design, to being more on like the business product development side. So I talked to a lot of different people. And basically, you know, I’d hear from them what they did for a living. A lot of them asked me, you know, what do you enjoy from your game development class that you’re doing? What do you enjoy from other classes that you have or, you know, your part time job when I was working on campus for a bit. And when I was explaining this to them, a lot of them pointed me towards production, just as a discipline and as a career path. So from there, you know, I started to connect with more producers, get a sense of like I mentioned, there’s a lot of different types of production. So just trying to get a sense of what does a producer role look like in a small company like in an indy studio versus a very large company. So what we think of as triple A. This is something like, you know, like Activision Blizzard, for example, is a really big and well known studio. So getting to talk to people from a variety of sources, and from there figuring out, what type of production role do I want to look for? Um, and actually, it was through one of those connections, one of the producers that I met that I found my way to my first role as an associate producer. So I guess my suggestion for anybody who is looking to go into games, especially if they’re not sure what aspect they want to go into, but they just know that they’re interested in games in general, or really for most entertainment media is to think about, you know, what are the aspects of the game that you really enjoy? Like, is it that you can really appreciate like a certain type of design, like you love level design. Maybe in your spare time, you even make your own levels, whether it’s for, you know, a video game online, whether it’s you’re making something yourself, whether it’s a board game. Think about the types of things that excite you and the work that excites you. And if you’re interested in production in particular, there’s actually a lot correlations that you can probably make to roles like project management, product management. So I would just advise you to take a look at, you know, what really excites you and what type of work do you want to do?

Traci: So I wanted to follow up on some of the things that you’re talking about here. You’ve done a lot of exploration of different roles and what you wanted, right? And tracing that path through it all. But what are some of the significant challenges that you’ve encountered and how did you overcome those along the way?

Jessie: Yeah, that’s also a great question. I think one of the biggest things is that, especially for someone, like I said, production is like a support role. So for people who tend to come into this role, I think there’s a lot of, you know, people pleasing that I want to do. You know, I want to be able to help everyone. I want to be able to make everybody’s lives better. But I can’t do that realistically for every single person, or at least, not to 110%. So I think one of the big things for me that I had to learn, throughout even college, and then in the industry myself is just figuring out how to do what my old boss called ruthless prioritization. Not only for my sanity at work and for the sanity of other people, but for my personal sanity as well. So when I say ruthless prioritization, a lot of it is, you know, there’s always going to be a million things to do, especially with games. You know, It is a form of art. So no art is really ever complete. This is how I usually think of I used to play the piano, and I would never feel like I was done finishing a piece. Whether I had already performed it in a concert or I was still, you know, going through hours of practicing it at home. It was never done because there was always something that I could do better. There was always something that I could make, you know, feel more lively, or I would always make a mistake in one particular section. So it’s kind of a similar thing with games where you can always improve it. There will always be bugs to fix. And there will always be ways to just tune things and make them just feel slightly better or just, you know, find more edge cases that you can address because it’s such an interactive medium. So when we prioritize things, when we prioritize work for the team, There’s a lot of saying, you know, like, which bugs are major. Which types of feedback from directors or leads are most important and will make the biggest impact on the game. Are they things that the team agrees with? And does the team feel like they have a clear path forward and the support that they need to actually accomplish all of that? And as a producer for a large team, you know, there’s a lot of requests that I will constantly get. There’s a lot of people who will message me, whether it is to ask for help on something specifically or to just keep me in the loop and keep me in there for visibility. So I’m constantly having to, you know, read messages, to sit in meetings, to read e mails, things like that. And for myself, I can’t get to every single message right away. I can’t sit in multiple conversations simultaneously. But what I can do is you know, get better at understanding, what is the context of the current conversation? Do I need to be in here right now and is there somebody else who can help out with this at the moment? And so sometimes what I end up doing is making sure that the right people are in the conversation. They have that conversation together with each other. And I can help follow up with any decisions or action items as need be. And usually, you know, I do love getting a chance to actually sit in and understand the nitty gritty, but I can’t be everywhere at once.

Traci: Well, I don’t think you’d want to be everywhere at once, right? That would be draining all of your precious energy. I like that ruthless prioritization idea as well.

Jessie: All the credit for that goes to my last lead.

Traci: It’s a great way to think about what should I do today? You know, even day to day, let alone a long term project. It’s really fantastic idea.

Christa: Yeah, I love how you think about your work and your responsibility to your team and to the projects. You spoke before. You mentioned servant leadership. Can you speak a little bit more about that?

Jessie: Yeah, so when I say servant leader, in my mind, a lot of this kind of comes back to that support role. So in video game terms, I also like to think of production as a support role, where, you know, sometimes if you’re playing a game, there might be somebody who is you know, specializing in fighting, specializing in magic. And usually there’s also a support role if you’re playing in a group or any sort of game that involves a group, where there’s somebody who might provide buffs to the rest of the team or heal the rest of the team. And I think of servant leadership as kind of, you know, the same analogy where my role is to help the team, and like I said, nobody manages nobody reports up to me. So I’m nobody’s lead. When you’re a producer, you can be a lead for other producers beneath you. So if you’re like a senior, you can be a lead to somebody who’s more mid or associate level. But really, my role is, like, you know, I’m working with a large team, in this case, like the gameplay team, and I have to kind of support them wherever I can. But that is my role is to be like their supporter. It isn’t, you know, to manage them career wise or to manage them personally. There are always going to be, suggestions that I give out to the people who are their leads, where I might, you know, from a project management standpoint, say that, you know, certain people are working on certain topics. But really, we have a higher priority feature to work on. So I might suggest that we move, an engineer from one feature to another feature, at least for the current month that we’re working in. But I’m never going to be the one who is, like, you know, fully dictating, especially from a creative standpoint, like, we should do this to tune, you know, how the enemy is currently appearing in the game or how it’s currently behaving.

Christa: Yes. What are the most common questions that you get from students who want to enter this field?

Jessie: I think one of the first ones is, for anybody I talk to, who is interested in production, usually I will ask them back is, what makes you interested in production? Just to kind of get a better sense of what they’re really looking to do? And they’ll usually reflect back to me, what is it that you do in production? So I think one of the most common questions from them is just, well, you know, how is this very different from project management? Like what are the other types of things that you do that make you not just a project manager? And like I mentioned, there are aspects of that, but I think it’s I think it’s understanding that I really also can do anything else that it takes to support the team. So like, for example, at my last company, I wasn’t just working with the development team. One thing that we needed to do as well because we were working on a game within the Alien IP is that I got a chance to be the liaison with Disney and Walt Disney games, and making sure that with Alien as a large IP, you know, that is spanning decades, movies, books, comics, et cetera, making sure that whatever we were doing was in line with the IP, that we had this comfortable back and forth. We had a good relationship with the and that they were, you know, also champions of whatever it is we were doing, because whatever we were going to put out would then become part of the larger Alien cannon. So I guess, like, you kind of go back to your question of what types of questions that people ask me. It’s kind of also explaining to them that, you know, your job may not include something like working with Disney, but it might. And it depends on what you’re up for, what you’re interested in, what you have the opportunity to do. But I think as long as you can kind of find that interest in somebody who wants to be a producer, then they’re probably going to be a good fit, and they we’ll have a bit more direction in terms of what types of production roles they’ll look for.

Christa: So along those lines, what do you wish you knew when you were a sophomore?

Jessie: So one thing that I wish I knew is that because there are so many different classes at Cornell, I wish I got to really sit down and look more at the list to see what I was interested in. So like I mentioned with the game development courses, this wasn’t something that I had stumbled upon, you know, just in looking at the class roster, but it was something that my friends had told me about. And while I did try to branch out of my majors and my minors to kind of find more, you know, out there classes to take and to just expand my field of knowledge. I wish that I took advantage of that opportunity even more, especially, you know, from a sophomore level, getting to have maybe one or two more years within Cornell, maybe further if you decide to stay on for other programs. But really taking advantage of that and using it to the best of my ability.

Traci: There’s so much offered, right? Any campus. With my own child finishing up their first year, every time I open the roster to help them choose their next class, I’m like, Oh, I want to take that. I want to take that. Yeah, and that. And that one, too. It’s amazing.

Jessie: Yeah, but I really do feel like, I think I got the advice a lot before I went into college that, you shouldn’t stick with your major in particular, necessarily. You should really try to push yourself and see what’s out there. And I think at the time when I came in as a freshman, I was saying, well, you know, I know exactly what I want to do. And some people, they do know at that age, and they know exactly what field they want to work in after college as well. But in my case, you know, I actually started out as a math major before I transitioned to information science. And then, you know, as I learned more about games, I actually took on the game design minor. And that actually opened me up to a lot of different other courses that I didn’t know existed. So there’s, like, creative character design, which was a fantastic class, and which I probably would have never heard of if I had initially just stuck with being a math major.

Traci: And that leads us beautifully into the question that we wanted to ask about what classes or classes had the most influence on you. And I’m not trying to put my thumb on the scale here. Because I’ve worked with Jessie in classes before, but you were just talking about the character development class, and tell us about other ones that you enjoyed.

Jessie: For sure. So I think yeah, the clear answer is the intro and the advanced game development courses. I’ll talk about it briefly, too, just because I think, you know, this is really what gave me the bird’s eye view of what it takes to actually make a game from start to finish. And it does follow, you know, a lot of the processes that, you know, most game studios do, just on a much smaller scale. So in some ways, I think of it as, you know, like a baby version of what I ended up experiencing in the industry. And I’m not always, you know, when you come into a game project in any role in the industry, I’m not always going to be a part of every single decision from beginning to end in the same way that I was in the game classes, just because, you know, you’re working with a smaller group, I think it’s something like five to eight people, depending on your group size over the course of about six months, like in one semester. So it really gave me like a sense of, okay, you know, a lot of us are on the design side. There’s people in the team who are on the software side. How do we work together? When do I need to inform them of other things. So there was a lot that it actually did teach me that translated very directly into my role. But I think in terms of other impactful courses, like I mentioned, I really loved the film courses that I took. I think one thing that was really valuable was that I realized that I really loved film studies. And I did take a couple of classes where we were doing things like editing, directing, but I actually found that I didn’t enjoy doing that myself, and I didn’t want to be a screenwriter or an actor, either, but I really wanted to write papers about it. And I think that kind of line of thought also led me to production because I love getting to work with people who are developers, but I don’t actually have an interest in doing the development myself. I might do a little bit here and there from my free time, but it’s not anything that I would ever, you know, go out and actually publish or to create myself necessarily.

Christa: It’s such a great example of finding your way into an industry that you love, into a world where you want to be in it and make an impact, and also finding the perfect fit for your skill set.

Jessie: Yeah. I think a perfect storm of things that all led me to my current role.

Christa: Where do you go to stay current? In this line of work in this industry.

Jessie: So I think with games, the fun thing is that one of the major ways is just by playing video games myself. You know, in some industries, in order to get to know your co workers, you might do things like you might keep up on sports. You may go and play golf with them yourselves. But in my case, I might just play video games myself. I might play them with my co workers, with my friends or with my old co workers. But when a game does come out, you know, that’s really big, similar to, like a blockbuster movie, I want to be able to talk to my co workers, not just about, you know, like, what the story is, what I’ve heard other people doing, but what my actual experience was firsthand. So the fun thing is to stay current is, you know, really just playing video games. Sometimes it’s like the big blockbuster ones, like I mentioned, and sometimes it’s working on smaller things that are for a more niche audience or in a genre that most people are not really interested in. But there will always be things that you can learn from it. And there might be co workers that I know that are specifically interested in a certain genre that I can talk to them about. But I think other ways to stay current, you know, are also just talking to other game developers. There’s a lot of different communities out there. There’s a lot of them that are centered around, you know, maybe certain interests in games and groups that people identify with more closely together. I’m in a couple that are focused on game production as a discipline, which is exciting to, you know, get a chance to talk to people who are interested in production, who maybe want to switch careers into it or want to start the careers there, or who have even been in game production for a really long time. And then I think at large, there’s a lot of events that you can attend, whether virtually or in person. So there are conventions. You know, I think a lot of people have heard of things like Comic Con, but there are conventions that are a bit more focused on games and game development. So, for example, there is PAX, which has an East and a West location throughout the year. I actually went to PAX East when I was at Cornell, with a bunch of friends and the club on campus. But there are also things like GDC, which is the game developers conference that are a bit more tailored to the actual developers behind the games, as opposed to just, you know, fans and players and a mix of developers. And a lot of those events like GDC, will post video recordings of the talks that they have. And a lot of other conferences that are worldwide like women in games or IGDA, which is the International Game Developers Association. A lot of them will also post talks, whether they’re more lecture focused, they’re career panel focused, they’re Q&A. And so I think a lot of those are good resources to just kind of keep up with what’s going on more in the industry level side.

Christa: And I imagine our listeners can follow along on social media, many of these things that you’ve mentioned. And I’m wondering, would it makes sense for a student or a young person in their career to attend, say, for example, women in gaming conferences?

Jessie: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of great opportunities, especially if you think you’re interested and you may think that you’re interested in a certain field or you have no idea which field that you’re interested in. I think it’s a great way to, you know, get to know people. A lot of people like to talk about what they do and to talk about themselves. And I think especially in games, what I found is everybody is so passionate about working in games. Otherwise, they could probably just work for none other software company or some other form of media. But if you’re in games, it’s probably because you really love it. You love playing games. You love making them. And so I think it’s a great way to, you know, not just connect with people in an industry you might be interested in, but also to just connect with other gamers and to, you know, make friends and make connections who you may also just want to play games with.

Traci: So I’m going to ask a hard one, maybe. If you weren’t doing this work, if you weren’t doing this, Jessie, what would you be doing instead?

Jessie: Oh. So I think I have maybe a couple of different answers. So if I weren’t in games, I think I still would be interested in a form of production, but maybe for a different entertainment medium. So I love film, for example, I might want to try you know, being a film producer or even theater and being a theater producer, which I think is quite different from being a game producer. And if I weren’t a producer at all, but I were still involved with games, I think I would probably want to be really involved with diversity and inclusion efforts. So one of the things that I was actually most proud of from my first job, you know, aside from us getting the game out the door, was actually being a part of the diversity and inclusion team. So one thing that we got to do, that was a really fun opportunity was we worked with this great organization called Game Heads for two summers in a row, which is focused on, you know, engaging and training, low income youth and youth of color, specifically for careers in tech and careers in the games industry. And the students we had in the career panel were fantastic. They asked a lot of really insightful and engaging questions. And I remember coming out of those events and talking to the devs who were on the career panel after, and everybody was so energized and so excited by the experience that I would love to be able to, you know, do more of that, too. But I think, if I had to choose something that really wasn’t production or in games at all. My favorite concentration when I was at Cornell, actually, within information science was on ethics law and policy. So I did consider for a hot minute potentially going to law school. And I did end up working with licensing and stuff in my job, but in a much different way.

Christa: We hear some negative things about gaming, right? A some of the games that are out there and experiences people have, particularly those who might be more vulnerable here in real life, often find themselves vulnerable in the gaming world. And so what does that look like? What conversations? What’s happening to address this?

Jessie: Yeah, that’s a great topic, too. I think a lot of it, you know, within entertainment media in general to kind of step back from games, you see the product that will end up on the movie theater screen or that’ll end up, like on the game disc that you bring home. And sometimes there are things within the end product, where like you mentioned, it may not feel like people are all being treated the right way within the game itself, whether it’s like on the scale of characters, or it’s the way that the world is built in the game. But I think a lot of it also has to do with the behind the scenes, kind of like you were alluding to, where, you know, when you take a look at who are the names on the list of credits, when you finish the game and the credits role, and, you know, how diverse of a team that might be, who might have had input in the design, or who might have had input in, you know, all of the different steps along the way. I think part of what we can do to address that is similar to I think what is going on in tech in general is to focus on how we can build people up who may be in less opportunistic places, but who may be interested in games or, you know, tech in general. So for example, with the Game Heads group that I mentioned, working with people who may be interested in a career there, but who may not necessarily know like what discipline they want to work in or just, you know, they may know what discipline they want to work in, but they don’t know where to find the training for it. They don’t know, how can I just reach out to people in the industry and get connections that way. So I think there’s a lot of things that you can do. There’s a lot of organizations that are focused on, you know, whether it’s kids who are in lower age groups, like in middle school, kids that are in more of like what we think of as like the older teenager, like young adult kind of age who are interested in getting into games and making sure that there is opportunity for people to really learn about what they want to do and really learn, what it truly is like to work in the games industry from a younger age. So I think that’s also why, for the game classes I had at Cornell, I was still in the age where You know, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, and I was very lucky to have the opportunity at Cornell to even take a course where you are going to make a game in the first place. And that’s something that I would love to help provide to other people so that, you know, we can end up in a future where if I’m sitting in meeting, I may not be the only woman in the room, I may not be the only person of color in the room.

Christa: Another question. I think our final question, perhaps, what do you do, Jessie, to relax, have fun, re energize, and maybe rest your eyes a bit.

Jessie: Yeah, I mean, I guess to your last point, I would normally say video games, but because I work fully remote, that involves a lot of staring at the screen. So I think, you know, the main thing for me is I’ve played piano since I was little. I’m not doing it as intensely as I used to, but I am doing it more like for myself and for fun. And I find that this is a great way where I literally cannot look at an electronic device if I’m playing the piano, and I have to force myself, you know, to really be there in the moment. I have to give it all of my attention, or else, I’m not going to, you know, play the right note. It’s not going to come out the proper way. So I really like that playing the piano has now for me become a way to relax and have fun, but also is a forcing function where I cannot be at my desk, I cannot be looking at my phone or checking messages from my friends or getting lost in, you know, going down rabbit holes and stuff on the internet. So I think playing the piano has been a really nice kind of safe haven away from you know, separating myself from work, especially because I work at home. And similarly, you know, getting a chance to just actually go out and, like, explore different neighborhoods, explore different parts of the city, especially because I’ve been moving around the past couple of years. But really, you know, getting a chance to really force myself to not look at a computer, to not look at my phone, and to be a lot more present.

Christa: Many of our guests mention music with that question. We have one guest from last season who is a mechanical engineer who designs pianos. You might want to listen to that episode.

Jessie: I actually did listen to that episode. I thought it was really cool.

Traci: Jessie, thank you so much for all of your time today. This has been just so refreshing to be able to hear how well you’re doing at work after not seeing you in class for a couple of years. More than a couple of years. And we’re so glad that you were able to take time to be with us today.

Jessie: Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me. It’s been a pleasure.

Christa: Thank you for listening. If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode, where we will be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to the Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you. Today in Engineering Career Conversations, we’re spending some time with Haley Antoine Grantham. She’s a Safety and Crashworthiness Engineer at Toyota Motor North America Research and Development. We welcome Haley, and we had such an enjoyable time speaking to her about the many interesting aspects about her job. So stay tuned. Haley, thank you so much for being with us here today. We’re so excited to hear everything you’ve been up to because it’s quite a lot, and I’m really particularly interested in these topics. So we’re going to let you give us your context. Tell us about your current work. What are you up to?

Haley Antonie Grantham: Yeah, absolutely. So I am a Safety and Crashworthiness Engineer at Toyota Motor North America, Research and Development or TMNA R&D for short. I’m based out of the Ann Arbor Michigan area. It’s about 30 minutes away from Detroit. And so for the first I guess, four years or so of my career, I was a Pedestrian Protection Engineer. So what does that even mean? Most people when they think about crash safety, they’re typically thinking about, you know, being the occupant of a vehicle. So inside the vehicle, when you’re sitting in the front or the back seat, however, at Toyota, we care about the safety of those that are also outside of our vehicles. So in my role, our ultimate goal is to reduce the likelihood of head and leg injuries to pedestrians, and also bicyclists, can’t forget them. And In order to do this, I use computer modeling tools to predict these injuries throughout vehicle development. And we collaborate with lots of designers and other engineers to implement design changes. And then eventually later in development, we’ll actually do physical testing, and we’re literally launching these instrumented, almost like severed dummy heads and legs at our vehicles, which is pretty crazy and pretty exciting to see. But about six months ago, I actually moved into a new function within crash safety. It’s the advanced body structure and computer aided engineering group. Which is quite a mouthful, but we really do have similar goals to the pedestrian safety team and that we want to reduce the likelihood of injuries, but this time for the occupants of the vehicle. So we’re trying to manage the energy of the vehicle crash through different designs and being really strategic with the way that we create our vehicle upper and underbody. But outside of all of that engineering work, I stay pretty busy in a lot of other activities at Toyota. I’m actually the R&D co-op coordinator. So I lead R&Ds recruitment, engagement, and conversion efforts. And I have a big team of a bunch of really awesome people, managers and engineers alike that support our specific functions within R&D. And I’m also part of our employee resource group, or we call them business partnering groups called Women Influencing and Impacting Toyota or WIIT, for short, as a steering committee leader.

Traci: That’s a lot.

Haley: Yeah. Yep, I like to stay busy. Absolutely. Maybe Cornell taught me how to do that.

Traci: So I have a I have a follow up question. So you’re absolutely right. Most people think about the crash worthiness as being a passenger or driver. And that you’re working about this outside of the vehicle itself, right? You’re tangential, if you will, to the vehicle itself, but it’s so important. I didn’t realize that this was part of crash testing before. How did you get into that subset of expertise? It’s really interesting.

Haley: Yeah, absolutely. You probably haven’t heard of it, because actually in the United States, it’s not a regulation yet. So um, kind of my group is doing this advanced safety work because it is supposed to be coming into effect in the US, in the near future, actually, the government agency that regulates, you know, crash safety standards, they had just released kind of their new “teaser” for the regulation protocol. So we expect it to come soon. But in other parts of the world, Europe, China, Japan, Australia, there are lots of regulations and ratings related to pedestrian. But in the way that I found it, I guess, is just sort of by chance, I did two co-op rotations in crash safety at Toyota, and the second one was actually in this pedestrian protection group. The first one was in a side crash group, so that was more of the occupant protection. And then after I got exposed to that and my second co-op, I decided, gosh, maybe this is a career for me. So it was truly by chance, it wasn’t, definitely wasn’t something I planned on doing.

Christa: Haley, as a pedestrian and a cyclist, I’m grateful for this work. And I’m thrilled, I’m excited to share with my cycling friends the news about the future of this work. So I greatly appreciate that, as well. Tell us more, what’s the day-to-day for you?

Haley: Yeah, absolutely. Day to day is pretty different. So during traditional vehicle development, for example, the ninth generation Camry, which we just launched earlier this year, or maybe the new Tacoma, which we launched late last year, both of which I supported. You can kind of think of those as traditional vehicle developments. So we go through lots of feedback design cycles throughout maybe 2.5 to three year development time frame. And as an evaluation engineer, I take the designs that our design engineers develop, and then really put them to the test. Whether this is using finite element analysis, simulations, hand calculations or physical testing, I evaluate those designs either virtually or with actual parts and then feedback to the designers about maybe what’s going well or maybe something that I’d like to potentially change or improve for a particular performance I’m responsible for, so that head injury or maybe that leg injury. But I can’t just be the only person informing that design because so many other engineers and performances, other than crash safety depend on the design of a part, for example, like our aerodynamics team, our handling team, our engine cooling team, strength, durability, there’s so many different performances that go into a vehicle. And so we all have to come together, come to a consensus if we’re all kind of maybe conflicting about a part change, for example. Feedback to the designer on what we agree upon. And then the designer then has to do more confirmation. So they have to check with other groups outside of just R&D, like our manufacturing or production teams, and then even our styling groups, which are kind of like the artists of vehicle development. And so all that to say, really is a lot of communication and collaboration, right? So, whether that’s within crash safety or with other groups, we just spend a lot of time during development, collaborating, working with different engineering teams, and we’re really trying to ensure that we find the best possible solution to meet our performance targets. Then that’s kind of the traditional vehicle development, right? But Toyota is actually transitioning from an automobile company to a mobility company, as we’re calling it. So it’s really focusing on how we move people, goods, and information, not just this classic car and truck company. What does that really mean? But I mean, mobility really means for Toyota. It’s about current and future research, technology, products, and services that make us competitive beyond automobiles. Hardware and software platforms that make life safer, provide more flexible and on demand solutions and anticipate changes of the time. So with that, I know that all sounds kind of broad and maybe, you know, not necessarily related to vehicles, which is what we’re all very used to seeing coming out of Toyota. It’s actually enabled us to work on some really cool projects. And I’ve worked on some projects in areas that completely unrelated to my core job in crash safety, like projects and accessories for off roading, which is a kind of, I guess, hobby that I had never been exposed to growing up in Southern California, and, you know, going to school in Ithaca. And then another project that will eventually be customer facing on our Toyota website, and then our Toyota and Lexus apps, which has been really cool. And I truly have no background in computer science, and I’m definitely not doing the hard coding for it, but I’m actually managing this project, kind of coming up with the concept behind it. So it’s a really exciting time to be in automotive, you know, not just in Toyota, but automotive as a whole is really going through this shift. So really no day is quite the same, and there’s lots of fun things going on.

Traci: I love your emphasis here with collaboration and communication and trying on all these new things, what you’re describing, working with your CS folks, with the apps and the web page and all. You’re going to be the perfect user tester, right? All of that and a different kind of accessibility, maybe than what you’re used to dealing with, with the vehicle design. Yeah, really fascinating work. I think that seques nicely into because Toyota is going through all of these shifts and retooling, what they’re all about. They’re answering the call to these bigger ideas that are floating in and around the world. We always ask our people that we’re interviewing, how does your work contribute to a healthier, more equitable, sustainable world? Definitely, we’ve got safety here. That’s lovely. So take us through your thoughts.

Haley: Toyota is really committed, and we see this in internal company messaging or just the projects that we all get to work on, and even, you can probably see it as a customer, in maybe commercials or whatever it is. But Toyota is really committed to contributing to the practical and sustainable development of society. We’re taking a really transparent and science-based approach to address climate change across every part of our company. So it’s not just our operations of our products, we’ll grow in harmony with the environment. Our commitment to vehicle electrification, I know that’s probably one of the big things that folks think of when they’re thinking about environmental, you know, causes within the automotive industry, you know, our commitment to that is just really one important element of our efforts to build the world a zero carbon future. We’re also challenging our suppliers and our dealers to minimize CO2 emissions and pushing towards carbon neutrality in our operations by 2035. So that’s coming up real quick, but we’re doing so much work to really charge forward in this mission. And in terms of, you know, in the crash safety world, kind of bringing it back to the things that I’m working on, my team is truly doing a lot of the work to develop our electric vehicles. So you can imagine a lot of things about the vehicle design are going to change when there’s a giant super heavy battery involved. And if you really think back to maybe even high school physics, force equals mass times acceleration, a heavier vehicle means more force and more energy to manage in a crash scenario. And so we really have to think differently about how we manage that energy and not only managing the energy, but we have to protect the battery itself in a crash event. Maybe you’ve seen different things on the news about what happens to batteries, maybe when they’re submerged in water, or in crashes and things like that. We definitely don’t want that happening to any of our customers. So those are all important things that we have to consider within the Crash Safety team.

Christa: Thank you. So, what people and organizations are important collaborators toward this brighter future?

Haley: Yeah, absolutely. I think in the battery space, we’re working with LG Energy Solutions, which is a really exciting collaboration. So they’ll actually be supplying our automotive battery modules to be used in our battery electric vehicles that are assembled in the US starting next year in 2025. And then again, you know, our suppliers and our dealers, we’re really challenging them to minimize CO2 emissions. So I think maybe some people forget that Toyota or any other automotive company, we don’t make every single part ourselves, right? We work with all these other smaller companies that create the seats or the steering wheels or the infotainment systems, and there’s, you know, hundreds and hundreds of suppliers that we work with to put together a vehicle. And so we’re working in leveraging those suppliers and challenging them to really move forward with us in this goal of minimizing CO2 emissions.

Traci: It’s really interesting that you even mentioned seat design, for example, is outsourced. I worked with a fellow in the past who was one of the, he was a designer, an engineering designer for the seats, and I never even thought about that before. But of course. His favorite was for long haul truckers because those seats have the hydraulics that move up and down with big load. It was really interesting work. You made me recall that important little bit.

Christa: Haley, in what ways do you anticipate AI impacting your work or the industry in the future?

Haley: Oh, that’s a good question. I think AI or even machine learning, those are just some popular buzzwords I think we’re all hearing lots about wherever industry you are, but particularly in the automotive of industry, in crash safety or maybe even in the broader evaluation or performance areas, like I mentioned before, strength or aerodynamics, or what have you. We actually see this internally in ways we’re leveraging it to create tools that actually help us make better predictions about the way, maybe a new vehicle or a new platform will perform under certain conditions. So kind of the thinking is that if we can evaluate performances early and virtually based on a previous vehicle’s performance, or maybe, like, screen a design with machine learning, we can improve our designs early, and then we can have a more efficient vehicle design cycle. And it also helps us kind of create a more robust design because we’re maybe picking out challenge points or something like that with these machine learning tools very early, and a lot of our engineers not only work on the performance aspect, but also they’re designing these tools themselves internal to the department. So it’s kind of a cool combination of, you know, if you are a mechanical engineer, for example, you can also flex your computer science or coding skills because you can create these tools that help not only you kind of improve designs or something like that, but those tools can also be applicable for other folks in your department. So we see that a lot definitely. But then in other areas, maybe we’re thinking of the more customer focused or software type, you know, AI applications. That’s definitely coming into play in automotive as well. So developing software that leverages AI to better serve our customers. We’re seeing things like that. Maybe the features that you see in your Toyota or Lexus apps, if anyone is a Toyota or Lexus driver with maybe a newer vehicle. They have some sort of AI or engine behind that, that’s been developed by our software company, Toyota Connected. And these products can help our customers schedule service or even kind of build up their next vehicle to their liking on the Toyota website, which are some cool ways. So there’s lots of AI really coming into play both internally to support vehicle development, and then also just simply in the products as you might maybe normally think of where you would see AI that are more customer facing like interfaces with our customers.

Traci: So many creative ways that the AI is being used, right?

Haley: Absolutely.

Traci: Early and eager adaptation or adoption, too, of all of these systems, and all the cautionary tales, but this seems like really appropriate ways to do early testing, as you were saying. It’s just amazing. There’s so many really great applications. I’m really interested in knowing your take then on, what do you recommend for others who want to go into this field? How do they get to this spot where you are doing so much good work?

Haley: Yeah, absolutely. You know, the automotive industry is rapidly changing, even at the Sears Society of Automotive Engineers Conference, which is held annually in Detroit, all of the branding is mobility and these kinds of wordings. You know, It’s not just an industry where, you know, you had to be as a child working in the garage with your parents and taking apart cars. You know, that’s really not the classic tale anymore of folks who are getting into the automotive or mobility industry. I think it’s a really exciting time to become involved because there are so many types of jobs for folks from all engineering backgrounds, mechanical, electrical, materials, chemical, biomedical, manufacturing engineering. There’s literally a place for you in multiple places actually for you within the automotive industry. And then, of course, there’s so much work outside of engineering. Maybe from like pure science and research, marketing, business, sales, strategy, purchasing, supply chain. There’s so so much within the automotive industry. Literally any educational background can land you in automotive. And so I think that’s a really cool time to be entering into this mobility sector. But really, maybe a little bit more specific to crash safety, the most common education is a four year degree in mechanical or biomedical engineering. Some companies prefer or require masters, but not at Toyota. But while in school, I’d really recommend getting involved in undergraduate research or a project team to get experience with project schedules, collecting data, analyzing that data. And really that collaboration with your peers or your research group is also really important experience. But crash safety, you know, I think I mentioned before, it’s a mix of virtual and physical testing. Obviously, the automotive companies don’t expect you to be crashing cars and analyzing that kind of data when you’re an undergrad. But something you can do to kind of give yourself a little bit of experience is at least maybe taking a course in finite element analysis or computer aided design, so either some FVA or CAD classes. But I know that also takes place outside of the classroom in some project teams. So that’s also some sort of little advantage to kind of just getting your toes wet in some of the technical aspects of this work that could be, you know, going on when you’re an undergrad.

Traci: That link to project teams is so important. For everybody who isn’t aware of our calendar, we’re recording this in the middle of May. We are just about to hit project team competition time and all their deadlines were recently in play. Your whole thing about project management of project cycles and keeping to those with your testing. Boy, I don’t think you could ring that one anymore, true. Far as campus experiences. But you’re right, the offices of undergraduate research and all of these project teams certainly feed into all those qualities you were talking about.

Christa: This is all excellent advice. And along these lines, what do you wish you knew when you were a sophomore?

Haley: Hm. That’s a good question. I think I wish I knew that everything would work out the way it’s supposed to. And I know it’s easy to say that, you know, in retrospect. But while you know, maybe if you’re a sophomore or junior, what have you listening, you can say, brush that off and say, hey, you don’t understand, I’m so stressed. I have all these classes, whatever. I was there, too. I get it. But, you know, really, I never even considered the automotive industry for a career, ever. Growing up in San Diego and then going to school in Ithaca, you don’t necessarily consider those two cities hubs of automotive activity. So I just had no exposure. I didn’t have any role models in the automotive industry. I didn’t even know that crash safety existed. But actually, a graduate TA of one of my classes encouraged me to go and talk to some of the companies at the Society of Women Engineers National Conference in 2017. So this was actually my junior year, or going into junior year, I suppose. So I was guess, a little bit late, so to speak, in my undergraduate career, to have an epiphany about what I want to do with my life. But she was at the time, like, the only woman TA that I’d ever had in a mechanical engineering course. So I really looked up to her, and, you know, she really, whether she knows it or not, that encouragement and literally grabbing me by the arm and saying, hey, like, go, go talk to these folks. Did you know that crash safety is a thing? And I said, No, I had no idea, she’s like, well, we’re both going to go learn right now. So we you know, walked up to booths and things like that. I had no idea what crash safety entailed, but, you know, I trusted her and, you know, took that leap of faith and had no idea that it would lead to all of this. But, you know, all that to say, you do end up, I think we’re supposed to. Maybe it’s not the career industry that you imagined early in your college career, but I think any career that you have, when you use your engineering degree is really guaranteed to impact the lives of others. You know, so if you’re a sophomore, a freshman or junior or, you know, senior, even listening, and you don’t quite know what you want to do yet, you know, I think just kind of find peace in the fact that you will get to somewhere where you’re supposed to be eventually. Maybe it’s not your perfect timeline. Maybe it’s not even your first job right at of undergrad. Maybe it’s not with the right company or, you know, something or the preferred company, so to speak. But I think eventually you will land where you are supposed to be.

Traci: Think your point is so great about the power of mentoring there. The vision of her grabbing you by the arm and let’s go talk to people in these booths, what a fabulously empowering moment and fun too. In that moment, she changed your whole life. It’s really important to understand we can be on both sides of that equation at any moment. A grad TA did that for you. That’s fabulous. In that same spirit, we like to ask folks, what class or classes had the greatest impact for you while you were still at Cornell?

Haley: Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, the biomedical engineering course work really diverges from the mechanical engineering or the rest of the engineering curriculum, you know, somewhere late sophomore year going into junior year, but really a lot of a lot of crash safety is pretty basic physics, plus some, you know, additional complications or what have you. So a lot of the foundation courses that I think most of us take during our first two years, basic physics, basic maths, and stuff. Those actually, just from a, you know, transferability perspective, those were the most tangible, I would say, I also took some materials engineering classes as a junior and senior. They were obviously very related to biomedical engineering. But I think being in those classes got me thinking about materials, how they affect, you know, the use case of that material or whatever the devices that material is making up. And then the performance of that biomedical device because of the material or something like that, which is really the same thinking way that we use in automotive. You know, is this material proper for this application in the instrument panel? Should we use something else or, you know, different energy absorption properties of different metals is also something we think about a lot, things like that. So, um kind of just some materials classes helped me get into that mindset, I would say. And so, you know, I hate to admit it, but I definitely did not go back to my school notes when I started at Toyota, but I can say that, you know, the courses built up my engineering mindset, and definitely those collaboration skills I talked a lot about. I’d say that communication is probably the number one skill I have to leverage on a daily basis. So I’m definitely, you know, still practicing and trying to improve upon that, but I do think that, you know, that’s a skill that we worked quite a bit on at Cornell and all of our group projects, or presentations or what have you. But then right behind that is probably being curious. I think being curious leads to asking good questions and asking questions leads to dialogue about you know, why a part was designed a certain way or why a certain material was chosen or why the result is the way it is. And then you kind of get into discussions from there. So I think you know, asking questions is super fundamental at Toyota. We encourage it all the time. And it’s part of vehicle development. It’s assumed that in every meeting you go to, there’s going to be a bunch of questions. So asking why just really helps us understand the true reason of, you know, why something is a certain way, not just taking something at face value. And I think I learned to be curious in my classes, especially those major specific junior senior classes, where we really dived into a lot of really, really cool topics. But also, you know, outside the classroom, I just want to touch on that because I think that the activities that I was involved in had almost an equal impact on me, and I really was involved in a lot of activities in undergrad, probably more than I should have. I did research, I was involved in SWE, Society of Women Engineers. I was a resident advisor, and the list goes on and on. But really these activities, I think, honed in those non technical skills, and also passions for, you know, serving others in my community. I think I really carry these experiences with me, even now. I really would just encourage every student to get involved with just something outside of the classroom. You know, it doesn’t have to be a project team. It doesn’t have to be research, but I think even a student group lets you develop those leadership skills and experiences, which is also super super important.

Christa: Indeed, Haley, you are clearly a curious and engaged learner. And excellent role modeling for those listening. So, where you are now in your career, where do you go to stay current for information?

Haley: There’s a lot of different sites dedicated to automotive information. Automotive News, for example, they’re based here in Michigan. They have you know, tons of articles coming out every day, whether it’s automotive “gossip” or actual information coming out. That is a very, you know, common source of information for folks in the auto industry. The Society of Automotive Engineers also has journals, they also have publications, things like that. So they have, you know, lots of presentations at the Society of Automotive Engineers conference that happens every single year. But then you can also, you know, get these passive resources through them, whether it’s journal or different research papers and things like that. So those are also good. But then if we want to get maybe more specific and be current on our actual Toyota customers, we get some information from consumer insights, which is another company that we work within all of really the automotive industry, leverages consumer insights. We launch a vehicle, for example, and then they gather lots of data on, you know, customer first impressions and things like that. And so we can take that customer feedback and whether that’s make an immediate improvement, you know, that might be something. But it’s more like improving the next generation of a vehicle, for example, based on that customer data.

Christa: So, are you still attending SWE conferences?

Haley: Oh, I am. Yes. I’m very fortunate that Toyota has been super supportive of sending lots of folks to SWE conferences. I’ve actually attended every year except COVID since I’ve been hired on, which has been lots of fun. I have actually spoken at SWE conferences since I was in college at Cornell, but I spoke with a group of other young professionals from Toyota at last year’s SWE conference. And then the previous year, my topic was a little bit more related to SWE activities and outreach and stuff, but it’s actually been lots of fun. I get to work the recruiting booth with other folks from all over Toyota North America, and also attend some really great sessions from other women in engineering industries.

Traci: Those conferences are so much fun. When I used to be at a university closer to Detroit, I would go to SAE. Then a lot of my executive ed students, participants there, were doing their presentations, so I’d get to go and watch and watch big. It was great. Yeah. It’s a great conference. Absolutely. SWE too, of course, but yes. We know that one’s awesome, too.

Haley: SWE is awesome. They just keep breaking records every year with attendance. This year, we’ll be in Chicago in the fall, which I think is going to be even bigger since there’s just so many solid engineering schools close to Chicago, so should be a fun one.

Traci: Who. So exciting. Yeah, maybe I’ll try it. Speaking of fun and being in a great city like Chicago, what do you like to do though for fun? It sounds like you’re way too busy to have outside activities, but of course you’re going to fit them in. And what do you do to have fun?

Haley: I think that’s the one thing that I prefer to, working full time than at college. When you working full time, you shut that laptop and you’re done. I know eventually maybe later in my career, maybe that might not be the case, but currently where I’m at, I get to be done on Friday and back Monday. But you know, I do lots of different things, and definitely having an engineering career helps you be able to do fun things outside of work with a, you know, solid salary and all those good things and all the benefits that you have. Definitely a big perk of being able to enjoy your free time. So I guess, I’ve been getting into golfing now that the weather’s warm. I grew up playing. I took a pretty big hiatus after high school, and I was in college. And then my husband, he just started playing as well. So now he’s like, super into it. He’s also an engineer. So you know, he’s always every single day, it’s a new thing. Oh, did you hear about this ball and why it’s, you know, shaped that way? Oh, do you hear how they, you know, design this, you know, golf club, all this stuff. You know, He’s got all the facts and figures and data. So he’s getting into that and really trying to become, you know, maybe we’ll see him on the PGA tour one day. I don’t know. I’m just kidding. But Michigan actually is really big for golf, which I didn’t realize. So we’ve been having a lot of fun, just checking out new courses and stuff and playing when we can. And just exploring, traveling is other, you know, kind of things I like to do. Michigan’s also very fun for, like, small towns and lake shore towns. You know, we’re surrounded by water. We also have so many lakes within the state, not just the big, great lakes. So there’s all these cute little spots around the state that are, pretty easy to drive through just for a weekend or even just a day trip. So that’s been a lot of fun since living here. And then I also, you know, maybe getting into my like, suburban adult life is getting outside in the yard and garden. Lots of adult hobbies, I suppose.

Christa: Adult hobbies. So If you weren’t doing this right now, you know, what might you be doing and is it something that maybe you considered as a child?

Haley: When I was a kid, my first exposure to quote engineering was maybe my first Lego League team. And I did not think that that was very cool. I was like, oh, I don’t know about this whole engineering thing. Is this all they do? They just, you know, I don’t know. I was totally not convinced at my first exposure. Eventually, I met my first biomedical engineer. You know, it’s kind of like meeting a celebrity when I was in high school, and so then that kind of led me to looking into the major and things like that. And then, you know, things went from there. But really, when I was younger, I didn’t I don’t know if I necessarily had decided engineering was for me until later in high school. But I think for a long time, I came from, you know, a family of educators. My mom was a teacher. My grandparents on both sides were teachers and professors, researchers. So I thought for a long time, maybe I’d, you know, be a STEM teacher or something like that. But, you know, maybe that’s what I thought it would be as a child. I don’t know if my memory is too strong, but I think eventually that’s something I’d still like to get back to. It’s still a passion I have kind of, you know, reaching the next generation. I know I’m not going to be the engineer that, you know, solves the greatest problems in crash safety or develops, like the most insane and awesome airbags or whatever. You know, that’s the next generation after me or maybe even the generation after that. The way that, you know, technology evolves at a snail’s pace, I suppose. So I think, you know, man, many, many, many years, after I retire from Toyota, I’d like to go back to teaching somewhere, maybe a community college, maybe a professor of practice, maybe even just, you know, high school or elementary school, whatever it may be, but, you know, maybe that aligns more, you know, with my childhood vision of my career, perhaps.

Christa: Those children would be fortunate to have you. In the meantime, we’re fortunate to have you in the role that you’re in.

Haley: Thanks.

Traci: I just Yeah, I love this whole thing that you have about you recognizing your mentors, right, and those people that were that the rock star bio engineering person at High School. And it’s just it’s so nice to hear it.

Haley: Yeah. I mean, it’s so important. I don’t think that any one mentor is going to be, you know, I mean, maybe my TA, for example, that was kind of a pivotal moment for me, but I think in general, mentors are kind of building upon each other. It’s the sum of all these interactions that you’ve had with other people. Like, you’re the product of all of the effort and time that other people have put in to you, and then you somehow become something later. And so I just think that it’s so important that when you get to that, whatever it may be, you, you know, go back to previous generation or, you know, younger people at your company or even peer mentoring, I think is so so valuable. And I don’t know. It’s just so important. I think we don’t, in college, maybe mentoring is not at top of mind, sometimes, but eventually, when you get into, you know, the real world, it becomes super super critical, I think.

Traci: Thank you so much for sharing all of your thoughts and wisdom and wonderfulness today.

Haley: Absolutely, any time.

Christa: Thank you for listening. If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode, where we will be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: We’re here today with Kasim Khan. Kasim is a research analyst at Wood Mackenzie, a global provider of data and analytic solutions for the renewable energy and natural resources industries. After graduating from Cornell Engineering in 2020, he began work at Woodmac, Supply Chain, doing consulting for utility, working to optimize supply chain operations across North America. His experience eventually led him to join the research team, where he now focuses on advising clients on energy storage technologies and operations. Welcome, Kasim. It’s great to see it today.

Kasim Khan: Yeah, good to see you.

Christa: Thank you. So I’m excited to share your story with our listeners. And I’m hoping you can start by telling us a little bit about what you do in your current work, and then go into what does that look like on the, you know, day to day basis?

Kasim: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, currently I work as a research analyst for an energy economics and consulting firm called Wood Mackenzie or Woodmac, for short. And, essentially what we do. You know, I think I kind of view us as being, like a information aggregator, you know, both of quantitative and qualitative information, and we use that to develop our own research reports, pricing forecasts, other types of forecasts and really, like a independent third party expertise that we use to advise pretty much anyone in the energy industry about challenges, opportunities. I mean, this can be like advising renewable developers who are actually building battery storage projects, but it can also be like advising say, you know, like the Nigerian government on their oil and gas policy or something like that. Like, we work with a variety of players across the globe, and it’s just very exciting to be in such a position where I can provide that, that sort of expert advice to different people. But yeah, so in terms of what that looks like on more of the day to day, I think a big part of my job is definitely speaking with people in the industry, so getting their perspective, hearing their thoughts, and then synthesizing all these different perspectives from different stakeholders into your own perspective on the market and then use that to develop thought leadership pieces. I’d say, yes, besides actually speaking to people and hopping on calls, a big part of it is working in Excel, PowerPoint typical tools I think a lot of analysts use, no matter which industry or which company you’re working in. But I mean, certainly, those are, you know, some places where I spent a lot of my time to day to day working on, like, specific pricing models or developing reports for a pricing forecast. I’m talking price right now because I’ve been working on that this week, and that should be coming out in a few weeks.

Christa: Yes. So if someone wants to get into this type of work, what might they consider doing as an undergraduate?

Kasim: Yeah, I mean, for this type of, like, market research role, I think you can really come from pretty much any background to be honest. I mean, the nice thing about this type of work is that though the organizations you work in and the people you work with come from a variety of backgrounds because it’s really important to have that diverse perspective. So like myself, I used to be engineering, a lot of my colleagues also did engineering, of all types, you know, chemical, I was myself, and then I have other colleagues who did electrical, et cetera, but also people studying or who studied OR, people who had more of a policy background or maybe studied like pure mathematics, that sort of thing. Yeah, so really, I think, as long as there’s, like, a demonstrated interest in the energy industry, and, you know, I think, as long as you also show potential for skills, like, skills that would be good in any job, you know, communication, teamwork, leadership, all those things are super important.

Christa: What’s one of the greatest challenges you’ve faced in your career?

Kasim: Yeah, good question. I think I would probably say the greatest challenge was this one specific project that I was on, not in my current role, but still at Woodmac, in my previous role in supply chain consulting. To give a little bit of context there, in supply chain consulting, we work mostly with utilities on specific project engagement, so like helping them renegotiate contracts, for example. Yeah, without going into too much detail, I’ll say that I was maybe a couple of years into my career, and I was in charge of leading these negotiations with a few contracts that this one utility had with a slew of private equity firms. And these are people who obviously know their stuff. And that meant I really had to know my stuff. And it’s not just that, right? It’s not just giving a simple presentation, but it’s actually, like, developing an argument. Actually sitting on a call and talking to these people and telling them information that they really don’t want to hear, and they really don’t like hearing. So, I mean, that was a huge challenge for me, right, especially, you know, coming from an engineering background where like, maybe some of those, like, more nuanced, you know, like organizational behavior, challenging questions, isn’t it really something I dealt with a lot. But it’s definitely an opportunity that I took to grow. I mean, I think I really overcame that by just like being as prepared as I could. So obviously developing my negotiation points, but then also, like, asking my colleagues for feedback, you know, holding, like mock calls before we actually did the real thing, as well as just like recording myself, hearing you know, hearing what I say correctly, what I say incorrectly, and better ways to phrase things. And, yeah, I mean, you know, I think it was definitely tough for the first couple of times, but I quickly became comfortable with it. And I think it really made me grow as a person. And I feel like after going through that, I feel like I can talk to pretty much anyone right now.

Christa: Yes, thank you for sharing that. This is something that we all go through at some point in our lives and our careers. And I appreciate that students can hear that story that they’re not the only ones who are struggling with this. Yeah. Thank you.

Kasim: Yeah. And I might also add just really quick, I feel like I think about this a lot, you know, because I feel like we hear a lot of these success stories of, like, really exceptional people who do amazing things in their 20s, right? And I’m sure a lot of a lot of highly motivated students at Cornell, elsewhere. You know, I mean, I myself was one of those definitely, we all want to shoot for the moon, right? And so with that is, like, you’re probably going to be in rooms where you’re going to be the youngest person there. So I think there is definitely always going to be some of that imposture syndrome. But I think maybe folks could turn that around and say, well, that actually means that I don’t know, you’re doing the right stuff.

Christa: Yes. That’s exactly right. I like that. I appreciate that perspective. So what inspired you to get into this line of work, and what is the impact you’re hoping to make?

Kasim: Yeah, for sure. So what inspired me? I mean, pretty much as long as I can remember have been interested in climate, energy. I mean, you know, since I was a kid. Just reading about the issue of global warming and climate change was something that always, like, really stuck out to me as being this huge problem that we may or may not end up solving. I think at this point, I can probably say that we’ve made quite a bit of progress. So I’m actually, I’m sure some people might feel differently, but personally, I actually don’t feel too bad or as bad about the situation as I did, maybe ten years ago. But, I mean, yeah, that’s kind of been the main driver. So, like, that led me to studying back in high school, you know, for the science fair. I was looking at different types of battery technologies and battery research that were going on. I mean, this is kind of this is like 2013, 2014, when Tesla was beginning to getting some press coverage, still, you know, very early stage, like there weren’t Teslas on the road in every other corner, like you see nowadays. But yes, that kind of prompted me to get into the battery EV battery storage space. And then when I was looking at colleges, it seemed like Cornell had a really great program for engineering, but also for the liberal arts, so I can get some more exposure to concepts beyond just the pure technology of things. So, that’s really what I think drove me from like a background in chemical engineering, energy research at Cornell to something where I’d be able to also get a broader perspective of the actual industry, you know, beyond academia. So I mean, myself, you know, my senior year, I was kind of like really thinking between should I continue with the research and maybe do a PhD and really contribute to like the cutting edge of what’s possible, with battery chemistry, or should I take this consulting offer that I had with Woodmac and actually figure out what are some of the other non technical challenges happening right now? So that’s what I did. And I feel like I’ve learned a lot I’ve met some really amazing people. Yeah, ultimately, it just kind of led me to, you know, returning from the consulting work to something more research and more battery based, but not in the academic sense, in the market research sense.

Christa: What ways do you anticipate AI impacting your work or this industry in general?

Kasim: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Of course, AI is the thing everyone’s talking about right now. Yeah, I mean, as a matter of fact, it’s something that has been getting a lot of buzz, I think, in the energy community in the past past month, past couple of months here, as these different utilities, or grid operators across the country put out their forecasts for what they think their demand, like what they think their peak demand is going to look like ten, 20, 30 years from now, that number is really, really increasing year over year, and that’s primarily due to data center growth, and the acceleration of that due to this boom we’re seeing artificial intelligence. So you know, certainly from that perspective, it’s like a lot of clients are asking us questions about how our data center is planning to meet that load growth. You know, obviously, these companies want to get to 100% renewable carbon free power. So some of that is definitely going to be delivered through storage, which is, you know, the research that I work on, specifically. But then, it’s also going to be met by other things in the landscape. So I think a flip side to that is AI is also helping helping us accomplish the energy transition. Like, I think one area of technology that’s really exciting right now are these things called virtual power plants. Now, I mean, these are things that I’ve been hearing about for quite a while now, but I think they’re starting to get a pretty serious amount of attention these days and quite a bit of press. And so essentially, AI is really helpful here because it’s really key in building these algorithms that can take you know, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands plus of things like smart meters, electric vehicles, heat pumps that are scattered all across the region and figure out like the optimal dispatch strategies for each of those devices. And if you aggregate all of that, you can treat it as like a power plant that’s the new virtual power plant. That’s been really helpful because it’s a really cost effective way for utilities to meet that demand growth without actually building, like a brand new solar plant or a brand new battery plant. So it’s like both sides. You know, AI is causing this huge demand growth, but then we can also help meet it with AI as well.

Christa: Yeah, so there are people with a variety of skill sets and interests who can get involved here. Students who are interested in data analytics, students who are interested in AI development, certainly, those who are civil engineers, chemical engineers, I mean, right, there’s so many different angles where people can get involved in the work that you’re doing. I’m curious to hear about the different types of people and companies and organizations that you are collaborating with on a regular basis.

Kasim: Yeah, different types of people, organizations, and companies. Well, that’s the exciting thing about the job, I think is we get to work with a huge diverse set of players. So in terms of the people, I think pretty much anyone who’s working in the energy space we interact with. So I mean, this can be very broad. I mean, these can be, you know, like policymakers, you know, people with insight into what policy is happening in Washington. That’s super helpful for us right now, because, for those of you who don’t know, the one huge huge boon for renewable energy in the past couple of years has been the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022, and there’s still a lot of uncertainty as to how some of those benefits are going to translate. So, yeah, we speak to people who are in tune with that policy side, speak to people on the technology side. So like, what, you know, like engineers, like people actually doing engineering at different battery companies. They’re super big to talk to on the sales side, business development, hearing what market opportunities different different players have and challenges they’re facing. Yeah, and I kind of alluded this earlier, but in terms of, like, organizations, these can be governments, these can be banks, financial institutions, who are lending money to renewable energy projects. These can be actual developers, so people who are actually building the project, they can be OEMs, original equipment manufacturers that are actually building the tech that is getting deployed here, and, yeah, it could be think tanks, non profits, as well, et cetera, et cetera.

Christa: What do you wish you knew when you were a sophomore?

Kasim: What I wish I had known as a sophomore is, I think, really being able to appreciate the networking opportunities I had in undergrad. And I honestly don’t think I really understood the meaning of networking until, like, shortly before I graduated or maybe even after I graduated. So yeah, for those sophomores or freshmen who might be listening to the podcast, I don’t mean networking opportunities as in, like, attending networking events and schmoozing with people. Although that’s part of it. I’m not going to say don’t do that, but I think a lot of it really just comes from, like, being aware that you’re in this awesome place surrounded by, like by people. I mean, you all had to apply and get in and get accepted. So it’s just like an extraordinary environment to learn from so many different types of people who will all go on to do great things. And, you know, like, both from a professional and social perspective, I think it’s super important to just, like, pass on, you know, like, make as many connections as you can, join clubs. Yeah, just, like, really stay in touch with people. You know, I mean, I’m not going to say it’s like, impossible after college, but it definitely gets a little harder. I mean, I’m thankful that in the consulting role I had, I was able to meet a lot of people, you know, kind of my age with similar interests. But you’re not going to find that everywhere. So yeah, definitely seize that opportunity, while you have it.

Christa: So along those lines, what classes had the greatest impact in preparing you for your career?

Kasim: I mean, there are a few I could pick from. I think what’s probably been most helpful was my experience in the intro, not intro to CHEME class, but it was CHEME 2190, ENGRD 2190. This is the class that all sophomore CHEMEs take before they, you know, actually get into the major. I had a great professor. I hope he still teaches this course. I’m actually not sure, but Professor Duncan. He, I think, taught me a lot about, like, how to think about problems creatively, as well as how to do creative research and present information in new ways. That makes it intuitive for the reader to understand what you’re saying. I mean, that’s super helpful in the work that I do because I’m always trying to think of ways we can use data to tell stories, and a lot of our clients come to us with questions. Sometimes it can be really hard to answer that if you don’t have a structured way of thinking about it. So yeah, just like those ways of problem solving and thinking about how to analyze and present data has been has been super helpful.

Christa: What do you do to relax and re energize and have fun?

Kasim: Well, I think music’s my biggest thing. I love, love, love to play music and listen to music as well, of course. So I’ve been doing French Horn for a long time. Yeah, you know, middle school, high school, then I was in the symphony orchestra in college. And and Boston’s great, so I’m based in Boston. And it’s a great place for finding community groups to play in. I’m actually playing in a concert in about a week. So that’s pretty exciting. Definitely a great way to, you know, meet people and just kind of a, take my mind off work. And then also play some guitar on the side as well and jam with some friends in the city. And then, yeah, beyond that, you know, I like playing tennis, you know, board games with friends and all that. Fun stuff.

Christa: Is there any place you want people to follow you to see where you’re playing?

Kasim: Oh, to see me playing. I don’t know about that, but if you want to if you want to follow me in my socials, I’m happy to say, you can find me @kawesomekhan on Twitter. K Awesome Khan.

Christa: Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Okay. So speaking of social, where do you go to stay current on information for your field of work?

Kasim: I think Twitter X is actually kind of underrated, still. Like, I mean, yeah, like ignoring all the drama that’s kind of happened in the past, like, a year and a half, but still it’s like, interesting, you know? Like, you’d think after everyone sort of, I mean, not boycotting, but kind of wanting to leave the platform after Elon Musk bought it. It’s like you’d think there would be something else that people are on now, but really not really. Like, I’ve spoken with people who are like thought leaders in the industry as well, and they’ve kind of told me that LinkedIn, Twitter is pretty much the place to be. And I like it a lot because I mean, if you keep it to a professional level, I think it could be quite informative. It’s just a great way to hear directly from smart people. I mean, like, you’ll have a lot of professors doing really insightful research, and you can tweet them and asked them questions, or see, like, back and forth discourse between different academics or different people who work in industry. It’s like a really great way to see, like what is trending right now in energy.

Christa: So if you were not doing this work right now, what might you be doing?

Kasim: Yeah, if I was not doing this. I mean, is this kind of like a dream job question?

Christa: Maybe. Maybe. Whatever you want it to be?

Kasim: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I do love music a lot. I feel like if I, yeah, you know, if like, money were no object, I suppose. I probably would be doing that in some sense. You know, I mean, it would probably be more on the rock or pop side or indie side than classical or French Horn. I mean, I love the French Horn, but I just I just don’t think I could do classical music for the rest of my life.

Christa: Who knows? Who knows? Maybe some thing will come out of that. Fantastic. Is there anything else you’d like to share with our audience?

Kasim: I mean, I guess there are a few things. I think I mentioned this, I mentioned this in the beginning. But in terms of the progress we’re making on the energy transition, I think it’s actually been pretty significant the past few years. Let’s see, like, I mean, in 2018, policies had us on track for about 3.1 to 3.7 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100, and that’s above pre industrial levels. And now that’s down to 2.5 to 2.9. So, I mean, within six years or something, that’s gone down a pretty significant amount. And so I think some of those success stories, you know, don’t get talked about as much. I think it’s important to recognize that a ton of progress has been made. I mean, granted, you know, those are still just projections, so we need people to actually make those a reality. And obviously 2.5 to 2.9 is still very bad. You know, anything anything above zero, I mean, really is not good. But yeah, so it’s like we made good progress, but yeah, we’ve got to keep fighting the good fight. And then, you know, I guess, the other thing from like a more career advice perspective, I would really encourage, like, reaching out to alumni and people who work in the industry because as an undergrad, like, I really didn’t know about the opportunities to get involved in renewable energy. Like, these weren’t really companies that came up in class discussions. So I think without doing the right outreach, you’re not really going to know what’s out there. And then maybe a third thing is something that I wish I had maybe done a little bit more is just, like, kind of trust my instinct and not like overthink things too much, because I don’t know, kind of, like, what I’ve found personally is, like, my instinctual decisions have usually been right. Like, you don’t need a reason for everything. I feel like a lot of a lot of engineers want to know why like they’re doing every single thing. I mean, just like natural curiosity, right. But I think to some degree, you don’t need to know why, you can just do things because you want to do it.

Christa: I like that. Good. I appreciate your positive outlook towards the future. It gives me hope because, yeah, I was seeing it less hopeful than you’re portraying it. So I appreciate that.

Kasim: It definitely comes and goes. Depending on the latest headlines, yeah.

Christa: Awesome. I’ve greatly appreciated learning more about the work that you’re doing, and again, your insight into where we’re headed. So thank you so much for chatting, and we will talk again soon.

Kasim: Yeah, thanks. It was a pleasure chatting.

Christa: Thank you for listening. If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode, where we will be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you. We had the wonderful opportunity to speak with Florencia Paredes, who is the Head of Product at Citrine Informatics. She was a 2011 graduate of the Materials Science major at Cornell, and at that time, the kind of work that she does now didn’t even exist. Join us as we explore the fascinating work she does each and every day. Florencia, it’s good to have you here today.

Florencia Paredes: Great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Christa: Yes, thank you. Can you tell us start by telling us about your current work?

Florencia: Yeah, so I lead product at Citrine informatics. It’s a software company at the intersection of machine learning and material science, and it’s really focused on helping materials engineers create new materials faster. You know, all over the news these days, you might hear headlines about the impact of materials from limiting pollution from chemical plants to the need for better battery energy storage systems. We help a lot of those companies. So we see a lot of those great projects coming through and working with our product. And that’s really where we come in and we help these big companies develop new materials for the future, and we’re really focused on sustainability. And I’m happy to give an an example on how our software works. So for example, let’s say that I am a materials engineer, and I’m working on specific plastic, like an ABS plastic. A plastic that is used for making car parts, like the dashboard of your car or making toys, and my goal, is to remove some banned flame retardants. Specific chemicals that are added to the plastic to make it more resistant to burning. Maybe these flame retardants are known to cause cancer. I want to remove them from these plastics, especially if they’re toys, but even in cars. I want to remove the specific chemicals from that plastic, and that plastic is made of think of a recipe or formulation of a lot of different chemicals. I’m trying to remove one specific chemical when I make it. But I also want to maintain those mechanical properties of my plastic, for example, like strength and ductility and toughness. As a materials engineer, I can use the Citrine platform and upload all my past experimental data of all the tests, strength tests and toughness tests, and all the past recipes and formulations that I’ve done. Upload all of that to the Citrine platform, and then using the machine learning from the Citrine platform. I can use it to help me figure out what my next experiment should be so that I get closer to my goal. Essentially, after a couple of experimental iterations, I find my new formulation or my new recipe for a plastic that continues to be strong and tough but doesn’t have those banned substances, and I get there faster. Sometimes projects like these can take a couple of years, say like five years to find a new formulation, and with the Citrine platform, I can cut that down to like two years, right? So we really are about helping these materials and chemicals companies cut down how long it takes to find that new recipe, that new formulation, so that they can do it faster and be able to make those changes faster so that we have those new products without, for example, these banned flame retardants in the market.

Christa: Excellent. That helps me a lot. Thank you.

Traci: It’s really quite interesting because right now I think anytime somebody thinks, oh, we’re using these large models, AI of any sort, LLMs, whatever it might be, to help us do this work, and we think it’s instantaneous. And so for you to say it takes us from five years to two years versus and in my head, I’m like, oh, this is an afternoon’s worth of work. No. So given that, like, what does a day’s work look like?

Florencia: For me as a product manager that works on building this platform, right, for the materials engineers to use. So, these days, I lead our product teams, so I’m really focusing more on setting the product strategy and vision and aligning it with our business goals and objectives, and really overseeing that we essentially that we are making sure that we’re building what matters for our customers, right? So I mentioned our customers are these big materials, chemicals companies who have these materials engineers that are working on these, tough materials problems. My goal is really making sure that we are delivering the best products and features and tools that these folks need in order to realize that truth of cutting these big project scopes that may take multiple years into a lot less and helping them be faster and more efficient in their day to day. For me, this means that a lot of my day to day is working with other groups in my organization from marketing and sales, customer success, and our customers as well, and just making sure that we are all internally, within my organization, that we’re all aligned and working in unison towards the same goal. So I also spend a lot of my time with my team or product managers, going through their user flows, hearing their brilliant ideas, talking through customer research and user interviews and user research that we may have done, which is always a lot of fun. That’s really where we focus most of our time, just making sure that we are defining the right problems and finding the right problems to work on.

Traci: It’s such an iterative closely drawn creative process, right? And then you have to fit it into your workflow. I just I find it all very, really fascinating, all these interplays between the different teams.

Christa: Yeah, I love the intersection. Is it customized for each manufacturer or each company materials company?

Florencia: That’s a great question. No. Our product is specifically, where software as a service, and it is a general product that you’re really, that these companies are buying and can apply to their specific material, their specific projects, their specific scope. So it’s a lot of fun to really, you know, from a product perspective, be able to see the generalizability across all of those, be able to understand what has the biggest impact, the most value.

Christa: So what’s the most significant challenge you faced in your work? And how did you overcome it?

Florencia: Two very different challenges at work. I would say, in these past couple of years with COVID and everything, we had layoffs, and that was definitely one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make. And I’m sure a lot of people in tech can relate to that. But I want to talk about a different challenge that maybe is a little bit more unique. When I joined the company, we did not have a product yet. We had a proof of concept that we showed had the right technology, and we were hitting the right business hypothesis to make this company great. But we functioned more like a services company. So we were helping really kind of building out the necessary things and helping more specifically working on specific projects with kind of this tool that we had. Making the transition from a services focused company to a product company where it is one product that is generalizable across multiple customers. That was one of the biggest challenges I have faced because there’s definitely so many directions you can go in, right? And how do you find the right direction to go in? Of course, you define goals and you make sure that you’re working towards those goals. There’s just a lot that goes on with this change from internal behavior to positioning and pricing and so on. The change management, it requires internally is significant. What else? I just it’s both very challenging and also very fun, in a sense, because we were a much smaller company back then, is that you have such an open array of possibilities, and you really have to make decisions and go in one direction and test what’s working and what’s not. At the same time, being a small company, you’re wearing a lot of hats, right, wearing a lot of hats, trying to do many things at once. There’s a lot really that you’re working on and trying to figure out and it’s challenging, but it’s very rewarding, I guess is what I’m trying to say here.

Christa: Excellent. Thank you for sharing that.

Traci: You touched on this just a little bit before with your example about removing the fire retardants from a particular plastic. But we always like to ask our guests, how is what you’re doing contributing to this more sustainable idea that we have these goals, that we’re trying to make this a healthier planet? Can you walk us through that?

Florencia: Yeah. We help our customers realize more sustainable products faster, right? We talked a little bit about that. And what has always drawn me, so I have a material science background, and what has always drawn me to material science and the chemicals world is that everything made of materials, right? From fabrics to batteries to biomedical implants to the table that I have in front of me here. So this industry is a huge industry, a trillion dollar market. And we are helping a lot of these companies, as I mentioned, really be able to make those changes. So for example, we’ve helped a consumer packaged goods company remove PFAS, so like forever chemicals from their consumer products, these chemicals that are known to cause multiple problems within our bodies. We were able to remove those products from a couple of consumer goods consumer products that are actually out in the market. We’ve helped personal health companies reformulate some of their flagship products with more bio based materials to be more sustainable, so more sustainable ingredients, essentially, removing some of those ingredients, again, just like my example. That’s how our company really helps see that future and working with those companies to realize those changes, remove those harmful chemicals and get there faster. And what’s amazing is, both fun and part of the material science world is that you can do that across so many different areas, right? I mentioned a couple chemicals there, but again, everything is made of materials. So there’s a lot of potential and a lot more that we definitely need to do from a sustainability perspective.

Traci: You are an expert at this. You’ve been at it for a long time. You neck deep, right, in the details. But we’ve asked you to think about what’s it like to be a sophomore. Trying to decide on a major, or anything else that you think a sophomore might need to know. So we kind of use that as a benchmark here, so time for the wayback machine. What advice?

Florencia: Got to go back and think about this. I’d say two things. You know, one of the most impactful things that I did, and I wish I did more of these, is internships. Knowing what work life is like early to help me back then, be able to understand both just internalize more the value of what I’m learning in each class and selecting my different classes. So doing more of that. So I do recommend definitely an internship at a company that you might think that you might be interested in in the future. It’s a great way to find what you’d like and what you don’t like. And I would also say for me personally, because I did go into the software development world, I would have liked to have taken more computer science and computation classes, and even more statistics classes, I think today they have data science classes as well. I don’t know if they called them that back in my day. But that is another area, just because I did go into software development under my belt.

Traci: Those that absolutely makes sense to me. I think I have the same tally sheet of things I should have done.

Christa: That’s fair. So what would you say, what classes or class had the greatest impact in preparing you for your career?

Florencia: Yeah, so I took an applied materials class. I can’t remember exactly what it was called at the time, a materials design class. And just really being able to see the application and how you really go through that whole process was very valuable. I focused a little bit more on polymers in part of my career and journey. So I would have, we work we work with a lot of chemical companies as well, and I’m definitely glad that I had some of those polymer classes, maybe would have taken a couple more. So yeah, I’ll also say, I took the wines course and loved that. So you also have to take some of those classes that are applicable not only to your career, but to your everyday life.

Traci: I think that that is great advice. I think too many people forget to take the fun classes too. Even though people tell me wines is really hard.

Florencia: Yes. I remember that.

Traci: So where do you go to keep current on what’s happening in your field right now?

Florencia: Yeah, so my field is kind of an intersection of multiple different things from data science and the latest machine learning and AI technology, and also the materials and chemicals world, in addition to consumer packaged goods and other markets as well. So there’s a lot to kind of keep track of. And I wouldn’t say that I go to one specific area. But, you know, I keep up in kind of both those realms, especially the AI and ML. Keep up with all of the you know, for example, everyone’s probably familiar with this, all of the new advancements in GPT and all the LLMs and all of those, like foundational model enhancements and everything that’s coming out in that space, because that’s critical to our product. And we’re always looking to how we can really expand and be at the leading edge of materials informatics or our space, of Citrine, our company. So we’re always looking at new things to see, okay, will this make an impact in our product? Will it make our core technology better? We have these problems that we want to solve for our customer, can these tools help? I don’t know if I’m answering your question to be honest, around, is there a specific place that I go? I really try to look, I’ll mention, I do use Google alerts to help me look into, you know, these specific areas. So I do get kind of a synopsis of what has been coming out in the past week.

Christa: I like that, too, and that’s a good maybe message for people who aren’t sure where to go. If you don’t know where else to go, where to begin, and you can’t find it, add an alert and see what comes to you. Add several alerts. I like that. You know? Who knows? Like there’s so many advancements coming your way that, yeah, who knows what’s going to be the next thing that’s going to be useful to you? That’s fascinating. You really are on the cutting edge. Love it. Okay, so if you are not doing this work right now, what might you be doing?

Florencia: Yeah. So I love the outdoors. I also just had a baby. So I would say that my days these days are filled, mostly, when I’m not working, trying to go on hikes and definitely getting outside into the trees. My husband and I also have a camper van. We get into the outdoors, camping, exploring, just even the local flora and fun of California. I am a new mother, but I’m hoping to get back into some sports that I really enjoy, like mountain biking, windsurfing, skiing. Really, if you could sum it up, it’s really just being outside in a sense.

Traci: Love that so much. California is a great spot to do that. Lots of great choices overall. We usually ask at the end, what do you do to relax or recharge, but I think you already told us. And that’s really, really quite wonderful. And, you know, being outside, just hits that reset button for most of us.

Florencia: It really does.

Traci: Thank you so much for joining us today. It’s a spot The work that you’re doing is a spot that I have been completely blind to. I mean, I certainly know about material science and CHEME and CS, but this intersection is such an interesting place to be. And so thank you for helping us kind of wade through that a little bit with you.

Florencia: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for having me.

Christa: Good. I appreciate that a lot, it definitely, this conversation definitely helps to demystify some things for me. Thank you.

Florencia: Good, good. If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode, where we will be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to the Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: Today we are talking with Tony Chen, who has made it his mission to connect Cornell alumni with each other, with events of interests, to bring people together, to build community, to grow the Cornell connections. And we’re always promoting connections with students. Tony will share some nuggets on how to think about this as a systems approach, how to apply systems engineering to networking. So join us. Tony, we’re so glad to have you here today. This is a special edition of the Engineering Career Conversations. And you are working so hard on keeping Cornellians connected, inviting them to a thriving alumni network. And can you please tell us more about the Cornell global mixers and the continuous reunion efforts.

Tony Chen: Yeah. So the mixers are every two weeks on Saturday Evenings. We started during the pandemic. March 2020 the pandemic happened. And then there were many events. Like I was already involved in Cornell events before the pandemic, Like every week, we would go run 3 miles and have lunch together. We would go to the museum. We would watch a new sport every month. And it’s like we had a lot of events before the pandemic out in DC, and the pandemic happened and then they stopped. During the pandemic, I started doing the Zoom calls. So everybody gets to still see each other. So that’s been going on for four years now, 2020 to 2024, every two weeks. Like, maybe like 6,000-8,000 Cornellians have been through the mixers now. People come and make friends with each other, and they come back again and again, every two weeks to see each other again. People make friends. And then, like, you see a lot of life changes over time, too. Some Cornellians they lose their job. They find a job. In the course of those four years, some Cornellians start graduate degree school. And then a couple of years later, they finish their graduate degree school. You see the life cycles of Cornell throughout the Zoom call.

Christa: It sounds like you started this with your group that you were already networking with in DC, and you’ve expanded it. So it’s Cornellians anywhere, is that right?

Tony: The pandemic like isolated all of us. At the same time, brought us all of us together, too. The pandemic, I think if the pandemic didn’t happen, I would still run the events in DC. And it would only been DC people. But because like everybody around the world had a similar issue, we all expanded globally. It was Alumni Affairs and Development, they’re very helpful. May time around May or April. They had a wonderful event. They brought together all the different Cornell clubs, and then all the Cornell cubs shared what kind of things they were doing I was doing the crosswords, the NY Times Crossword every week with, like, ten, 20 Cornellians every week on Saturdays at 3:00 P.M. Eastern Time. So I talked a little bit about the crossword. And then I think Cornell Club, Boston talked a little bit about the events they’ve been organizing. Now I realized that everybody had the same issues. So I started organizing the mixers through that. All the clubs got to meet each other that way.

Christa: We need to get a link in our show notes to where people can learn about these mixers.

Tony: I’ll send it over to you. Yeah, it’s been the same link for, like, 3.5 years now.

Traci: And can you tell us then about the continuous reunions? How are they different?

Tony: Oh, gee. Yeah, I hope everybody goes to a reunion every year. No, not just every five years, not every ten years, but every year. The continuous reunion club. We’ve been coming to reunion every year since 1908. Yeah, I always tell people to go to reunion every year because it’s the best way to meet alumni. Everybody’s back in Ithaca. Nobody’s working, everybody gets to meet each other. And then it’s all very, like, informal ways of meeting each other. So people are much more likely to make friends with each other that way. But there’s so many events too.

Christa: Yeah, what are your favorite events at the reunion?

Tony: Oh, gee, it depends on the person. Like, if you’re a lawyer. You can get continued legal education credits, COE credits. There’s always like three COE credits you can get every time. If you’re in business, you got all the kinds of good business lectures there, too. They are like, AI in business this year, I think. I’m very excited about that one. And then if you’re in engineering. There’s like I always go to electrical engineering happy hour on Friday afternoons. And then I also always go to the AEP Engineering physics breakfast every Saturday morning. They have very good quiches every morning. And then last year was a new one, too. They have a graduate school one, too. For the longest time, the graduate students didn’t really have, like, a dorm to stay in or a place to go. Now, the graduate school has been doing so many more graduate school events, too. So if they only went to graduate school at Cornell, there’s still there’s a lot of events you can go to. They had a what’s a golf game called on the lawn?

Christa: Bocce ball?

Tony: Yeah, they had like a Bocce game, I think last year. And they also had a graduate engineering afternoon tea as well. That was a, well, they had a live band, too for that one. Was out in Upson Hall where they have a nice little patio out there. They had a little music band playing there, and the graduate students come back to. And then I wish everybody would come back to reunion every year. I love it.

Traci: Now, the other thing that you help everybody, a way you keep everybody connected is through the newsletter. And so it’s a newsletter for alumni, if I understand correctly. So what is the general, I’ll start with this. What is the general focus of that newsletter?

Tony: Oh, I try to connect Cornellians, in every possible way. True, very hard to find all the different ways to connect Cornelians with each other. So, the news has all the events happening around the world. All the Cornell events. I go through like 20 or 30 lists every week and just look for all the events because otherwise, it’s too hard for each individual Cornelian to look for every event. And then I get them onto one big list, that way everybody knows what events are happening. Cornell Tech has a lot of really good events in New York City. But if you didn’t go to Cornell Tech, you wouldn’t know about those events. Weill Cornell has so many good events, as well. And then if you didn’t go to Weill Cornell, you wouldn’t be knowing about those events either. The Cornell ILR Conference Center has a lot of events. All the different Cornell Clubs all around the world have different events. So there are a lot of people that don’t know about the events. So I put them all into one place. So that’s one way of connecting Cornellians. Another one is jobs. A lot of Cornellians are looking for jobs. Lot of Cornellians are looking to hire people, too. I see all those Cornellians posting jobs. I see all those Cornellians looking to looking for a job, but they don’t see each other’s posts because they’re not connected with each other. I see both sides. I try very hard to copy and paste all the jobs into one place so that the Cornellians looking for a job could see that list of all the jobs, and they could reach out to the Cornellians, looking to hire. That one worked pretty good. Last week, someone told me they found a job through it. Another person told me that he got an interview from it. They didn’t get the job, but he got interview from it. Yeah, it works out pretty good.

Christa: It just sounds like you’re really dedicating your time, all of your time, you know, it sounds like you’re dedicating this time of your life to supporting other Cornellians, connecting other Cornellians.

Tony: There’s 250,000 Cornellians. And Cornellians do all kinds of interesting things too. So I tried very hard to find all of those and then feature them. Now that way more Cornellians can know they can do all those interesting things too. Last month, Cornellian was running for US House, the House of Representatives. We went out to San Antonio for the campaign launching event. Then another Cornellian runs like a women’s art gallery in New York City. I was out to that. And then a couple other woman artists reached out to her through that. And we always do a variety of different things, all kinds of different things. Yeah, I wish more Cornellians would know about them.

Christa: Yeah, you’re a PR person for Cornellians. I love it. So what’s the greatest challenge you face in doing this work?

Tony: There’s so much Cornellians out there, and all the information is like everywhere. It’s like scattered everywhere. And then I try very hard to aggregate them into one place. There’s so much information everywhere. I think there’s just so much, I always say that there’s a lot of abundance in the Cornell community. Abundance. Whereas, the issue is a lot of Cornellians aren’t connected a lot of Cornellians. They don’t know about a lot of the events. There’s a feeling of scarcity. And scarcity is not good. It’s important to have a feeling of abundance. That we try for bigger things that we find a job within a week rather than a couple of months.

Christa: Tony, I love this perspective of abundance, and I feel that way about many things in life, as well, particularly with regard to networks and getting out there and making connections and, you know, meeting new people and all of that. And certainly, with regard to careers. I know so many students struggle when they’re not getting what they’re looking for. They’re struggling to make some connections. They’re struggling to find the internship that they’re looking for, the job that they’re hoping for. And how do we balance that? You know? What might you say to that student who’s really struggling to find what they’re looking for and how to see it from this perspective of abundance? Not only just see it, but how to act from a place of abundance, perhaps.

Tony: I didn’t meet the alumni when I was a student. I really wish I knew it earlier. I think there’s a lot of events, like very soon, where you could meet a alumni. For example, you can sign up to be a reunion clerk. And then you would be assigned a class, like a class of 1950, what year is this? 1954, or 1964. We’re in 1969, or 1974. You could be assigned of the classes, and you’re like, they’re a clerk for them. So you make sure that everybody signed in correctly. Everybody can find their housing correctly. And that is just such a good way to meet alumni. Because all the alumni talk to you. They’re so happy to be back and you’re so helpful to them. They’re all really, really happy to talk to you if have, like, career advice questions that you have. I think the thing that really clicked for me is when you see all those alumni, 50 years out of college, and they’re still such good friends with each other. I think that’s when I realized. I’ve got to make more Cornell friends. Because after 30, 40, 50 years, I’ll still be friends with them, and then it’s a wonderful friendship when it’s over the lifetime, and then you see them like we go through different jobs, go through different life cycles, their kids graduate from high school, and you just see a lot of different things over time. So I wish I was a reunion clerk. I think that’s one good way to tap in. And another way to tap into the feeling of abundance is go going to more Cornell events. There’s events all around the world right now. And then if you go anywhere in the world for the summer, there’s always going to be a Cornell event somewhere nearby. So I recommend you going to event events. I think like for example, if you’re in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area, there’s a very good crab feast coming up. I love the crab feast. They go to the beach. They have, hot dogs, they have crabs, they have beer, it’s a very wonderful event. And like 200-300 Cornellians go to that one. So yeah, that’s coming up, I think on June 23. That is an example of an event to go to. There’s also, like, Boston, for example, they have their annual meeting. The head of the Botanic Garden at Cornell is going to Boston to speak about the Botanic Gardens. New York City has so many events, too, throughout the whole summer. You should meet more Cornelians over the summer, too.

Traci: I love your perspective about the friends that you make in college, whether they’re alumni or they’re in your very same class. You know, they stay with you for forever if you’re lucky. That’s certainly the case for me. 35 years later, me and my first week, bestie we’re still hanging out all these years later. And I think that those are important connections for all of us to make. And so with all of this energy and this idea of abundance, I love this framework that you have, Tony. We wanted to ask you, too, about what do you see, what do you hear, in these conversations when all of these people are gathering together, about how Cornellians are changing the world for the better? How are they helping create a sustainable world, better world, in whatever way that might look? What are some, a story or two, that you’ve heard?

Tony: I really like Cornell’s motto, “Any person any study”. I think it’s really, really good. The world is like, very unfair. A lot depends on where you’re born, who you’re born to. Like, a lot of it depends on that. And education is a way to make the world a little bit more fair. So even if you’re not born, in one of wealthier areas, and even if you’re not born to wealthier parents, you can still come to Cornell. You can still come to Cornell, you’ll fit right in, and you’ll still be very successful afterwards. You can still pursue any career afterwards. I think that’s something that I admire a lot a lot about Cornell. I think that I think that you make the world a little bit fair. You’ll have a lot more ideas coming in on how to solve different problems, and then you can go out afterwards and solve those. I think one worry I have with “any person any study” is that sometimes in a lot of different things that you try to do, it’s not enough. Just studying a lot doesn’t get you very far in a lot of careers. You have to have the network, too. So to the point, just going to Cornell is not enough. You have to have the Cornell connections afterwards, too. So, any person, any study, any friend. It goes on after you graduate, you still make more friends. So like right after you graduate. You’re not done making Cornell friends yet. You can still make more Cornell friends. So, for example, if you go into paralegal and want to go to law school, you can come to Cornell events and meet lawyers and learn about the different lawyer practice areas. So by time you go to law school, you know which practice area you would like. So if you’re starting out as an engineer and you’re trying to figure out whether you want to go down a path of managing engineers or you want to go into a more technical role, you can come to Cornell events and talk to Cornellians and learn about different trade offs between the two paths. You’re not done making friends after finishing Cornell. You can still make more friends relevant to your career and that will help your career. So it’s not just the friends you made from before, there’s friends you make in the future too. So Cornellians come from all over the place from everywhere, and then afterwards, they can be successful in any career trajectory that they choose to go in.

Traci: I’m so excited that you said, “any person, any study, any friend”. That’s amazing. It resonates with every single Cornellian. And then your addition “any friend” talks about the networking. You know, this is part of who we are here, right? Helping each other out, getting through our studies, getting through our jobs, finding inspiration out there in the world from other people. I just love that addition that you made to the motto, if you will.

Christa: I love it. I love it. So there’s so much good advice here, and uplifting advice for the young people who are still trying to figure out, who are their connections? How do they tap into this network? And what does that look like? Where to begin? I’m wondering if someone wants to connect with you. Is that something you’re available for? I mean, are you open to meeting any student who wants to reach out and talk?

Tony: I already talk to ten a day right now, every day. And then, during, like, the layoffs, like two years ago, I was talking to like 25, 30 a day, every day. I try very hard to meet every Cornellian. It’s very important to meet every Cornellian.

Christa: I love that. We’re going to include a link to your LinkedIn, and I’m guessing that is the best way?

Tony: That’s the best way to reach out to me, yeah, and I post a lot on LinkedIn about Cornellians, too. And then, one recommendation that I have actually, is when you start building your network there’s like, if every person is like a node, like, everybody’s a node, and you’re trying to connect different nodes with each other, with lines. You have a node and a node here and you draw a line between the nodes, it’s good, that’s way you start out. You start drawing lines between your node and the other person’s node. And you end up with a lot of lines. But it’s hard to maintain when you have like 300 lines it’s really hard to maintain those lines because you have to, like, once a year, you have to catch up with each line. And then the 300 lines that you have to maintain. So that’s like a one a day every day, and then you end up running out of time. Like, as your network grows, it’s more, think of it in terms of boxes. Rather than having a line of maintaining each individual line, you have a box of nodes. So, Cornell for example, is like a big box of nodes. It’s easier to maintain boxes rather than lines. Because if you go to reunion every year, for example, you automatically reconnect with like 100 people with just one event. Walking around, you reconnect with a lot of people inside that box. Then if you like if you’re part of the Cornell Debate Team, for example, for the Debate Team Sam Nelson goes out New York City. He has a lot of different events around debate. So that’s a good way to maintain your box of nodes. If you’re on a sports athletic team, if you’re on – I was part of Risley and every December we have our Risley get together, our Holiday get together on Zoom. And like the founder of Risley Residential College would come and everybody would share their little Risley stories. That’s a good box as well. Rather than thinking of each connection as a line, think of it as a box. And you should always come back to reunion, always come back to all the different events around each of the groups. That is easier to maintain. Maintenance is very important for relationships.

Christa: Thank you, Tony. I’m going to start using that one, too. I mean, I hope that every student listens to your podcast, and also as I talk with students about their networks, I do think for many people, it’s overwhelming to think about how do I keep up with these relationships? And the way that you talk about it as boxes and more from a community perspective. I think is both, you know, takes away some of the time and energy and, you know, all of that to maintain, and also can make it more lively and, you know, comfortable, and smooth and inspiring. More conversations can happen. I think there’s a lot to this. That’s a great nugget of advice.

Tony: I always try to do events are recurring as well for that reason. If it’s a recurring event, like every two weeks, we have the Zoom call mixer. Every month, we meet at a food court in New York City. Like, every week we do the crossword together. It’s all recurring, week after week, after week after week. Yeah, that really helps maintain the box because if you just come to one, and in like a couple of months later, you come to another one, you’ll see a lot of the same people again, so it helps you maintain that box. I think it’s very important to have these recurring events that happen again and again. Reunion, for example, every year since 1908, we’ve been coming back to reunion every year. Like that’s a good example of a box.

Traci: I’m really interested in how, so even though I’m an instructor and I do work like this, I am an extreme introvert. I get very nervous meeting new people, although I mask it very well. I look like I’m fine, but on the inside, I’m like full of anxiety or I’m extremely tired or whatever it might be. So it’s really, really difficult. And I love these casual inroads that you’ve created for people, like the crossword event. I’m completely drawn to that idea. And so for people like me who have a really hard time, who are stretching themselves to do networking, do you have any advice for those kind of folks that it’s a little bit difficult to dive in the deep end?

Tony: The one thing I try very hard to do, like at the food court events, is I always circle around and look for people who aren’t talking to anybody, might be a little shyer. And I try very hard to learn more about them and then connect them with other similar people within the event. So I try really hard to make sure everybody has a chance to talk to people. I think I think that might be one way to help the more introverted people.

Christa: So when the introverts show up at events, they should look for you.

Tony: Yeah, that way they can connect.

Christa: I have a question for you. So what class had the greatest impact on you when you were a Cornell?

Tony: There’s a lot of things that stand out. After the fact, I realized how helpful they were. One thing I did was the debate team. That helped a lot. It helped with, like, a lot of the communication skills. It also how to form an argument, how to listen to the other side, and respond. That was very good practice. Another really good thing was EARS training, empathy, assistance, and referral. I think the EARS, that one was really good too. I took the level one training, and I took the level two training. There, you learn how to be a good listener. You listen really hard. Try not to judge, just listen very hard, and then try thinking through how are they feeling, the way they’re feeling. Then I just very good practice as well.

Christa: This is great. I imagine these two things, whether you’ve thought about it, you know, maybe helped lead you in the direction to where you are now. And so I’m wondering when you were younger, maybe as a child, or maybe as an incoming first year student at Cornell, what did you imagine yourself doing for your career?

Tony: When I came in, I only knew I liked math and physics. I began applied engineering and physics because they had a class called Mathematical Physics. A great class. I love that class. Beautiful. Through Cornell, I did a lot of other things. I lived in Risley. I did performing arts there. I did a law and society minor. So I learned about all the different laws in societies and the humanities. I did research with the Sociology Department. So as I learned a lot about networks and sociology. I did debate team with all the government majors and policy people. Really, help me expand and get a feel for what more I like in addition to just math and physics. Cornell was very helpful for that. Ever since I graduated, I never used applied physics afterwards. I never did integrals ever again. I’ve always wondered, like, how it helped. I was thinking about it this morning. I realized that in a career, you build up intuition, you build up skills, and you build up relationships. So intuition, skills, and relationships. If you want to get real really good at something, you have to build up intuition, skills, and relationships to do that one thing really, really well. At Cornell the classes, the lectures, that taught a lot of intuition. You get a lot of good intuition about it. They give you a lot of backs and you have to get used to the facts. You have to get to understand the facts, internalize it, adjust it. And that’s good for intuition. The skills from the lab classes, the lab classes give you a lot of skills. So how do pipetting and how to do the programming, how to build the semiconductor thing in lab class. And the relationships, I got that from the clubs and the other activities I did. You learn how to build up intuition. You learned how to build up the skills, you learned how to build up the relationships. And then after that, well, like, in the real world, you start to choose, like a place that you want in an industry that you really want to be good at. And once you choose that industry, you got build up the intuition, the skills and the relationships. For me, for example, I really want to connect all the Cornellians with each other. So I try very hard to build up the intuition around it by meeting every Cornellian, by learning everything about all the different Cornell events. So I build all the intuition. Just having a list of classes, having a list of facts isn’t enough. You have to really internalize the build intuition on what Cornell are doing, what Cornell is doing. And then the skills, is like the marketing, like get the word out about different events, you’ve got to get the word out about different things. I got organized events. That’s another skill. Another skill is like talking and listening and trying really hard to build a relationship with everybody. So that’s the skill side. And then the relationship side, I guess I try to meet every Cornellian, all different age ranges, all different majors, all different places around the world. Those are relationships. And because I build up the intuition, the skills and the relationships for it, I can connect Cornellians a lot better this way.

Traci: Thank you for that. I don’t even know what to expect for the answer for this next one. What do you do to relax and have fun and re-energize yourself.

Tony: So it’s mostly just meeting Cornellians. I like changes in scenery, so I come to Ithaca. I love coming to Ithaca. A lot of times the big cities like DC, New York, Boston, have a lot of things happening all at once. Whereas Ithaca, it’s like, much more manageable. That’s a good way. Coming to the reunion, I think that helps a lot. Well, one thing I actually try to do, I try very hard to do is I try very hard to systemize things. It’s like, the analogy I use is like, if you’re juggling, you’re juggling like three things at once, I have like three balls in the air. You’ve got to remember, you have the red ball, the blue ball, and the yellow ball, where those two other balls are. But once you have, like 20 balls in the air, then it’s really hard to remember where each of the 20 is at. So instead, you have to think of it in terms of a system and each individual ball at a time. So rather than thinking where each ball is, you think right hand, left hand, or where to throw each ball when it does come down, and then you create a little system. Rather than thinking of each individual ball individually. I do that a lot with my events, the recurring events, every two weeks. I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have to think when’s the next Zoom call. I know it’s in two weeks. Just like has been two weeks ago, just has been like four weeks ago. I think the systems help manage a lot of juggle. Like, the newsletter. Every month, I publish a newsletter. That helps a lot, too. It becomes like a system. Like, what day do I have my newsletter? It’s at the end of the month, it’s time to do the newsletter again. Systems that helps, like everybody to, like, get on the same schedule as well. That helps a bunch, too. So systemize. I always think in terms of system. It doesn’t really help me relax, but it relieves a lot of the stress and to all that.

Christa: You’re engineering your life. I love it.

Traci: Yeah. A wise person told me many years ago that engineering gives you a systems way of thinking, and I think that you’ve just explained the benefit of that in this context very, very well. Thank you so much for your time today. I’m getting energy just listening to you and having this conversation, and I’ve learned about events that I didn’t even know about. And so for that, if nothing else, I’m absolutely thankful. But your energy bringing together all of these people from all of the different majors, and just welcoming them back to campus, with your energy and the way that you want to hold all these people together, right given their time at Cornell. I just think it’s a really wonderful thing that you’re doing. And so the whole campus owes you a thank you as far as I’m concerned.

Tony: Like, I’m very, very fortunate to be a Cornellian. I’m very, very fortunate. I think, like, when I applied to Cornell I had no idea there was such a wonderful alumni network. And I’m very fortunate that I chose Cornell. I think that Cornell really brings a lot of people together from all kinds of different ways so that after graduation, Cornellians all still come together. I took classes with all kinds of different majors. I took classes with MBAs. I took classes with JDs, I took classes with Hotelies. Like it really brings people together. And I’m very grateful for having gone to Cornell. Like, I think after graduation, then it really sunk in and I was like, wow, I’m very fortunate to be a Cornellian.

Christa: And we’re fortunate to have you. Thank you so much for doing all of this, Tony. Thank you for listening. If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode, where we will be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: Today, we are talking with Emilie Camera. Emilie has had a fascinating early career arc, working first in product development for medical devices at Fikst and now as a mechanical engineer for Steinway & Sons. She works on specialized bespoke and limited-edition pianos along with Steinway’s regular production. Emilie has a lot to share with us, and we’re glad you’re here.

Emilie, it’s so good to have you here today. Welcome.

Emilie Camera: Thank you. Happy to be here.

Christa: I would love to have you start by telling us about the exciting work that you’re doing and how you got here.

Emilie: My current position is at Steinway & Sons as a mechanical engineer. Specifically, my job involves working on custom pianos—limited editions, one-of-a-kinds, bespoke designs. We typically do limited runs of about 50 pianos, though that could change in the future. Essentially, I work on anything that deviates from our standard production models.

Christa: What does that look like in terms of applying your mechanical engineering skills? What does your day-to-day work involve?

Emilie: I get to see a lot of unique designs come in. I work closely with industrial designers who submit concepts, and my role involves evaluating feasibility. Sometimes that means tearing apart a design and having discussions about what is and isn’t possible. There’s a lot of negotiation and education involved, since many designers don’t know the intricacies of piano manufacturing.

For example, I have to ensure that new designs still accommodate necessary structural features—things like shipping requirements, assembly logistics, and acoustic integrity. Every day brings a new challenge, and that makes it a fun job.

Christa: You mentioned to me that you travel abroad for work. Can you talk more about that?

Emilie: Steinway has two factories—one in Queens, New York, and one in Hamburg, Germany. A few months ago, I visited the Hamburg factory to see how their operations run. It was fascinating to compare the differences and similarities between the two factories since we make the same product in both locations.

While in Europe, we also collaborated with Italian designers on a bespoke piano. We traveled to Florence to visit their studio, see their craftsmanship in action, and ensure everything aligned with our manufacturing capabilities.

Traci: Many students dream about designing a product they personally love, but they often see it as unattainable. How did you get to this place where you’re designing pianos and merging your passion with your engineering skills?

Emilie: This position is truly the perfect combination of my passion for music and my expertise in mechanical engineering and product development. I’ve always been involved in music—I play the violin and used to play piano more actively. Steinway has always been a name I recognized because of my musical background.

But if you had asked me while I was in school, I wouldn’t have thought of this as an option. The realization came when I was job searching. I started thinking, What are things I love? Who makes them? How can I be part of that process?

That led me to discover an open position at Steinway, and I applied. It turns out that everything needs to be designed by someone—every product, every detail. If there’s something you love, there’s probably an engineer behind it.

Traci: That’s such an important realization. Everything we use has to be designed by someone, and there are so many opportunities that engineers don’t initially think about.

Emilie: Exactly. I was also surprised to learn how much engineering goes into what many consider an artisan-crafted instrument. While Steinway pianos are made by highly skilled craftspeople, there’s still a need for engineers to ensure the right materials are used, the design specifications are met, and the manufacturing process runs smoothly.

Traci: What are some of the technical skills you use daily?

Emilie: A big part of my job involves CAD modeling and designing custom components. With bespoke and limited-edition pianos, the challenges vary. For one-of-a-kind pianos, we focus on how to produce a single unit without disrupting the production line too much. For limited editions, we have to integrate changes efficiently while maintaining Steinway’s high-quality standards.

Another key aspect is testing. When we introduce new designs—whether it’s a different leg structure or an innovative support mechanism—we have to ensure they are structurally sound and won’t fail under stress. Since Steinway pianos are meant to last more than a lifetime, we don’t take shortcuts when it comes to quality control.

Traci: What are some of the biggest challenges you face, and how do you navigate them?

Emilie: One of the hardest phases in product development is the early stage when things are still nebulous. Sometimes, you don’t even know the right questions to ask. That can be frustrating, but over time, I’ve learned to approach it methodically. Instead of worrying about finding answers, I focus on defining what I don’t know and what I need to figure out next.

Traci: That’s a great approach—acknowledging the unknown unknowns and working from there.

Christa: Our podcast often explores themes of creating a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world. How do you see your work fitting into that broader picture?

Emilie: Initially, I struggled with that question. My previous job was in medical devices, where it was easy to see the direct impact on people’s health. When I transitioned to pianos, I had a moment where I thought, Am I really making a difference?

But then I realized that the arts are vital to human well-being. Music brings people joy, and instruments like pianos enable artistic expression. While my work might not be as tangible as life-saving medical devices, it still contributes positively to the world.

Traci: That resonates. During difficult times—like the pandemic—people turned to the arts for comfort. Music, literature, and film were essential in helping people cope.

Emilie: Absolutely. The value of music in our lives shouldn’t be underestimated.

Christa: Who are the key collaborators in your work?

Emilie: The craftspeople at Steinway are a huge resource. Some of them have been with the company for 30 or 40 years. While I have an engineering degree, they have a lifetime of hands-on expertise in piano-making. I always consult them first when developing new designs.

Understanding the end user is also crucial. I talk to piano technicians, tuners, and salespeople to gather feedback. They interact with customers daily and provide valuable insights into what works and what could be improved.

Traci: What do you wish you knew as a sophomore?

Emilie: I wish I hadn’t stressed so much about following the “right” path. There’s no single way to build a career. You don’t have to do exactly what everyone else is doing—just focus on learning and exploring what excites you.

Christa: What classes had the biggest impact on you?

Emilie: MAE 2250—the intro to prototyping and machining—was a game changer. It gave me hands-on experience and introduced me to product development.

Another key course was Innovative Product Design, which really solidified my interest in this field. Seeing a product come to life through iterative design was incredibly rewarding.

Traci: Where do you go to stay current in your field?

Emilie: I keep up with manufacturing best practices, lean production methods, and design for manufacturability. I also follow industry-specific blogs about pianos and high-end craftsmanship.

Christa: If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?

Emilie: If I stayed in engineering, I’d still be in product development—just working on a different product. My childhood dream was to be a professional musician, but now I realize I’ve found a way to stay connected to the music world in a way that fits me better.

Traci: You found a rare intersection of passions.

Emilie: They’re out there! If you love something, there’s probably an engineering role connected to it.

Christa: Thank you so much for sharing your story with us.

Emilie: Thank you!

Christa: If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode as we celebrate engineers making a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: Today, we’re joined by Alissa Diminich. Alissa is a principal engineer at Inflo Design Group, primarily working on drinking water and wastewater projects. She has her bachelor’s and master’s, both from Cornell, in civil and environmental engineering. While at Cornell, she was a member of the AguaClara project team and, as an alumna, has served on the board of the nonprofit AguaClara Reach, which works to advance the design and innovation of community-scale gravity-powered water treatment technologies. Hello, Alissa, how are you?

Alissa Diminich: I’m good, thanks. How are you?

Christa: Good. It’s great to have you here today.

Alissa: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Christa: So our first question is pretty basic. We want you to tell us about your current work. What are you working on? What are you excited about?

Alissa: Sure. So I’m currently a civil engineer. I work primarily in water and wastewater design. Right now, I’m doing a lot of drinking water work, which can be really varied. I’m in the Middle Tennessee area, right near Nashville, and this region is experiencing so much population growth that infrastructure is working hard to keep up.

For a lot of water utilities in this region, that means a lot of planning needs to happen, and they have significant work to do to keep up with the growing demands. In my role, I’m not only helping with specific designs for treatment and water distribution but also helping utilities think through: What do we need? How do we get there? It’s a lot of planning and looking at an overall program for growing their system, rather than just saying, Oh, we need a new pump station or treatment plant.

Traci: Well, I’ve worked with a lot of water engineers and adjacent professionals over the years, and they often say no two days are ever the same. What does your day look like? Do you have an average pattern?

Alissa: What you’re saying is absolutely true because it really depends on where you are in a project. Right now, I’m spending a lot of time with one of our clients, helping them with ongoing work at their treatment plant. I get to stay really focused with them.

Some days, I work from home on designs, talk to manufacturers about new equipment, or prepare updates for the plant staff. One day a week, I’m on-site at the water treatment plant, talking with operators about what’s working well and where they’re having problems. I want their feedback because they’re the ones running the plant every day. My goal is to design systems that make their lives easier, reduce pressure on them, and ensure that they have reliable, well-functioning systems.

I’ve also spent a lot of time on-site for construction projects. I was a resident engineer for a recent water treatment plant construction project that lasted about a year and a half. Seeing things I had designed get built and making sure they were built correctly was incredibly rewarding. That experience helped me think about design differently—how can we make things better for the next time?

Traci: Many water engineers I’ve spoken with emphasize a deep sense of responsibility because water is life. Can you talk about how you view your work in that context?

Alissa: Absolutely. We are so privileged. When I say, I turn on my faucet and expect clean, safe water, that comes from a very specific perspective—one of living in a place where access to clean drinking water is ensured. That should be the case globally, but unfortunately, it’s not.

In my current job, I work locally to help utilities maintain and expand their services. But personally, I also think it’s important to share expertise in other settings. That can mean having conversations with my neighbors about infrastructure, raising awareness, or working with nonprofits that address water access.

For example, I’ve been involved with AguaClara Reach, which was born out of a Cornell design team. AguaClara Reach focuses on sharing open-source drinking water treatment technology in places where conventional approaches may not work well. It’s exciting to be part of an organization that is making an impact beyond just my local area.

Traci: Thank you. That was beautifully said. You’ve also shared insightful perspectives on workplace challenges and impostor syndrome. Can you walk us through those thoughts?

Alissa: Sure. Looking back, I realize that once I get through a challenge, I tend to think, That wasn’t so bad—because I made it through.

Early in my career, I really struggled with impostor syndrome. I felt like there were things I should know but didn’t, and I worried people would find out. At some point, though, I had a shift in mindset—I realized that not knowing is an opportunity. Now, when I meet someone who is really knowledgeable, I get excited to ask questions.

I wish I had figured that out sooner. Now, I tell younger engineers: Ask all the questions! There’s never a better time to learn. People respect honesty. When I say something with confidence, my colleagues believe me because they know I’m also willing to admit when I don’t know something.

Traci: When we prepared for this interview, you mentioned that motherhood has shifted your perspective. Can you share more?

Alissa: Absolutely. I have two young kids—almost three and almost one. Motherhood is one of the most challenging things I’ve ever experienced, but it’s also made me care even more about my work.

I feel so fortunate to work for a company that supports flexibility. Returning from maternity leave, I had control over my transition back, and I still have a schedule that allows me to balance my work and family. That flexibility has been everything. If I had a more rigid corporate job, something would have had to give, and it likely would have been my job.

Going through this experience has made me realize how critical workplace support is. We need to do better at supporting employees, because when people struggle personally, their work suffers too.

Christa: What do you wish you knew as a sophomore?

Alissa: I wish I hadn’t just focused on checking the boxes for my degree. There’s so much to learn beyond the requirements! I wish I had embraced that curiosity more—taken courses purely out of interest and soaked up all the knowledge available.

Traci: You did both your bachelor’s and master’s at Cornell. What classes stood out to you?

Alissa: My intro to engineering course on water treatment changed everything for me. We had these little bench-scale treatment systems, and I was fascinated by how we could start with muddy water and end up with clean water.

That class was taught by Monroe Weber-Shirk, and it set my entire trajectory. He’s influenced so many people’s careers, including mine.

Christa: Where do you go to stay current in your field?

Alissa: The American Water Works Association (AWWA) and Water Environment Federation (WEF) are great for keeping up with advancements in water and wastewater engineering.

Traci: If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?

Alissa: Something related to the environment. I’ve gotten really into native plants and sustainable landscaping. If I had unlimited time, I’d probably do something in landscape architecture, focusing on native and non-invasive plants.

Traci: What do you do to relax?

Alissa: Gardening. When I’m overwhelmed, I go outside. Whether it’s tending to my vegetable garden or just playing outside with my kids, fresh air keeps me grounded.

Christa: Thank you so much for sharing your journey with us.

Alissa: Thank you! This was fun.

Christa: If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode, where we will celebrate engineers making a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: I’m here today with Christine, a mechanical engineering graduate from Cornell University, whose career spans work at NASA Johnson Space Center, Boeing, and in science education and policy. Christine is now in a doctoral program at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she investigates human-robot collaboration and communication supported via augmented reality, particularly in high-risk environments. As you’ll hear in this episode, Christine is deeply invested in increasing inclusion, equity, and justice in education and STEM fields. I’m glad to have her here today. So why don’t you start by telling us more about your current work?

Christine Chang: Sure. Yeah. So currently I am a Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado Boulder. I work in the Collaborative AI and Robotics Laboratory. I’m getting my Ph.D. in Computer Science, and I do research on human-robot interaction. This is a pretty broad field, but I am especially interested in looking at the human side of things—how we can improve the ways that humans can communicate and understand robots and vice versa.

Day to day, this involves a lot of different things. It can be building a system that I’m going to use in an experiment with humans and robots, designing experiments, writing—whether it’s writing code or academic papers—and reading. In addition to that, I do a lot of mentorship and service work, advising undergraduates and graduate students. I serve on different committees in the department and have been involved with the Computer Science Graduate Student Association as the Anti-Racism and Inclusion Chair, where I work with faculty in the department, college, and university.

Christa: Excellent. Can you tell us about your path that got you to where you are today?

Christine: Yeah. When I tell this story, I like to go all the way back to high school because that’s where it started. I saw the movie Apollo 13, and there’s a scene where engineers at NASA have to figure out how to make a square filter fit into a round hole using only available materials. I saw that and thought, That is what I want to do, and I want to do it at NASA.

At the time, I didn’t know that meant studying engineering. But I joined my high school’s robotics team, which was still new, and we participated in the FIRST Robotics Competition. I loved it. That experience solidified my decision to study aerospace or mechanical engineering.

At Cornell, I chose mechanical engineering because I knew I could get a strong education while also exploring other interests like writing and Spanish. I also participated in the co-op program, which led me to work at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. They offered me a job at graduation, and I took it.

At NASA, I worked on a variety of cool projects, including training as a flight controller for Mission Control, working with pyrotechnics testing and design, and developing a system to turn lunar regolith into breathable oxygen. It was an amazing experience, but at some point, I wanted to live in a different place, so I moved to Seattle to work at Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

While working, I had always been interested in education and decided to take a course at Boise State University. That led me to pursue a Master’s in Education and eventually teach junior high and high school students in math, science, and engineering.

Later, I transitioned into working at Boise State University in STEM outreach and diversity initiatives, helping faculty and students engage with local teachers and communities. One of my proudest achievements was starting a robotics team for high school girls. That team still exists today and has expanded to include students of all genders. Many of those girls have gone on to study engineering in college, which makes me incredibly proud.

As I got more involved in higher education and STEM diversity, I realized that I would need a Ph.D. to make a greater impact. When recruiting mentors for the robotics team, it was evident how few women worked in computer science and technology. That realization inspired me to study computer science for my Ph.D.

Now, I’m planning to graduate next year. It has been a winding path, but every step has informed the work I do today.

Christa: I love hearing about your journey. I think nonlinear paths often bring the most interesting perspectives.

Christine: Absolutely. Every experience I’ve had—NASA, teaching, outreach—has shaped the research I do today and the impact I hope to make.

Christa: Speaking of impact, how do you hope to use your Ph.D. to make the greatest difference?

Christine: That is really at the heart of my work. My goal is to improve our world through technology policy. That might sound idealistic, but I truly believe everyone can contribute to positive change at whatever level they are capable of.

In addition to my technical research, I have worked in technology policy. I was part of the Colorado Science and Engineering Policy Fellowship, where I proposed facial recognition legislation that has since been signed into law. I also interned with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), where I worked on AI accountability policy, digital discrimination, and other technology governance issues.

I want to continue influencing technology policy at the federal level and beyond. Equity is a major driver for me. Technology access is a human right, and policy decisions should reflect that. Many tech policy issues can be framed through a human rights lens, and once you do that, the solutions become much clearer.

Christa: It’s such important work, and I’m glad you’re pursuing it. What advice would you give to students who are interested in AI and equity but want to stay on the technical side?

Christine: There are many great resources. A good starting point is the Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT) conference, where researchers publish work on ethical AI and responsible computing.

Another great event is the We Robot conference, which brings together technical experts, legal scholars, and policymakers to discuss robotics and AI. It’s a unique interdisciplinary experience that forces researchers to think beyond their immediate field.

For students, I recommend reaching out to people in law, ethics, and policy to expand their perspectives. Many universities have centers focused on technology policy and ethics—getting involved with those groups is invaluable.

Christa: That’s excellent advice. I always tell students to build a diverse network of people with different expertise. It leads to new opportunities and insights.

Christine: Yes! Every major career decision I’ve made has been influenced by someone in my network. A diverse network exposes you to new ideas and unexpected paths.

Christa: What courses at Cornell had the greatest impact on you?

Christine: The sophomore-year design class in mechanical engineering. It was the first time we had to apply what we learned to a real project, including machining our own designs. I didn’t do particularly well, but the experience taught me invaluable lessons about the iterative design process.

Christa: What advice do you have for undergraduates, especially sophomores?

Christine: Stick with it and follow your passions. I struggled in my sophomore year and questioned whether I should stay in engineering. But I pushed through, got a co-op offer from NASA, and realized that engineering was where I belonged. Even if your path changes later, it’s important to stay committed to what excites you.

Christa: This has been such an inspiring conversation. Thank you for sharing your story, Christine.

Christine: Thank you!

Christa: If you are enjoying these conversations, please follow and review on your favorite platform. Join us for the next episode, where we will be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: This week in Engineering Career Conversations, we were very fortunate to interview Dayin Chen, who completed her undergraduate degree at Cornell in Operations Research in 2017. She just finished a two-year MBA at the Wharton School of Business and has now returned to Deloitte Consulting as a Senior Consultant in the Sustainability Strategy and Transformation Group.

Now, during our interview, you will hear several acronyms that we would like to clarify before we begin. P&L stands for Profit and Loss Statement. IRA refers to the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 in the United States. And Wharton ESG stands for Wharton’s numerous offerings around environmental, social, and governance platforms. We welcome you and hope you enjoy this incredible conversation as much as we did.

Traci: We are so happy to have you here today. We know that you have done so many things, and we’ve been reading about all your experiences. To start us off, can you tell us about your current work? What does your day look like?

Dayin Chen: I just graduated from a two-year business program and started work back in September. I returned to Deloitte Consulting, where I had worked for four years previously, but now I’m in a new role in their Sustainability Strategy and Transformation Group. My current project is with a beef, poultry, and prepared foods company with $50 billion in revenue. The specific project I’m working on is a $100 million sustainability initiative to expand regenerative farming practices across row crops and their beef business.

Traci: No small order. That sounds amazing.

Dayin: Yeah. The primary reason I returned to Deloitte after school—after exploring many different opportunities—was that I really wanted to understand how big companies work, how they operate, and how transformational change happens. A lot of the work isn’t glamorous or visionary in the way startup work can be. It’s less about creating new concepts and more about tackling the tactical challenges that existing companies face. I thought it was crucial to get this experience to inform my long-term career decisions—whether I continue down this path or eventually decide to launch something of my own.

Christa: Can you tell us what a typical day looks like for you?

Dayin: This project is fully remote for me. I work from my home office, though I live only 25 minutes from Deloitte’s physical office in downtown Philadelphia. My schedule is pretty standard—nine to five—at least for this client.

Right now, we are in the process of recruiting farmers to join our regenerative farming program. A big part of our work involves mapping the customer journey—specifically, the farmer journey. We are setting up processes, engaging vendors, determining what data we need to collect, and figuring out how to manage personally identifiable information. We then synthesize all this information so the company can track progress toward its business growth goals and overall sustainability targets.

This company is looking to reduce its Scope 3 emissions as well as its Scope 1 and 2 emissions, which pertain to its own value chain. Some of these emission reductions are being sold to downstream partners like retailers and fast food companies that purchase their meat products. So there’s a lot of partner engagement, data collection, and corporate strategy discussions involved.

The most interesting part for me is understanding how this sustainability work feeds into the company’s broader strategy. We all know beef is a high-emission product. As we reduce emissions, we also have to consider the long-term implications for their business. Will they need to shrink or pivot? These are tough questions, and while I don’t talk to the CEO directly, the leaders of our project do, and they’re having those high-level discussions.

Traci: It sounds both complicated and important. You mentioned journey maps earlier—can you talk about what that looks like in your work?

Dayin: Sure. One journey map we’re creating is for the farmers we’re recruiting into the program. We start by defining the persona—for example, a commodity corn farmer in Missouri with a 1,000-acre farm who has never used regenerative farming practices before.

Step one is identifying how we get in touch with them. Step two is building their interest and trust—how do we bring them into the top of our funnel? From there, we document the entire enrollment process, including forms, contracts, and data collection.

Then we track the implementation of their practices. If they commit to reducing tillage, we send soil samplers to collect data and use remote sensing to verify changes. The final step is payment—actually compensating the farmer for their efforts—and then working on retention. How do we re-sign them into the program and build long-term relationships?

It’s a detailed, visual process that requires stakeholder interviews, research, and iterations.

Christa: You’ve worked in both startups and large corporations. What are the key differences you’ve noticed?

Dayin: The biggest difference is the number of people involved in decision-making. Large corporations have more legal considerations—every contract is reviewed by general counsel, every step involves multiple approvals, and there are more bureaucratic hurdles. While startups can move faster, big companies have more resources and expertise.

Traci: What’s been the most significant challenge in your work?

Dayin: Two things:

First, dealing with difficult people. Early in my career, I had managers who were demanding or unclear in their communication, which could feel like personal attacks. Over time, I learned to separate work feedback from my self-worth and recognize when a work environment wasn’t the right fit.

Second, navigating sustainability in large corporations. Greenwashing is a real concern—companies may appear to be making progress while not truly addressing systemic issues. I constantly reevaluate whether the work I’m doing is impactful or just optics. It’s a tough balance, but for now, I’m gaining valuable experience in sustainability strategy.

Christa: That’s a huge consideration—how to measure real impact. How do you stay connected with others working in sustainability?

Dayin: Business schools and academic institutions are doing a lot of research on corporate sustainability. At Wharton, we discussed how sustainability still needs to tie back to financial metrics. Companies are realizing that things like reputational damage and supply chain disruptions can affect long-term shareholder value.

I also stay involved with the Wharton ESG Initiative and keep up with industry reports. It’s important to remain engaged with both academia and industry trends.

Traci: Let’s shift gears. What do you wish you knew as a sophomore?

Dayin: That careers are much longer than just your first job. I was so stressed about getting the perfect internship, but in hindsight, it didn’t define my career. I wish I had spent more time networking with professionals in roles I aspired to.

Traci: What courses had the greatest impact on you?

Dayin: At Wharton, Legal Aspects of Entrepreneurship was eye-opening. It revealed how corporate America operates, from tax structures to job security. It reinforced that working for a big company is great for stability but isn’t the best long-term wealth-building strategy.

Christa: How do you stay current with trends in your field?

Dayin: I deliberately choose projects that align with the latest regulations and business movements. I also read reports from Wharton ESG and industry publications.

Traci: If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?

Dayin: Likely working in supply chain operations or growth strategy at a mid-sized company. Long term, I want to start my own business.

Christa: What do you do to relax?

Dayin: I meticulously plan my fun—hiking trips, movie nights, PTO. It helps me build anticipation and truly enjoy those moments.

Traci: That’s such a great strategy. Dayin, thank you for this insightful conversation.

Dayin: Thank you for having me.

Christa: Thank you for listening. Join us next time as we celebrate engineers making a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: We had the chance to catch up with Allie Gaines, a Cornellian who completed her undergraduate degree in 2014 in Information Science, Systems, and Technology. With her many interests, she works on issues of food, food production, data analysis, epidemiology, the health of the planet, sustainability, and more. Since leaving Cornell, she’s gone on to do incredible work across several disciplines. And on the day we spoke, she was getting ready to defend her Ph.D. in a couple of weeks while working full-time in consulting. Listen in, as we can learn so much from Allie. Thank you for being here.

Christa: Hi, Allie. It’s good to have you here today.

Allie Gaines: Hi, Christa. I’m excited to be here.

Christa: I’m excited to share your story. Can you start by telling us a bit about your path? How did you get here? Maybe some of your degrees along the way, as well as your current work and your most recent work before that, because I know you’re in a new position.

Allie: I graduated from Cornell in 2014, majoring in Information Science, Systems, and Technology. Right after school, I started at Athena Health, an electronic medical record company in Boston. I had always had an interest in healthcare but hadn’t really explored it, so I was excited for the opportunity. On that team, I worked on data interoperability in a technical role.

After a few years, I realized that while I could understand the technical side, I really liked working on the healthcare clinical solution side. I was put on a project involving cancer registries—ensuring medical record data was sent to government cancer registries. That work showed me how data could be used to track disease prevalence and make a real difference.

I then spent a year in consulting, gaining broader experience before pursuing my Master’s in Global Health and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford. Studying overseas was an amazing experience—exam days felt like being in Harry Potter since we had to wear formal academic robes. During my Master’s, I focused on the links between daily habits, nutrition, and disease patterns, particularly in relation to cancer.

That led me to pursue a Ph.D. in Epidemiology, where I focused even more on nutrition and its effects on both public health and climate change. Over the last four years, I developed a method to calculate greenhouse gas emissions associated with packaged foods. This was exciting because packaged foods are everywhere—in hospitals, schools, malls—and they significantly impact both human health and the environment.

One of the highlights of my Ph.D. was developing a potential food label that we pitched to the Australian government. While the U.S. doesn’t yet use similar labels, it was rewarding to work on something with real-world policy implications. The goal was to help consumers and industry leaders make more informed choices about nutrition and sustainability.

Now, I’ve transitioned back to full-time work as a Product Manager in Healthcare and Business Strategy at Exponential Data. This company specializes in machine learning and AI-driven solutions to improve healthcare data analysis. We work with pharmaceutical companies and electronic medical records, using AI to optimize data and provide better insights for patient care and treatment outcomes.

Traci: That sounds amazing. In your current position, you’re trying to untangle or weave a new web of data inputs. What does that mean for you day to day?

Allie: The biggest change from my Ph.D. to now is the breadth of projects. During my Ph.D., I worked on one specific thing in-depth for years. Now, I juggle multiple projects across different areas of healthcare.

For example, we work with pharmaceutical companies to analyze drug performance in different populations, particularly when patients have co-morbidities (multiple conditions at once). Understanding how different medications interact and which treatments work best in specific populations is critical.

On the clinical side, we analyze patient journey data—tracking commonalities in demographics, lifestyle, and outcomes. This aligns with my original interest in nutrition and how daily habits influence public health.

One major challenge in healthcare data is that systems are highly siloed. Electronic medical records, patient data, and treatment outcomes exist in separate databases, making it difficult to see the full picture. Our work focuses on linking and optimizing these data sources to improve analysis and decision-making.

Traci: I’m glad there are people like you doing this—it’s a lot to manage!

Christa: As an Information Science major, your skills are applicable to so many industries. How did you decide to focus on healthcare and nutrition?

Allie: My interest in food and health is personal. Growing up, my family ate a lot of fast food, and I had little understanding of what “healthy eating” really meant. Like many kids, I thought Diet Coke was a normal part of my diet!

As I studied public health and nutrition, I realized how much diet-related diseases—obesity, cancer, heart disease—are tied to modern food systems. Our food doesn’t look like what our grandparents ate, and that shift has serious consequences.

At the same time, I believe it’s okay to explore different interests. I took a detour into consulting and finance, which gave me valuable skills before returning to healthcare. My advice is that you don’t have to know exactly what you want to do—just follow your interests and take opportunities to explore.

Traci: You’ve touched on so many important topics. How do you see your work contributing to a healthier and more sustainable world?

Allie: My work bridges public health, sustainability, and policy. The epidemiology research I did informs better public health strategies, and now, at Exponential Data, we’re working on data-driven solutions to improve healthcare.

I also want to emphasize the importance of being a woman in STEM. Women are still underrepresented in tech and engineering, and I hope to create a supportive environment for future generations.

Traci: That’s a great point. Speaking of sustainability, tell us more about how climate change connects to food and nutrition.

Allie: The food system is the second-largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, after energy. Food production accounts for about 30% of human-caused emissions. Meat production, in particular, has a huge environmental impact due to land use and methane emissions from cattle.

During my Ph.D., I analyzed over 30,000 unique ingredients in packaged foods to assess their environmental impact. We found that ingredients, rather than packaging or transportation, were the main drivers of emissions. That’s why shifting diets toward more sustainable food choices can have a big impact on both health and the planet.

Christa: Who are the key collaborators in this work?

Allie: Academics, industry leaders, and policymakers. Governments are starting to recognize the role of food in climate change, as seen at COP 28, where food was a major topic for the first time. Academic institutions provide the data, policymakers drive regulations, and industry leaders need to implement change.

Traci: Where do you go to stay current in your field?

Allie: I follow Food Politics by Marion Nestle, a Cornell Visiting Professor in Nutrition Science. She’s a great resource for global food and health policy discussions. I also recommend the Blue Zones documentary on Netflix, which explores diets and longevity in regions where people live past 100.

Christa: If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?

Allie: I’d love to work on nutrition education for kids. One of my original Ph.D. proposals was a school lunch program to teach children where their food comes from and how to make healthier choices.

Traci: What do you do to relax?

Allie: I love being outdoors—hiking and running marathons. I’ve completed three of the six World Marathon Majors so far: London, New York, and Berlin.

Traci: That’s incredible! Allie, thank you so much for sharing your journey with us.

Allie: Thank you! I hope this inspires students who are still figuring out their paths.

Christa: Thank you for listening. Join us next time as we celebrate engineers making a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: Nathan Williams earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell in 2011, then went on to get a Ph.D. studying the Moon and Mars at Arizona State University in 2016. He now works as a science systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Our interview with Nathan takes us to Mars and back again, and there are some surprises along the way. We hope you join us.

Traci: We are happy today to introduce you to Nathan Williams, who is willing to talk to us about many extraordinary things. Christa had a nice intro conversation with him the other day, but we’re really excited to explore all the different ways that Nathan is having a great impact on the world and doing the great work that he does all day long. Welcome. We’re so glad that you’re with us today.

Nathan Williams: Thank you for having me. I’m really happy to be here.

Traci: Let’s give people a little bit of background. What are you working on right now? Tell us about your current work.

Nathan: So many things. In general, yes, I’m working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with NASA at CalTech in Pasadena, California. Most of my current work right now is looking at Mars—various landing sites, working with the Mars Rover Perseverance, the Ingenuity helicopter, Mars sample return, and several other missions. Basically, if it’s something related to the Mars surface—especially mapping products and relating science to engineering—I’m often involved in a lot of those conversations to help facilitate those, to make sure that we really get the most bang for our buck out of our missions. That we’re really getting the greatest science return that we can.

Traci: For someone who might be considering a path like this, can you talk more about what this looks like day to day?

Nathan: My day-to-day life is extremely varied. No two days are ever the same. In part, that’s because I’m on operations, and tactically, we get new data down from Mars every day. We’re often in a new place—seeing new rocks, dust devils popping up everywhere. No two days are the same because we’re always doing something brand new. I find that extremely exciting. The same with the helicopters—every single day we’re flying, downloading new images. You never know what you’re going to see, and that’s part of the thrill for me.

Traci: It just seems like the work you’re doing is the stuff of movies and books. People fantasize about it or have some misconceptions about how it works. What’s the most significant challenge in your work?

Nathan: The biggest thing is you just have to stay nimble and flexible. In my position, I’m talking to scientists and engineers—people with very different backgrounds and ways of thinking. They don’t always communicate efficiently with each other. I have a science background, but I also have an engineering background from Cornell, where I pursued quantitative geophysics in grad school. That allows me to bridge the gap, facilitate conversations, and ensure our teams are aligned.

One day an engineer might come to me and ask, “We have this capability—what should we do with it?” I can translate that into something useful for the scientists. Then, I take the scientists’ needs back to the engineers in a way they can understand. The details of what I do change every day, but the key is listening, translating, and ensuring that communication happens.

Traci: Now, Nathan, people might think I have my thumb on the scale here, but I don’t! I teach engineering communications, and I think you’re proving my point.

Nathan: No, it’s true! Communication is what makes the best teams efficient. When everyone can talk freely and share ideas, barriers break down, and we achieve so much more.

Christa: What advice do you have for people looking to improve communication skills in an engineering or scientific environment?

Nathan: Try to learn as much as you can about the people you work with. Even if you don’t work with them directly, understanding their context is valuable. Beyond that, just sitting down and chatting with colleagues—informally—helps build rapport and insight into how they think.

Writing is also critical. We do a lot of technical documentation, and it’s important that reports are both detailed and accessible. If a scientist needs to read an engineering report, it shouldn’t be so technical that they can’t understand it. Finding that balance between depth and clarity is an ongoing challenge but worth striving for.

Christa: One of our themes is how engineering contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world. How does your work fit into that, and who are the key collaborators?

Nathan: NASA is all about efficiency. Every piece of equipment we send into space has to be lightweight, energy-efficient, and reliable. Many of the technologies we develop end up being shared with the public. Our research translates into better materials, medical equipment, and even energy-saving systems here on Earth.

In terms of equity, diversity in our teams is critical. When you bring together people from different backgrounds, you get fresh ideas and innovative solutions. The same way we analyze Mars from different perspectives—looking at satellite images, surface data, and geological patterns—we need diverse perspectives in our teams. It makes us better problem solvers.

Traci: That’s such a powerful argument for why diverse teams are stronger teams.

Nathan: Absolutely.

Christa: If you could go back, what do you wish you knew as a sophomore?

Nathan: Get involved in undergraduate research! I started as a freshman, working on Earth sciences, then moved to studying the Moon. That early exposure built my network, which later helped me land opportunities at NASA. Also—network, network, network. It’s more valuable than I realized at the time.

Traci: What do you do to relax and reenergize?

Nathan: I love bird watching! It’s like a mini treasure hunt. You never know what you’ll find. At Cornell, I was involved in the Cornell Raptor Program, working hands-on with birds of prey. That experience was incredible. Now, I don’t have time for that level of commitment, but I still go hiking and look for birds whenever I can.

Christa: Tell us about Mars time.

Nathan: Mars days—sols—are about 40 minutes longer than Earth days. When we’re in the early stages of a mission, we shift our work schedules to match Mars time. That means our shifts move every day—sometimes starting in the morning, then the afternoon, then overnight. It’s like living in a constant state of jet lag.

To adjust, I blacked out my windows, used artificial daylight lamps, and scheduled meals strategically. It’s tough, but it’s worth it because—well, we’re on Mars!

Traci: If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?

Nathan: Probably studying birds in a research setting, or working in geophysics, or even software engineering. But honestly, I can’t imagine a better job than this.

Christa: Final thoughts?

Nathan: The sky is no longer a limit. The key to success—no matter what field—is understanding context, communicating effectively, and working across barriers. That’s how we make the biggest impact.

Traci: Nathan, it’s been a joy talking to you today.

Nathan: My pleasure! Also, for those interested in NASA’s work, follow NASA and JPL on social media for the latest updates.

Christa: Thank you for listening. Join us next time as we celebrate engineers making a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: Stwart Peña Feliz just completed his MBA at MIT Sloan School of Management, where he is this year’s winner of the MIT Climate Energy Prize. Stwart is the founder and CEO of a startup that recycles plastic using a novel process that’s 90% more efficient compared to other processes with zero carbon emissions. He was also recently accepted into the Breakthrough Energy Fellows Program. Welcome, Stwart.

Stwart Peña Feliz: Thank you. I’m excited to be here and I appreciate the opportunity.

Christa: It’s good to have you. Let’s start with you telling us about your current work.

Stwart: Yeah, so I am in a very fortunate situation to have met my co-founder, who innovated a process that is able to take plastic of any quality and upcycle it for all market applications. Something that I think we all know is that we have a big issue with plastic waste at the moment. The predominant way of recycling is mechanical recycling, but mechanical recycling downgrades the quality of plastics. Essentially, you can take plastic from a water bottle and recycle it into textiles and fibers, but not vice versa.

As a result, plastic eventually ends up in landfills, and new fossil fuel-generated plastic has to be created to meet demand. What my co-founder has innovated is a process that can take plastic of any quality—whether bottles, textiles, or fibers—and upcycle it to virgin-grade quality that can be used for all market applications. What’s amazing is that compared to other technologies that achieve this, our process requires 90% less energy and can be electrified to reach net zero carbon emissions.

It’s honestly something I am very privileged to be working on. Every day I wake up re-energized for the new challenges. Since I’m working on something brand new, many of the challenges I face have never been encountered before. It’s difficult, but overcoming these obstacles brings us one step closer to our goals.

Christa: That is very exciting. We’d love to hear about your engineering background and how it’s contributed to your success so far.

Stwart: I graduated as a chemical engineer from the class of 2017. I truly loved my time at Cornell—doing research and trying to learn as much as possible. I interned at ExxonMobil as a process design engineer, which was an amazing experience, so I decided to work there full-time.

Cornell truly prepared me for everything I encountered at Exxon. I like to joke that I have never been as challenged in the real world as I was by Cornell’s prelims! But that preparation meant I was fully equipped to tackle the engineering challenges at Exxon. My foundation gave me a leg up compared to my peers, allowing me to move through roles quickly and excel.

After ExxonMobil, I pivoted into a renewable energy startup where I served as a senior process engineer while also diving into business development. That experience showed me how to integrate engineering with business to bring the best products to market. It also revealed a skill gap—I lacked business expertise. That realization led me to apply to MIT Sloan, where I just graduated.

I wanted to become a lethal asset—someone who could understand the technical details but also communicate a technology’s business viability and bring it to market. No matter how well I could communicate, it wouldn’t mean much if I couldn’t understand the technical aspects. My engineering background has been critical in allowing me to bridge those worlds.

Traci: I think that’s a wonderful connection you’ve made. Since I work in engineering communication, I love hearing how you link everything together! You’ve faced many challenges along your journey, but what has been the most significant one?

Stwart: I think the biggest challenge I’ve had to overcome, and one that many people will face, is impostor syndrome—or just having confidence when facing major challenges.

A quote I recently told a mentee is that impostor syndrome is the greatest thing that can happen to you. We all know that if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. So if you feel impostor syndrome, that means you’re in the right place.

One of my biggest personal challenges was being laid off from ExxonMobil in 2020. Due to COVID and the downturn in oil prices, the company reduced its workforce. I was placed in the performance improvement program (PiP), not because of my technical skills, but because my positivity and confidence were perceived as arrogance compared to technical veterans.

That feedback shocked me. What I saw as my greatest asset was framed as a weakness. I started doubting myself and losing confidence. But thanks to the support of my peers and family, I realized they were wrong—I wasn’t the problem. My ability to communicate and connect was a strength.

I doubled down on that skill, which became a driving force behind why I went to business school. Now, I’m leading a company, raising capital, and bringing technology to market—all because I leaned into what makes me unique instead of shying away from it.

Traci: I love that reframing of impostor syndrome—it’s not a sign of failure but of being in the right place to grow.

Christa: I agree. That’s such a great perspective. What’s your vision for your company and the impact you want to have?

Stwart: Our vision is to clean our environment and give plastic its rightful place in the circular economy. Ultimately, we aim to remove millions of pounds of plastic from our oceans, landfills, and environment while preventing an equivalent amount from being produced through fossil fuels.

Plastic has clear benefits—whether in healthcare, making vehicles lighter, or preventing food spoilage. The problem isn’t plastic itself, but how we produce and dispose of it. Our company ensures plastic can be reused indefinitely without relying on fossil fuel production.

Christa: Who are the key collaborators in achieving that vision?

Stwart: Two major groups: universities and financial institutions.

First, universities. There’s a gap in talent because traditional engineering curricula focus on legacy industries like oil and gas. We need more educational programs tailored to sustainability and clean technology.

Second, financial institutions. Hard-tech startups require large-scale investments, but they often struggle to attract funding compared to software companies, which generate quick returns. We need a shift in how venture capital and banks view long-term investments in infrastructure and sustainability.

Christa: That’s an excellent point. What advice would you give your sophomore self?

Stwart: Focus more on communication skills. Technical ability is important, but your ability to clearly communicate your ideas and work in a team is what sets you apart.

Now, as I recruit talent, I prioritize candidates with strong teamwork and communication skills over perfect GPAs. If I had understood that sooner, I wouldn’t have stressed as much over grades and instead focused on growing holistically.

Traci: I love that answer! And you weren’t paid to say that, right?

Stwart: Nope! But it’s true—communication has been critical in my career.

Christa: What do you do to relax and reenergize?

Stwart: I love skydiving! There’s nothing like jumping out of a plane and experiencing total freedom at 14,000 feet. It’s an incredible feeling.

On a daily basis, I go to the gym. Taking care of my body helps my mind stay sharp, so I can bring my best self to work.

Traci: That’s amazing. Stwart, thank you so much for this conversation.

Stwart: Thank you!

Christa: Thank you for listening. Join us next time as we celebrate engineers making a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: Today we have with us Xiangkun Elvis Cao. He is a Schmidt Science Fellow at MIT, working at the intersection of technology, business, and policy for carbon dioxide removal. Welcome, Elvis.

Elvis Cao: Hi, thanks, Christa. It’s a great honor to be here, especially after I left Cornell. It’s good to be back virtually.

Christa: Excellent. We’re glad to have you. Let’s start with you telling us a bit about your current work.

Elvis: Yeah, absolutely. I’m currently a Schmidt Science Fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT, and my focus is on carbon dioxide removal technologies. With my engineering training background, I now focus on how we can best develop and deploy these technologies at the nexus of technology, business, and policy. This is an important topic since we have urgent net-zero goals to reach, and carbon dioxide removal is one of the main approaches to help us achieve that.

Christa: Excellent, and what does that look like exactly?

Elvis: I got my PhD training in Mechanical Engineering at Cornell, where I worked on a specific carbon dioxide removal technology—reactive conversion of CO₂ into sustainable aviation fuels under sunlight. This is just one of many approaches for CO₂ utilization. Carbon removal technologies encompass capture, utilization, and sequestration, making it a broad and interdisciplinary field.

Now, transitioning into my postdoc, I have been fortunate to receive funding from the Schmidt Science Fellowship to work on what I believe is a critical missing piece—developing policies and business incentives to help transition these technologies from the lab to real-world deployment. Technology alone is not enough; we need to ensure that it can be successfully integrated into industries and markets.

Christa: Excellent. And who are the important collaborators in this work?

Elvis: Collaborators include stakeholders from multiple sectors—government agencies, NGOs, and policymakers who shape regulations and incentives. At the same time, research institutions collaborate with businesses to create synergy between scientific innovation and market implementation. By bringing together policy experts, businesses, and researchers, we can more effectively tackle climate challenges.

Christa: Yes, absolutely. In what ways do you anticipate AI impacting your work or the industry in the future?

Elvis: AI is a powerful tool, but it can’t solve everything. In materials discovery, AI helps identify potential new materials, optimize processes, and improve system efficiencies. However, AI still needs human scientists to evaluate ethical, social, and policy implications. For example, AI alone cannot determine whether a climate policy is equitable or just—we need human experts for that. AI and human collaboration are essential to making real progress.

Christa: Yes, I appreciate that. Thank you. What’s the most significant challenge you face in your work?

Elvis: One major challenge is the strong disciplinary boundaries in academia. My PhD was in Mechanical Engineering, and now I’m in Chemical Engineering, where I already see clear distinctions between adjacent disciplines. However, as I pivot further into the intersection of engineering and social science, the boundaries become even more rigid.

I often struggle to define my own research identity because traditional academic structures do not always accommodate interdisciplinary work. While there is growing recognition of the need for interdisciplinary research, funding mechanisms and institutional support remain limited. The Schmidt Science Fellowship is helping address this, but we need broader systemic change to support early-career researchers working at disciplinary intersections.

Christa: I’m glad to hear that you’re part of a movement toward more collaboration and interdisciplinary work. Can you tell us a bit about your journey and how you got to where you are?

Elvis: It has been a long journey. I was born in a small village in China and raised by my grandmother, who was a hardworking farmer. She never finished primary school, but she believed deeply in the power of education. Her encouragement and support helped me reach where I am today.

I earned my PhD from Cornell in 2021 and was honored to be included on multiple “30 Under 30” lists for my work on climate solutions. Now, as a Schmidt Science Fellow at MIT, I continue pursuing my passion for carbon removal technologies. I owe much of my success to the support of my family, mentors, and colleagues.

Christa: How did you get from rural China to Cornell?

Elvis: It wasn’t a straightforward journey. I completed my undergraduate degree in China, pursued a master’s in Canada, and then decided to apply for PhD programs in renewable energy. Cornell was the only institution that offered me full funding, so I accepted. That decision ultimately shaped my career and brought me to where I am today.

Christa: What do you wish you knew when you were a sophomore?

Elvis: I wish I had read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People earlier. The concepts in that book—dependence, independence, and interdependence—are incredibly valuable. Even today, I use a decision matrix from the book to prioritize tasks based on urgency and importance. This framework helps me manage my workload efficiently.

Christa: Interesting. I know you’re extremely busy, yet you take time to mentor others and share knowledge. Can you tell us about your article on failure?

Elvis: Yes. I believe we need more open conversations about failure, especially for early-career researchers. My journey was not straightforward, and I benefited from great mentorship. Now, I want to give back.

Earlier this year, I co-authored an article on failures in graduate school, which resonated with many readers. It has been accessed over 6,000 times since January, and I’ve received numerous messages from students who felt reassured knowing they weren’t alone. Science is full of setbacks, and we need to normalize discussing failures as part of the learning process.

Christa: What would you say is your purpose?

Elvis: My scientific purpose is to develop and deploy carbon removal technologies that make a measurable impact on climate change. Beyond that, I want to empower underrepresented individuals in STEM.

During my PhD, I mentored first-generation and low-income students, which was a transformative experience for me. In 2022, I was honored to be inducted into the Bouchet Honor Society for my advocacy. Moving forward, I want to continue supporting others while learning from them as well.

Christa: Where do you go to stay current in your field?

Elvis: Carbon dioxide removal is a rapidly evolving field. I stay updated through a LinkedIn group dedicated to this topic, where professionals share the latest advancements. I also rely on the Research Excellence in Carbon Sequestration (RECS) program, which has built a strong network of over 600 experts in this field.

Christa: What resources would you recommend for undergraduates who want to get involved in this work?

Elvis: The LinkedIn group I mentioned is now public, so students can join. Additionally, reading recent scientific publications is a great way to explore emerging research and build knowledge in carbon removal technologies.

Christa: What do you do to relax and re-energize?

Elvis: Gardening. During the pandemic, I couldn’t visit my family for four years. To stay connected, I started growing lettuce and tomatoes in Ithaca, calling my grandmother for advice. She loved teaching me how to farm, and it became a great way for me to relax. Unlike research, where results can take years, gardening gives immediate gratification.

Christa: If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?

Elvis: I always wanted to be a scientist, so I’m exactly where I want to be. But if I weren’t in STEM, I’d likely be involved in climate policy or social science—still working toward sustainability, just in a different role.

Christa: Thank you for this insightful conversation, Elvis.

Elvis: Thank you so much. The pleasure is mine.

Christa: Thank you for listening. Join us next time as we celebrate engineers making a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: We’re happy to share today’s conversation with Nathan Ghabour. Nathan, who currently works at Nike, is an experienced product leader in the computer software industry, skilled in computer-aided design, biomechanics, surface modeling, and product design. Nathan’s career launched with a Bachelor of Science focused on Biomechanical Engineering from Cornell University, class of 2013. Welcome, Nathan.

Nathan Ghabour: Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Christa: Nathan, let’s start by having you tell us a little bit about your current work.

Nathan: Yeah, right now I work at Nike within the Innovation Department called NXT. NXT is a group of innovators that Nike created that allows us to build the future of sport. It’s actually a really cool place to see such an investment in innovation. Unlike other apparel companies, Nike really wants to keep setting itself as a leader in the industry. I work in a department called NXT Digital. Because innovation existed before computers and Nike, I help lead a more digital wave focusing on machine learning and product creation. I use avatars and bodies to enable people to design and use a large set of data to allow us to understand all the different shapes and poses humans have.

Traci: I think that that is really fascinating. What does your day look like then? I’m imagining all kinds of things, but I want to know what is actually true.

Nathan: Yeah, I’m a director now, so I do a lot of different things. When I worked at a startup, I wore a lot of hats, and now as a director, I wear a lot of hats—different hats though. Part of my job is solving hard problems, really looking at what we can do with the datasets that we’ve collected over the last couple of years at Nike and finding ways we can create better products using that. That’s where I use my engineering skills to solve these bigger problems. Like what does a new sizing system look like? Or what are better ways to approach sizing across the industry?

Other parts of my job involve educating people. People don’t necessarily know what machine learning means in and outside of Nike. I help people understand the use cases and applications of the technology we create and build the tools to do that. I also manage a group of engineers who develop the tools and capabilities that create UIs and interfaces, enabling people to use all the data we’ve collected.

Traci: With that in mind, I have a follow-up question. I quite often talk to my undergraduates about using avatars or case histories, whether real or fictional, to help frame a problem. How do you develop those in-house and then deploy them to make a better product?

Nathan: Ironically enough, I worked for the company that helped create a standard for this. My third job out of Cornell was at a company called Body Labs. They focused on understanding human shape and pose.

At my first job, I was designing insoles for shoes and using CAD, but I longed for a foot model to design the perfect insole. Scanning technology is still pretty basic, capturing data and creating a point cloud—a collection of literal points in an XYZ plane. Body Labs took those point clouds and gave them meaningful human shapes. They developed a statistical model using thousands of scanned human bodies to separate shape and pose components, creating a unified mesh.

It’s like a human-shaped balloon being pumped up to fit all the point clouds. Once it fits, you have a unified mesh that you can import into any CAD system, analyze, and use across product creation.

Traci: I don’t think I’m going to get over the idea of pumping up a human form. That’s amazing. Thank you for the visual.

Nathan: We had to really think about different ways to explain the technology. Explaining a Gaussian equation to non-engineers is difficult. A big part of my job is creating analogies that make complex math and engineering concepts accessible. I work with designers and pattern makers who may not have taken multivariable calculus, so I have to frame things in ways they understand.

Traci: You’re doing a great job already today.

Christa: I’m thinking about how many students have an interest in product design. Can you tell us more about your path to where you are today?

Nathan: Out of Cornell, I was an independent major. I took a path off the normal course. I saw a future in design but knew that traditional engineering jobs often start with years of incremental work before getting to design. That wasn’t for me.

I started at HSS, building tooling to measure MCL circumferences for surface area calculations. It was fascinating, but I wasn’t designing, so I looked for something different. That’s when I found startup culture. I helped start a company called SOLS in 2013, which 3D-printed custom insoles. That allowed me to use my biomechanics and CAD expertise to create products while also learning about 3D printing.

Through each step in my career, I built a bridge between industrial design and mechanical engineering, ensuring products not only look good but also perform well.

Traci: You mentioned having to translate engineering concepts for non-engineers. How do you navigate that?

Nathan: My job as a translator has evolved from technical-to-technical to technical-to-business. I transitioned from engineer to product manager at SOLS, where I had to articulate design requirements to CAD engineers. At Body Labs, I had to understand statistical modeling and machine learning—fields I wasn’t trained in—so I read my old math books to grasp key concepts.

The trick is using simple terms. Saying “Gaussian” assumes people know what that is. Instead, I use analogies like the human-shaped balloon. You also learn to read visual cues—if someone looks overwhelmed, you need to dial back the complexity. Communication is a two-way process. If someone doesn’t understand, it’s not a failure; it’s an opportunity to refine the explanation.

Traci: I’m over here cheering because you’re describing so many of the things I teach in engineering communication—translation, distilling ideas, and vulnerability in learning.

Nathan: Absolutely. It’s not just a skill; it’s an asset. Being able to bridge communication gaps makes you more valuable in the workplace and opens career opportunities.

Christa: Thinking about impact, how does your work contribute to a healthier, more equitable, or more sustainable world?

Nathan: My work has always been about improving products for humans. Early in my career, I aimed to make orthotics more affordable and effective. Now, with avatars and digital fitting, I’m helping the industry move beyond outdated, one-size-fits-all ergonomic data—most of which is based on average white male Army recruits from decades ago.

We now have data to design inclusively, addressing differences in body types, genders, and physical abilities. My work ensures designers have the right data to create products that truly fit diverse populations.

Traci: One of my favorite topics is data collection and how it shapes design decisions.

Nathan: It’s critical. I spend a lot of time auditing datasets to prevent bias. There are no universal ethics guidelines for data, so it’s often up to individuals to self-regulate. That’s why diversity in engineering is so important—different perspectives ensure better decisions.

Christa: If you could go back, what advice would you give your sophomore self?

Nathan: Cornell is hard. But remember, you’re at one of the top universities in the world. No matter where you are in your class ranking, you’re still among the best. I wish I had reminded myself of that more often.

Traci: If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?

Nathan: I always wanted to be a chef! But engineering was the right path for me.

Christa: Thank you, Nathan. This was an inspiring conversation.

Nathan: Thank you!

Christa: Join us next time as we celebrate engineers making a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: Today, we are joined by Dr. Malika Grayson, founder of Steminist Empowered LLC and Program Manager at Northrop Grumman. Welcome.

Malika Grayson: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here, and it’s sunny where I am, so it makes me even happier.

Christa: Excellent. We’re thrilled to have you. We know you studied wind energy at Cornell. Can you tell us more about your background and how you got to this place in your career?

Malika: Yeah, I did study wind energy, which is funny because I have a small wind turbine on my desk right now just as a reminder of where I came from. My background started in Trinidad and Tobago—that’s where I grew up. I knew I wanted to do something in engineering, even though I didn’t know exactly what it was at the time. That took me to Adelphi University to study physics.

During my time at Adelphi, I did a summer undergraduate research experience at Georgia Tech. It was my first experience at an engineering-focused university, working in a lab with mechanical engineering research. That experience convinced me that I wanted to pursue a PhD. I applied to multiple programs and ultimately ended up at Cornell.

I remember visiting Ithaca in late April and telling myself I didn’t want to go there because of the weather—it was raining, and I think it was still snowing! But then, two days before I had to make a decision, I saw someone on TV wearing a shirt that said, Ithaca is Gorges. I took that as a sign and chose Cornell. Once I got there and had to decide what to study, I reflected on my Caribbean roots, the ocean breeze, and the power of wind energy. That’s how I ended up researching wind energy for my PhD.

Christa: I love it. I love that you took a pause from that Caribbean breeze to join us in gorgeous Ithaca, New York.

Malika: Yes. Of course, I don’t do any wind energy now, but that’s another story.

Christa: Well, let’s talk about that story now. What do you do now at Northrop Grumman? And what does that look like on a daily basis?

Malika: I’m a Program Manager at Northrop Grumman. My journey to program management actually started at Cornell through student organizations like Grad SWE and NSBE.

I attended a NSBE conference while at Cornell and visited the Northrop Grumman booth. The recruiter told me to come back the next year since I wasn’t graduating yet. I did, and that’s how I ended up meeting the director of engineering. I asked him, My background is in wind energy and fluid mechanics—what could I do at a defense contractor like Northrop Grumman? He suggested I apply for a rotational program, which turned out to be an incredible opportunity.

Through that program, I lived in California for a year, working on software development and thermodynamics. My second year was in Virginia, where I focused on portfolio management and leadership skills. In my third year, I split my time between strategy, technical engineering, and supporting engineers within the company.

After finishing the program, I transitioned into IT project management, solving large-scale problems. Eventually, I was offered a role as a Program Manager, leading strategic investments that impact the company. It has been an exciting journey of taking risks, learning, and growing.

Traci: I think that your path is so interesting—the ebb and flow of exploring and then coming back to your roots. That really allowed you to open doors for yourself while always knowing you had a solid foundation.

Malika: Absolutely. The more I take risks, the less scary they become. The first time you step outside your comfort zone, it’s intimidating. But if you keep doing it, you realize it’s okay to explore and see what else is out there. If something doesn’t work, you can always recalibrate.

Traci: Given all these experiences, what has been your most significant challenge, and how did you overcome it?

Malika: One of my toughest challenges was losing my advisor, Professor Garcia, during my PhD. At the time, I didn’t think I would finish graduate school. But I learned that when facing challenges, you have to find support, take a step back, and trust yourself.

Having a strong network is crucial. Whether it’s mentors, colleagues, or friends, building a community helps you push through difficult times. I grew up in a large Caribbean family, surrounded by support, and I’ve carried that mindset into every stage of my career.

Christa: Community and mentoring are clearly a big part of what you do. I know you serve on the board of Discover Engineering. Can you tell us more about that organization and your role?

Malika: Discover Engineering is an organization focused on providing every student with STEM experiences. They organize Engineers Week, Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day, and the Future City Competition, where students build sustainable cities.

I started as a volunteer at Northrop Grumman, helping promote Engineers Week. I aligned with their mission and kept getting involved. Eventually, someone in my network referred me to the board, and I’ve been serving there ever since.

Traci: You also founded Steminist Empowered. Can you tell us about that?

Malika: Steminist Empowered is a company I founded to encourage and mentor women of color pursuing advanced degrees. We started with a four-month mentorship program where we paired women with mentors, hosted guest speakers, and discussed topics like self-advocacy and imposter syndrome.

Now, we’re partnering with STEMNoire for a conference in Puerto Rico, where we’ll host a workshop on career preparation and networking. My goal is to continue expanding the impact of Steminist Empowered.

Traci: You have three books with your name on the cover. Can you relate that to the work you’re doing with Steminist Empowered?

Malika: Writing wasn’t something I planned after finishing my dissertation! But after being one of the few Black women in my PhD cohort and the second Black woman to graduate with a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Cornell, I realized I had experiences worth sharing.

I started a blog, which led to my book Hooded. My latest book, Lessons Learned: Stories from Women Leaders in STEM, is about resilience and success in STEM careers. My goal with all my writing is to uplift and encourage others.

Christa: Your work aligns so well with the College of Engineering’s mission to create a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Malika: Absolutely. Equity in engineering isn’t just about saying we need more diversity—it’s about taking action. I participate in employee resource groups, mentorship programs, and diversity councils because change requires effort from all of us.

Traci: Who have been your most important collaborators?

Malika: Educators, universities, and companies. I work with universities on workshops for students and partner with companies that support diversity in STEM. My collaborations help me stay engaged and understand what today’s students need.

Christa: What’s one signature message you like to share with audiences, especially students?

Malika: Don’t put yourself in a box. Just because you’re an engineer doesn’t mean you can’t be an author, entrepreneur, or leader in other fields. Engineering gives you the tools to solve problems—how you apply those skills is up to you.

Traci: What’s next for you?

Malika: Growing Steminist Empowered, expanding my impact in retention and recruitment efforts, and continuing to develop my leadership skills.

Christa: What do you do to relax?

Malika: I love cooking—especially when someone else washes the dishes! I also enjoy traveling, taking walks, and watching TV.

Traci: If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?

Malika: Maybe a chef, or a travel guide. But honestly, who knows? Life keeps evolving!

Christa: Thank you for this inspiring conversation, Malika.

Malika: Thank you for having me.

Christa: Join us next time as we celebrate engineers making a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you. We are happy to have Debbie Madden today.

Debbie Madden: Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Christa: Debbie, it’s clear you’ve accomplished a lot in your career. Can you please take a few minutes and tell us more about your path and what draws you to new opportunities?

Debbie: Sure. As you mentioned, I am a serial tech entrepreneur. I call myself the Accidental Entrepreneur because I never set out to be one. When I was at Cornell, even in my first job, I worked for one of the biggest companies in the world. I never thought I’d be where I am today.

I fell into entrepreneurship accidentally. I got a taste of it while working at Kraft Foods, now Mondelez, using my ORIE degree. It was exactly what I thought I was going to do with my career, but three months in, I realized it wasn’t for me. From then on, every other job I had involved either creating a business or working for a small startup.

Entrepreneurship is scary, messy, and exciting all at once. I think if I hadn’t experienced working for a large company first, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to take the leap. I found that I thrive in environments where I’m solving problems I don’t initially believe I can solve. That kind of challenge gives me energy and drive.

Christa: I love that. How do you translate that for students as they think about next steps and the possibility of becoming an entrepreneur?

Debbie: Over the last decade, entrepreneurship has been glamorized. But the reality is, 99.6% of startups fail, and it’s not necessarily the right path for everyone.

I encourage students to view every opportunity—whether perfect or not—as a learning experience. Some think, I’m going to be an entrepreneur, so I don’t need to learn how to code or I don’t need to understand back-office operations. That’s a mistake. Take every team, every boss—good or bad—and absorb the lessons.

One of my most valuable lessons came from a Cornell class where we had to form teams of four and start a business. My first team was high-performing. We gelled, divided tasks effectively, and supported each other. At the time, I didn’t realize what made us successful. But the next semester, I had a different team, and we struggled. That contrast taught me what makes a great team, and I still use that knowledge today.

Traci: I love your insights about teams. Can you highlight what makes a great team member?

Debbie: There’s a lot written about this, and it’s crucial because the best teams—not necessarily the best ideas—win.

Google spent millions researching what makes teams successful. The number one factor? Psychological safety. Do team members feel they can speak their minds, disagree, and still be respected? Do they commit to decisions even when they initially disagreed?

Diversity also plays a role, but simply having a diverse team doesn’t automatically make it effective. What truly matters is whether people feel safe to be themselves and voice their opinions. If you’ve ever been on a team—whether in sports, school, or even family—you’ve seen the difference between teams that solve problems effectively and those that struggle with the same issues repeatedly.

Traci: I love that. It’s not just about being nice; it’s about driving better outcomes.

Debbie: Exactly. High-functioning teams aren’t just a “nice-to-have” thing. They directly impact success—whether measured by happiness, money, or achievement.

Christa: Thinking about your work, what’s the broader vision you’re working toward? What impact do you hope to make?

Debbie: Personally, I believe in acting with integrity, even when no one is watching. I always ask myself, Would I be okay if this conversation was on the front page of The New York Times? If the answer is no, I change my approach.

In business, my company, Stride Consulting, builds software for major brands like Disney, Peloton, and IBM. But why we do it matters more than what we do. We aim to empower companies to have a positive impact on the world.

Technology is central to everything—AI, software, and machine learning can be used for good or bad. We want to build better systems that enable companies to achieve greater reach and efficiency in areas like healthcare, clean energy, and education.

Christa: Who have been some of the most important partners and collaborators in your career?

Debbie: I take inspiration from everyone I meet. I see the world as my tutor.

There’s a movie about a girl in a spelling bee who felt disadvantaged, and her mentor told her, The whole world is your tutor. That stuck with me. Every conversation I have, I ask, Can I learn something from this person?

If you don’t have a mentor, get one. It doesn’t have to be someone older or more experienced. Often, the best way to find a mentor is to become one. Help someone study, give career advice—mentorship is a two-way street.

Christa: What’s been the most significant challenge you’ve faced?

Debbie: When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, Stride was only a year old. I had young kids and was facing a year-long treatment. The hardest part wasn’t the treatment—it was learning to delegate everything at once.

I had to trust my junior team to run the company and let my kids take on responsibilities at home. It was terrifying, but they rose to the occasion. I realized I had been holding people back by trying to control too much. Delegating fully made me a better leader and allowed others to grow.

Christa: That’s inspiring. What a powerful lesson in leadership.

Debbie: One morning, when I finally regained the strength to make breakfast for my kids, I walked into the kitchen and saw that they had already done it themselves. I could have jumped back in, but instead, I sat down and had coffee with them. That moment taught me that sometimes, leadership means stepping back.

Traci: That’s an extraordinary insight. Leadership isn’t just about taking charge; sometimes it’s about empowering others.

Christa: If you could go back, what advice would you give to your sophomore self?

Debbie: As a sophomore, I felt like I didn’t belong. There weren’t many women in engineering, and many of my classmates seemed smarter than me.

Looking back, I realize that what makes me successful isn’t my intelligence—it’s my grit, humor, and empathy. My advice to students is: Find the courage to be confident, even in small ways. Surround yourself with people who challenge you. It’s okay to be unsure. There’s no one right path—just show up as a good human and keep learning.

Also, fun fact—sophomore year was a big year for me. I met my husband then, as did my sister and her husband. No pressure!

Christa: Let’s wrap up with a speed round. What do you do to relax and reenergize?

Debbie: I love lifting weights and playing strategy board games with my family. My favorite right now is El Dorado.

Traci: What’s one place you go to stay current?

Debbie: Podcasts! I listen to Freakonomics, The Daily, Hidden Brain, and others while I exercise or drink my morning coffee.

Christa: If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?

Debbie: I always thought I’d work with children. I’d probably be mentoring kids—helping them build confidence and find their place in the world.

Traci: I have no doubt you’ll find the right way to do that. Thank you for this conversation—it’s been truly inspiring.

Debbie: Thank you! Cornell gave me so much, and I cherish those memories—even the problem sets!

Christa: Thank you for listening. Join us next time as we celebrate engineers making a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: Joining us today is Ilayda Samilgil, CEO and co-founder of LLume Organic Robotics. Welcome, Ilayda.

Ilayda Samilgil: Hi, thanks for having me.

Christa: Excited to have you here today. Can you please start by telling us about your current work?

Ilayda: At LLume, we used to be called Organic Robotics, which is why we still refer to both names. At LLume, we make stretchable fiber optic sensors, called Light Lace, and integrate them into different form factors and textiles to measure human performance metrics. These range from vitals like respiration to biomechanics, including motion capture and muscle fatigue.

Traci: We’d love to hear more about how your product is distinct from anything else on the market.

Ilayda: Our stretchable fiber optics are soft and stretchable, as the name suggests, but they can sense without requiring skin contact. For example, our chest straps don’t need to be placed directly on the skin—you can wear them over clothing. It’s currently the only technology that measures the waveform of respiration rather than just providing a rate. We can detect whether you’re breathing shallowly or deeply, the duration of each breath cycle, and the length of inhalations and exhalations.

Additionally, because our sensors are fiber-optic based, they don’t have many of the limitations of electronic sensors. We can sample at extremely high speeds, which is important for capturing high-speed movements—like a pitcher’s shoulder motion. Other products often downsample data, but ours collects every detail.

Another advantage is that we can use a single battery-powered pod to operate multiple sensors. Instead of placing pods all over the body—on the elbow, shoulder, or chest—you can put one centrally, like on the back of a shirt, and still capture data from multiple areas. This makes our sensors less bulky and more comfortable.

Traci: Perfect. That was awesome.

Christa: You started your company as an undergraduate, and now, a few years out of school, you’re leading it. How did that happen?

Ilayda: The technology originated from my senior year lab work. To be honest, I didn’t plan to start a company. After graduation, I spent time job hunting, unsure about what kind of company or role I wanted. The only thing I was certain about was that I wanted to create something innovative, impactful, and tangible.

I didn’t want to work on large-scale products like cars or airplanes—I wanted to develop something I could hold in my hands. But apart from that, I was open to different opportunities.

While I was job searching, my co-founder was figuring out applications for the sensors and invited me to join. Initially, I doubted whether I had what it took to run a company. It felt risky, especially coming straight out of undergrad. But I realized that if I didn’t take this risk now, it would be even harder 20 years later with more responsibilities. It checked my two key boxes—innovation and tangibility—so I took the leap. Now, more than three and a half years later, here we are.

Traci: What does a typical day look like for you?

Ilayda: We have a growing team of about ten people, half remote and half in-person. Each day varies. Some days, like today, I’m in meetings all day—talking with investors, customers, or team members. Other days, I travel to demonstrate our technology.

We usually start at 9 AM with a full team meeting to align on priorities. Throughout the day, there are Zoom calls since half our team is remote. Testing is a daily activity—sometimes basic functionality checks, sometimes validation studies comparing our devices to other products.

There’s always problem-solving involved. We often face challenges with multiple possible solutions, so we strategize which approach will be most effective. The dynamic nature of each day is something our team thrives on.

Traci: Thinking about your team and daily challenges, what’s the long-term vision for LLume?

Ilayda: Right now, we’re developing two products—a chest strap and a shirt—focused on professional athletes. Our long-term goal is to make our technology accessible to fitness and wellness consumers as well.

We envision a lineup of different form factors beyond shirts and chest straps—leggings, socks, swimsuits. Users could choose wearables based on their specific needs, like leg tracking for weightlifting or a swimwear-integrated sensor for aquatic training. Ultimately, we want to provide personalized, comfortable, and highly functional wearables powered by our unique technology.

Traci: That’s an exciting vision. What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced?

Ilayda: My answer to this changes every few months as new challenges arise. In the beginning, it was finding the right team. Convincing people to join a startup without significant investment was difficult.

Another challenge was self-doubt—wondering if I had what it took to lead. There were a lot of rejections from grants, pitch competitions, and investors. The first “yes” was pivotal. Once we got one, others followed more quickly.

Then there were practical hurdles—I studied engineering, not finance, HR, or accounting. Learning how to manage these aspects of a startup, especially as an international founder unfamiliar with U.S. benefits systems, was tough. But over time, I figured it out.

Christa: What resources helped you develop these skills?

Ilayda: Advisors and mentors played a huge role. We joined the Praxis Incubator at Cornell, where mentors guided us through business development.

We also reached out to Cornell alumni through LinkedIn. Searching for startup finance experts or other needed skills, we messaged alumni, and almost everyone responded. The Cornell network has been incredibly supportive.

Christa: As you grew into an entrepreneurial role, what was your first step in engaging with the ecosystem at Cornell?

Ilayda: My co-founder had some experience with it, which helped us navigate the process. We applied to Praxis, and they provided feedback on how to refine our approach.

Even though I didn’t plan to be an entrepreneur, I minored in entrepreneurship at Cornell. That gave me a foundation in the startup ecosystem, which was valuable when we officially launched.

Traci: How does your work contribute to a healthier, more sustainable, or more equitable world?

Ilayda: Our chest strap, which will be our first commercial product, helps users optimize breathing. Breath control can reduce stress, lower blood pressure, and improve wellness.

In the long term, we see applications in clinical and medical settings. While our initial focus is sports and wellness, the potential for broader health impact is significant.

Traci: What organizations or collaborators helped shape your vision?

Ilayda: We participated in NSF’s I-Corps Program, which helped with customer discovery and business strategy. We also work with Cornell’s Strength and Conditioning Department, providing devices for testing and feedback.

Initially, we explored partnerships with larger companies but decided to establish ourselves first before revisiting those opportunities. However, the interest from major industry players was confidence-boosting.

Christa: If you could go back, what do you wish you knew as a sophomore?

Ilayda: I wish I knew there were so many startup opportunities in Ithaca. I would have sought internships with early-stage companies to see how they operate.

As an international student, I also wish I had known that starting a company here was legally possible with the right steps. Seeing other young founders succeed would have helped me realize entrepreneurship was an option.

Christa: What do you do to relax?

Ilayda: I spend time with my dog, ice skate, and read. Skating is especially calming—it forces me to focus and be in the moment.

Traci: If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?

Ilayda: Something innovative and hands-on, probably in consumer electronics or hardware. But hopefully, I won’t have to find out!

Christa: We hope for continued success with LLume. Thank you for joining us today.

Ilayda: Thank you for having me. This was fun.

Christa: Join us next time as we celebrate engineers making a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: Today, we’re joined by Matthew Snyder. I met Matthew when he was an undergraduate here studying civil and environmental engineering. He was nominated by a supervisor for Co-op Student of the Year for his exceptional work and received that award in 2018. He then stayed on for his master’s in civil and environmental engineering. Now, he’s an assistant project manager and engineer working with water purification and resource recovery. Welcome, Matthew.

Matthew Snyder: Good to be here.

Christa: How are you today?

Matthew: I’m good. It’s a little gloomy down here in Texas, but we always need the rain.

Christa: Yeah, good. Glad you have that. Speaking of rain, you work in water purification. Can you tell us more about your work and what that entails?

Matthew: It’s a fancy way of saying drinking water. I do mostly “inside the fence,” as we call it—once we get the water to treat and then send it out past that. I do a little bit beyond that, but primarily focus on the treatment process itself.

While I was at Cornell, I worked with AguaClara on gravity-based filtration and also did research with the Ithaca Water Treatment Plant, which has membrane filtration. Membranes have fascinated me ever since—I tell people I fell in love with them in school. My company specializes in membrane filtration, whether that’s direct filtration, where water goes straight through the membranes into distribution, or indirect, where we pre-treat it before filtration.

Christa: What does your day-to-day look like? Are you walking around the plant, working remotely, or behind a computer?

Matthew: My company is medium-sized, with around 1,100–1,200 employees. We pride ourselves on client service, which means we’re not fully remote. While we allow hybrid schedules, I prefer going to the office.

I spend about three days in the office working on design and number-crunching, but at least two days in the field. I visit treatment plants we’re working on, including one currently under construction from a design I spearheaded when I first started. It’s rewarding to see it go from a study phase to an actual facility.

Additionally, we’re serving as third-party construction managers on a quarter-billion-dollar project, so I spend a day there ensuring everything aligns with the plans. Some of my colleagues do more desk-based work, but I actively seek field opportunities because I enjoy the hands-on aspect.

Christa: For others interested in those opportunities, what advice do you have? What skills should they develop?

Matthew: My first big opportunity came from a co-op at a plant in its commissioning phase. That hands-on experience was invaluable.

A willingness to take on less glamorous jobs also helps. I primarily work in clean water, but I also do wastewater treatment. Our big construction project is a wastewater plant, and not everyone wants to spend time at a wastewater facility. But I volunteered, gained experience, and now I have more opportunities.

Christa: So, curiosity and a willingness to take on the tasks others may not want.

Matthew: Exactly. When I started visiting the wastewater plant, the project manager told me he struggled to get people out there. Meanwhile, I thought, Great! I get a day out of the office every week. It’s never a dull moment.

Christa: What has been one of your greatest challenges?

Matthew: The transition from school to work was difficult. At Cornell, I took a class where we partnered with alumni working in engineering firms. They gave us real projects, which was a great introduction, but still barely scratched the surface.

When I started working in 2020, everything was remote, making it even harder to figure out processes. Unlike school, where everything is structured, real-world work varies significantly from person to person. I had to learn to ask questions constantly.

Christa: That willingness to ask questions seems to have served you well.

Matthew: Definitely. I learned during my co-op that it’s better to ask a million questions than to guess wrong.

Christa: What impact does your work have?

Matthew: Many people take water for granted. My current project is a $22 million plant that provides clean water to a small town—just 12 million gallons a day, which isn’t much in the grand scheme. These projects are expensive and essential, yet often overlooked.

As young professionals, we want to raise awareness. We recently hosted interns from across our company for a tour, showcasing different engineering roles in water treatment, structural work, electrical systems, and water resources.

Now, with the EPA introducing stricter PFAS regulations, public trust and education are more critical than ever. We’re brainstorming ways to engage communities—like bringing high school students to tour water plants so they understand where their water comes from.

Christa: That’s a great initiative. Shifting gears, you worked on an MEng project during COVID. Can you tell us about that?

Matthew: Our team studied the Ithaca Water Treatment Plant, which sources water 13 miles away. They struggled with manganese fouling their membranes. The problem was that they couldn’t detect the issue until it was too late.

If they dosed chemicals too early, it would turn the water slightly purple—not harmful, but concerning to customers. If they reacted too late, the membranes clogged. We created a predictive tool based on rainfall, temperature, and stream flow to optimize dosing.

Unfortunately, COVID limited our ability to refine it further, but we provided a useful starting point.

Christa: Your work combined technical expertise with public communication.

Matthew: Yes, and that’s why I chose the project. After years of technical work, I wanted experience with stakeholder interaction. Now, I rely on plant operators’ input regularly.

Christa: What’s next for your learning and professional development?

Matthew: In August or September, I’ll qualify to become a Professional Engineer (PE), which is a major milestone in civil engineering. Unlike some disciplines, civil engineers stamp infrastructure designs—everything from roads to drinking water systems—so it’s a big responsibility.

Beyond that, I want to deepen my expertise in membrane technology. I’ve attended conferences and hinted to my boss that I want to specialize further. Whether that means more school or hands-on experience, I’ll see where it takes me.

Christa: That’s exciting. Are you ready for the speed round?

Matthew: Sure.

Christa: What do you do for fun and to relax?

Matthew: I’m a big golfer. One of the perks of living in Texas is year-round golf. My uncle owns a course in upstate New York, so I love visiting in the summer.

Christa: What’s one place you go to stay current in your work?

Matthew: I’m a member of AWWA (American Water Works Association). They have an excellent online resource for research, journal articles, and design standards.

Christa: If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?

Matthew: I’ve always been drawn to water. My mom was a civil and environmental engineer at Cornell before becoming a lawyer specializing in water rights. I initially resisted following her path but ended up here anyway!

I originally considered applying my knowledge outside of consulting—maybe in water policy or infrastructure planning. Long term, I want to contribute to water sustainability and accessibility.

Christa: Water is such a critical issue globally. How do you balance infrastructure costs with the need for clean water access?

Matthew: In Texas, we have the Texas Water Development Board, which funds infrastructure projects for underserved communities. My company has a team specializing in helping municipalities secure funding.

Christa: This has been a great conversation. Thank you for joining us, Matthew.

Matthew: Thank you for having me.

Christa: Join us for the next episode, where we celebrate engineers making a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum, where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: Today, Esther Park will be joining us. Esther is a chemical engineering graduate and here to speak with us about her career as a pharmacist. Welcome, Esther.

Esther Park: So glad to be here.

Christa: So glad to have you. First, can you tell us a bit about your path to becoming a pharmacist?

Esther: Yes. It was fairly convoluted, but now I look back, it ended up being a straight path. I graduated with a chemical engineering degree and did what I thought was an amazing co-op program at Procter & Gamble. After seven months of work experience, I knew I wanted to do consumer products.

The Cornell Career Center really set me up for success with career fairs and recruiter meetings. I had a couple of job offers in consumer products before graduation and chose The Clorox Company in the Bay Area. I worked on Pine-Sol, bleach, and Clorox disinfecting wipes. But after two years, during the 2008 economic downturn, the company shifted focus from innovation to cost-saving, which was less exciting.

I started considering a career shift but continued working at Clorox while figuring things out. I took some classes and shadowed different roles, including biotech and clinical trials. One of my mentors suggested that having a pharmacy degree would open more doors in clinical trials. Ironically, my mom had wanted me to be a pharmacist in high school, and I refused, thinking it was the most boring job ever. Turns out, she was right.

A neonatologist friend at Stanford Children’s set me up with a shadowing opportunity with a pharmacist colleague. I spent four hours following her and was amazed—pharmacists in pediatric institutions care for the most vulnerable patients and see miracles every day. That experience changed everything.

I reduced my work hours to 75% and took four additional classes—communications, anatomy, psychology, and physiology—before applying to pharmacy school. I got into UCSF, the top-ranked program at the time. Cornell had more than prepared me. The P-Chem course there was so much easier than Professor Duncan’s! After four years, I earned my doctorate, started working in pediatric pharmacy, and eventually moved into regulatory compliance and safety.

Christa: Excellent. Thank you.

Traci: I’m really interested in your job title. What does a regulatory compliance and safety pharmacist do?

Esther: There’s a lot happening behind the scenes in a hospital that patients and families should never have to see. My role focuses on preventing and analyzing errors. If an error occurs, we conduct a root cause analysis—asking why at least seven times to understand how and why it happened.

I also communicate with patients and families when an error reaches a patient, explaining what happened and how we’re preventing it from recurring. I’m a front-facing leader for major projects, such as changing infusion pumps, addressing medication shortages, or updating medical supplies.

Pharmacy is one of the most heavily regulated areas in a hospital, and rightly so. My team ensures our five licensed pharmacies comply with state and federal regulations while exceeding internal safety standards. I have seven pharmacists reporting to me, each responsible for areas like shortages, quality, and formulary management. It’s not what I originally imagined doing, but I love it.

Traci: Esther, I am so impressed by your energy, your devotion to process improvement, and how much you’re managing. You’re leading teams and working across so many departments. Can you talk about the communication skills you’ve developed?

Esther: I love this topic because I always say, It doesn’t matter how much you know or do—if you can’t communicate it effectively, it doesn’t matter.

For example, pharmacists participate in rounds with medical teams. If I present a medication change unclearly or forcefully, the doctor may dismiss it. But if I phrase it concisely and persuasively, I can influence care decisions that reduce harm.

Hand-offs are another critical communication point. If I don’t clearly convey the situation in shift transitions, crucial details can be lost, affecting patient safety.

My team uses SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation) formatting for all communication. Our goal is to make it concise—one clear subject line, key bullet points, a short assessment, and an actionable recommendation.

At Cornell, I took Professor Clancy’s memo writing class. She told us we wouldn’t appreciate it until we were in the workplace—and she was absolutely right. Now, even senior leaders send me reports to edit because clear communication is that essential.

Traci: Thank you for sharing that. It’s great for students to hear how communication skills translate into the workplace.

Christa: Thinking about these communication and optimization skills, I hear from students who want to contribute to healthcare or sustainability but aren’t sure how. What would you say to them?

Esther: Engineers absolutely have a place in healthcare. Let’s take IV fluids—something most people don’t think about.

IV fluids contain a precise balance of electrolytes, and if a solution is hypotonic (lacking enough electrolytes), it can cause serious harm. Engineers ensure these solutions are sterile, stable, and packaged correctly.

Recently, our hospital switched to environmentally friendly IV bags. However, these new bags burst when transported through our pneumatic tube system. Engineers had to assess everything—tube pressure, packaging design, even how pharmacy staff placed the bags in the tube system.

This is the kind of problem-solving engineers bring to healthcare every day.

Christa: That’s a great example.

Traci: Where do you go for collaboration or inspiration in solving these big challenges?

Esther: I collaborate with providers, nurses, respiratory therapists, and sourcing partners. Outside my hospital, I work with compliance leaders in Seattle, statewide pediatric groups, and even federal quality and safety organizations.

A great example is RSV. Every summer, we track RSV trends worldwide to anticipate outbreaks. I partner with Medicaid, Medicare, and other hospitals to ensure we have preventive treatments ready.

This year, RSV finally made headlines, raising awareness and accelerating vaccine development. The work behind the scenes—from tracking trends to securing treatments—is crucial, and engineers play a role in making it happen.

Christa: That’s fascinating. What’s been the most significant challenge you’ve faced?

Esther: Two challenges stand out.

First, when we switched electronic health records, everything had to be rebuilt manually, disrupting workflows. Doctors and nurses were frustrated. I had to escalate issues, ensure clear communication, and push for fundamental fixes, not just quick patches.

Second, drug shortages. A few years ago, we had 50 shortages annually. Now, it’s hundreds. Some meds simply disappear when manufacturers shut down.

We take three approaches:

1. Pharmacy absorbs the impact—we adjust behind the scenes so doctors and patients don’t notice.
2. We change protocols—doctors must prescribe alternatives, and nurses adjust administration.
3. No alternatives exist—we have to make tough calls about patient care.

This is an urgent crisis. Engineers in biotech and pharmaceutical manufacturing are desperately needed to address these issues.

Traci: That’s staggering. Let’s look back—what advice would you give your younger self?

Esther: Take intro courses, shadow professionals, and talk to the Career Center. And remember: 80% of decisions are good decisions. If they’re not, you learn from them.

Christa: How do you stay current in your field?

Esther: I follow professional organizations, FDA/DEA updates, and research journals. Critical thinking is essential—always vet your sources.

Traci: Finally, how do you relax?

Esther: Being outdoors, hiking in Olympic National Park, practicing mindfulness, and enjoying a good meal.

Christa: If you weren’t a pharmacist, what would you be doing?

Esther: Zoology! I once lived on a boat in the Galapagos, swimming with sharks and penguins. That would be my dream job.

Christa: That sounds incredible. Thank you for sharing your story, Esther.

Esther: Thank you!

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: Welcome. Today we have with us Caitlin Stanton, a computer science graduate. Welcome, Caitlin.

Caitlin Stanton: Hello. It’s great to be here.

Christa: Excellent. It’s great to have you. And I saw on social media that this is a special week for you—you just got promoted.

Caitlin: I did! It actually happened yesterday. So, moving up in the world.

Christa: Excellent. Congratulations—well-deserved, I’m sure. Can you start by telling us a bit about your current work?

Caitlin: Yeah. I work at Cruise. I used to be an associate software engineer, and now I’m a software engineer, which is really exciting. I work in our Embedded Systems Department on the kernel frameworks and accelerators team.

Each person on my team owns a component within the car. Since Cruise is a self-driving car company, you’ll see our orange and white cars in places like San Francisco, Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Austin—driving with no driver behind the wheel. We provide ride-hailing services, similar to Lyft and Uber, as well as grocery delivery.

I specifically own the soundboard, which controls the various sounds our electric car emits. Since the engine is silent, we need to produce artificial sounds so that people can hear us. My work also involves enabling customers to call support from the car, ensuring the vehicle can hear emergency sirens to pull over, and integrating with other vehicle functions. I’ve been at Cruise for a little over a year and a half, and I recently took full ownership of the soundboard system. My days are spent coding, testing hardware, and ensuring my system fits within the broader vehicle framework—lots of moving parts!

Christa: That’s really innovative work. I know many students are interested in this field. Can you tell us more about your path and what helped you get here?

Caitlin: For sure. When I first got into coding, I loved the idea that a single line of code could change something, like a website or an app. But what really excited me was working with tangible systems. When I joined Girls Who Code in high school, one of our projects involved moving a robot around, and I found it fascinating that you could write a line of code and the robot would physically respond.

At Cornell, I studied Electrical and Computer Engineering, where I learned both coding principles and the hardware that supports them. I developed an appreciation for different levels of the technology stack—from high-level apps to the physics of circuits.

My junior and senior years were the most impactful because I took project-based courses. These courses allowed me to work hands-on with Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, and FPGA boards—plugging in circuits, making things light up, and even creating my own projects. These experiences sparked my interest in embedded systems, which is exactly what I do now.

For my master’s, I refined those skills further. When I started job hunting, self-driving cars stood out as a really interesting and unsolved challenge. Cruise and I found each other, and the rest is history!

Christa: What’s been the most significant challenge you’ve faced in your work, and how did you overcome it?

Caitlin: The biggest challenge I’ve faced is imposter syndrome. I’m the first and only junior hire on my team, working alongside senior engineers with decades of experience. Consciously, I know I can’t compare myself to them, but there’s always that little voice asking, Should I be doing more?

Another challenge is representation. I’m one of two women on a 15-person team. While my team is supportive, there aren’t many role models who share my background or experiences, which makes it harder to visualize my career path.

To overcome this, I actively seek mentorship—inside and outside of work. I’ve connected with senior engineers at Cruise and with mentors from previous jobs, professors at Cornell, and even my friends. I’ve learned that mentors don’t have to be older or in the same industry; they can be anyone who provides guidance.

Christa: I love that concept—knowing you can learn from anybody. And I know you’ve made a habit of giving back. Can you tell us more about your mentorship work?

Caitlin: Absolutely. I got my start in tech through Girls Who Code and later Build by Girls, both programs that support women and underrepresented minorities in technology. Having a strong community early on made a huge difference in my journey.

I wanted to provide that same support to others. In high school and college, I mentored students from underprivileged backgrounds and those transferring from community colleges to four-year universities. I also spoke at hackathons, judged competitions, and even gave a TEDx talk at Cornell.

I know I don’t have all the answers, but I want to be a resource for others. If someone can look at my journey and think, Caitlin did this, so it’s possible for me, then I’ve done something meaningful.

Christa: That’s amazing. What’s one of the most important messages you’ve been sharing lately?

Caitlin: Imposter syndrome is normal. It’s not fun, but nearly everyone experiences it. Even people who seem confident on the surface can be doubting themselves internally.

I try to reframe imposter syndrome as an opportunity for growth. If you feel out of place, instead of seeing it as a weakness, use it as motivation to learn. Find a mentor, take a class, or dive deeper into your field. And most importantly, remember that failure is not the end—it’s part of the process.

Christa: That’s such an important message. I also remember you writing a blog post about not getting a return offer from an internship. It went viral! Can you share a bit about that experience?

Caitlin: Yes! I had an internship where I expected to get a return offer, but I didn’t. I was devastated at first, but I decided to write a blog post about it, just as a personal reflection.

I posted it on LinkedIn, and suddenly it blew up. People reached out saying they’d had similar experiences but never talked about it. That’s when I realized rejection is common, but we rarely discuss it openly.

Ultimately, that setback led me to better opportunities. I did another internship, gained new experiences, and even ended up interviewing with that same company later on—this time, they gave me an offer! It taught me that closed doors often lead to better ones.

Christa: What an inspiring perspective. And now, here you are at Cruise, working on technology that contributes to a more sustainable world. Can you tell us more about how your work impacts the environment and safety?

Caitlin: Cruise’s self-driving cars are designed to improve road safety and reduce emissions.

From a safety standpoint, human drivers get distracted, tired, or make mistakes. Our cars use AI, cameras, radar, and lidar to make decisions faster and more accurately than a human driver could.

Environmentally, all of our vehicles are electric. We aim to replace gas-powered cars with an emission-free ride-hailing fleet, reducing our carbon footprint while increasing carpooling efficiency.

Christa: That’s incredible. For students interested in this field, what advice would you give?

Caitlin: You don’t have to work at a self-driving car company to get started. Focus on building relevant skills—whether in UI/UX, embedded systems, hardware, or AI. Work on projects, take hands-on courses, and seek internships in related fields.

Christa: What do you do to relax and recharge?

Caitlin: I love running, spending time outdoors, and making sure I balance work with hobbies. I also set boundaries with my time—if something isn’t bringing me joy or growth, I reevaluate it.

Christa: If you weren’t in tech, what would you be doing?

Caitlin: Probably working in advocacy—helping underrepresented communities access education and career opportunities.

Christa: Thank you so much, Caitlin. It’s been wonderful talking to you.

Caitlin: Thank you!

Christa: Join us next time as we celebrate engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: Today we have Jessica Olsen, who graduated in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in civil and environmental engineering. Jessica is currently an infrastructure design engineer for the U.S. Air Force and tutors local community college students in math and chemistry. Welcome, Jessica.

Jessica Olsen: Hi, thank you for having me.

Christa: Our pleasure. Jessica, can you please talk with us about the work that you are currently doing?

Jessica: Sure. Right now, I am working under the Palace Acquire program through the U.S. Air Force. I work as an infrastructure design engineer for potable water systems. I’m currently stationed at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in central New Jersey. The base is really interesting because it has Army, Navy, FBI, and Air Force all located on the same base.

I’m responsible for designing the infrastructure that allows us to get water out of our taps. Anytime there’s a rupture in a line or new construction is happening, I go in and design how that water gets from our water treatment facilities to our buildings. I’m also undergoing a water quality study to improve the quality of water we provide to everyone on base.

Christa: I love it.

Traci: We were interested in how you got to this spot. Let’s go back in time a little bit. Engineering training at Cornell was no doubt rigorous, but can you explore for us what it’s like to transition from being a student into being a practicing professional?

Jessica: Sure. I participated in the co-op partnership while I was at Cornell, and it was really influential for me to take a break in my education and understand what an office environment is like. I did my co-op with Langdon Engineering and Environmental Services, which is a private consulting firm. That was a different experience compared to my government practice now. In private consulting, we were the client, contracted to do work all over the country—building Amazon warehouses in Colorado, monitoring landfills in New Jersey.

Now, working for the government, we are the owners, able to execute whatever work is needed. The transition from education to working full-time has been really interesting because, in school, you have short-term goals—assignments, exams, and semesters. But now, I’m working on years-long projects, so I’ve had to shift from short-term thinking to long-term planning.

Traci: As an instructor, that’s a really interesting point. In school, learning is structured, but now you have to be self-directed. How do you choose where to focus your time in staying up to date?

Jessica: I’ve joined a lot of email lists from universities whose research interests me. They send out monthly reports on what they’re doing in their labs, and I find that really informative. By the time research makes its way into the public via news, textbooks, or professional society magazines, it could be years old. So I think it’s important to stay connected to those original sources of information.

Traci: That’s such a great point. There’s a lag time in how knowledge gets disseminated, and keeping up with real-time research is critical.

Christa: I love that. That’s great for our faculty and students to hear, especially those considering undergraduate research. Speaking of students, you tutor at a community college. What do you find invigorating and challenging about that work?

Jessica: The biggest challenge is the lingering effects of pandemic-style learning. Students who struggled with online learning are now facing difficulties in their more advanced courses. For example, a student might be taking calculus but struggling with pre-calc concepts.

As a tutor, I have to think deeply about the progression of a math or chemistry education and identify those missing building blocks. It’s also a humbling experience—I’ve realized that as professionals, we often skip over steps in our head without thinking about the foundations.

Many of the students I work with are balancing full-time jobs and families, taking classes at night, and still reaching for education. It’s inspiring to be part of that journey.

Traci: That’s such important and valuable work. What motivated you to choose community college tutoring?

Jessica: I’ve taken classes there since high school. Even during my summer breaks at Cornell, I took courses in topics I didn’t have time to explore—environmental science, psychology, philosophy.

Now that I’m back home and working full-time, I found myself with empty space in my schedule. In school, there’s always another assignment to work on, but now I have time to explore anything I want. Tutoring was a way for me to reconnect with my community and give back to an institution that helped me for so many years.

Traci: That’s such a generous and growth-oriented mindset. I love it.

Christa: Thinking back to yourself as a high school student or an early-year Cornell student, what do you wish you knew back then?

Jessica: I wish I had known that it’s okay to take time to make decisions. I felt pressured by the semester system—like I had to figure everything out within four years.

Looking back, I was so focused on finishing my classes, joining research labs, and being involved that I didn’t reflect as much on personal growth. Education isn’t just about checking boxes—it’s about understanding your goals and being okay with adjusting them along the way.

Christa: What do you think about when envisioning your future career?

Jessica: I’m really interested in going back to graduate school. I’ve applied for master’s programs for the upcoming academic year, focusing on hands-on research in water quality.

Right now, my job is a mix of design work on the computer and fieldwork seeing actual construction. But I loved being in the lab during undergrad, and I want to go back to that. Whether it’s studying emerging contaminants or water management, I want to transition into research and, hopefully, a role with the Department of Defense in environmental research or coastal resilience projects.

Traci: How does working on long-term projects in your field shift the way you approach problem-solving?

Jessica: It requires balancing past knowledge with rapidly emerging research. We’re at a pivotal point in water policy—learning about contaminants like PFAS that have been used for decades but only recently understood to be harmful.

Regulations are evolving, and my work requires staying on top of federal updates. Water projects are never really “done”—they evolve as science and policy change.

Christa: Your openness to learning and adapting is inspiring. What organizations are key collaborators in your field?

Jessica: Water policy is unique because there’s a federal umbrella through the EPA, but individual states have their own regulations. States like New Jersey and California are leaders in progressive water policies, but not all states regulate contaminants the same way.

Private organizations, like the World Health Organization and various water initiatives, also influence regulations. The level of protection people receive depends on where they live, and that’s something I think about a lot in my work.

Traci: What’s been the biggest challenge in your work?

Jessica: The unknown health risks of emerging contaminants. PFAS, for example, accumulates in the body and doesn’t degrade in the environment. We’re still developing technology to break these chemicals down into non-harmful components, but full implementation could take decades.

Christa: What advice would you give students interested in your path?

Jessica: Try a co-op or internship. It’s invaluable to get real-world exposure and understand what’s possible in your field.

Christa: What do you do to relax?

Jessica: I love dance, Pilates, and spending time by the ocean—even if it’s too cold to swim. And I love to read!

Traci: Any book recommendations?

Jessica: Water 4.0 by David Sedlak. It takes you through the evolution of water infrastructure from ancient Rome to today.

Christa: If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?

Jessica: Probably working in environmental science, studying coral or coastal species.

Christa: Jessica, this has been an inspiring conversation. Thank you!

Jessica: Thank you so much—I really enjoyed it.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: Today we are with Nidhi Maniar, Cornell class of 2022 with a Chemical Engineering master’s degree. Nidhi is a battery engineer. Welcome.

Nidhi Maniar: Hi, Christa. Thank you so much for a great introduction.

Christa: It’s great to see you. We are excited to share your story. We had a great conversation the other day, and I’m excited for others to learn more about the work you do.

Traci: Well, this is Traci, and I guess I will get us started today. Can you give us a little bit of background about what it is exactly you do at Amazon as a battery engineer? Let’s just start there.

Nidhi: Sure. At Amazon, a battery engineer is someone who has a deep understanding of battery chemistry and mechanisms. They are responsible for optimizing battery performance and ensuring safety and reliability in devices.

Traci: I always think of Amazon as just an online retailer. How is Amazon deploying batteries and why do they need your expertise?

Nidhi: Amazon has a devices sector, including Lab126, where products like tablets, e-readers, and Ring home security devices are developed. All these devices use lithium-ion or other battery chemistries, and we need to ensure they are safe and reliable for customer use. Right now, Amazon’s primary focus in this space is consumer electronics.

Traci: That’s a great explanation. Thank you for that. You’re a new graduate and have been at Amazon for a little while now. What do you enjoy most about your work?

Nidhi: There are three things I enjoy the most. First, the cross-functional collaboration at Amazon. I work closely with the thermal, mechanical, and firmware teams, and I get to learn a lot from different perspectives.

Second, the curiosity of learning new things. Since I recently graduated, there’s so much I still need to learn. It’s fascinating how such small battery cells can be so complex.

Third, the feeling of making a difference in society by being part of the battery revolution that is transforming the world.

Christa: Say more about that revolution.

Nidhi: Companies are trying to become greener, focusing on higher energy density batteries. Eventually, we will transition from oil and gas to electric vehicles and battery-based energy solutions.

Christa: For someone interested in this work, what resources would you recommend?

Nidhi: If you’re interested in battery engineering, the role varies from company to company. I recommend reaching out to Cornell Engineering Career Services if you’re still figuring out what you like—they were instrumental in guiding me.

Networking is also key. Connect with people on CUeLINKS and LinkedIn to learn more about different roles. Cornell offers many resources beyond this, so students should take full advantage of them.

Christa: Are there any particular courses or projects that students should try to prepare for this type of work?

Nidhi: If you’re looking to become a battery engineer, working on battery-related projects is essential. Getting hands-on experience in chemistry fundamentals will help.

Cornell has many energy-related courses that are useful. Additionally, I highly recommend the management writing course offered by the Johnson School. Writing skills are critical in any industry.

Christa: Can you say more about how you use your writing skills?

Nidhi: Writing is highly valued at Amazon. For example, when writing an email, you don’t want to overwhelm the reader with too much information. The high-level overview should be clear enough that someone can grasp the key takeaways in a few seconds.

As an engineer, you may underestimate the importance of writing until you take a structured course and realize how much you can improve.

Traci: That’s great to hear. Writing and communication are essential skills for engineers. You were in Chemical Engineering, correct?

Nidhi: Yes.

Traci: They try to handle technical communication in-house, but I love that you sought additional training in writing.

I want to ask you about job searching and networking as a new graduate. Can you walk us through your experience with that?

Nidhi: Sure. The first thing in a job search is to focus on the role you want instead of applying randomly to hundreds of companies. It’s more effective to apply to 10–15 targeted companies and tailor your resume for each one.

Also, instead of applying directly on websites, network with employees from those companies. Ask for feedback on your resume and build a conversation before requesting a referral.

Another important aspect is avoiding comparisons. Everyone has their own journey, and it’s crucial not to get discouraged if someone else finds a job before you.

Traci: I really appreciate that perspective. Networking is important—did you primarily use online tools like LinkedIn and CUeLINKS?

Nidhi: Yes, CUeLINKS was very helpful. The Cornell alumni network is amazing—alumni are generally willing to help if you reach out politely. Also, attending local networking events can be beneficial.

Christa: What else do you think is important for the audience to know?

Nidhi: One key insight I’ve gained is that companies appreciate deep fundamental knowledge more than overly complex projects. Having strong basics is often more valuable than trying to impress with complexity.

Traci: That’s a great perspective. Let’s step into a time machine and go back to when you were a sophomore. What advice would you give yourself?

Nidhi: I would have done more networking and built relationships with Cornellians early on. I also would have taken advantage of career center resources sooner instead of waiting until my final years.

Traci: Does networking happen in projects and coursework, or are there other opportunities?

Nidhi: Networking happens everywhere, including working with students from different departments. But the key is maintaining long-term relationships, not just reaching out when you need something.

Christa: That’s such an important point. Networking isn’t just about asking for favors—it’s about building real relationships.

Traci: Networking should be reciprocal. As an early-career professional, how do you give back to mentors or those who helped you?

Nidhi: You can support them in return. If they have projects where they need assistance, offer to help. It’s a great way to build relationships while gaining experience.

Traci: That’s a wonderful approach. Now for a fun question—what do you do to relax or re-energize?

Nidhi: California has beautiful scenery, so I love taking my painting canvas and colors to the beach or mountains to paint. It’s very relaxing.

Traci: That’s amazing! Do you have a collection of paintings at home?

Nidhi: Yes, I do!

Christa: What’s one place you go to stay current in your work?

Nidhi: Reading research papers helps me stay informed about new developments in battery technology. Even if something isn’t scalable yet, knowing the possibilities helps shape future innovation.

Traci: Do you also look at patents?

Nidhi: Sometimes, but patents are often written in a way that hides critical details. Companies protect trade secrets, so patents provide general ideas but not full solutions.

Traci: If you weren’t doing this work, what would you be doing?

Nidhi: As a child, I wanted to be a painter. My long-term dream is to live in a European city and paint. But for now, I love my job because I know I’m making a real impact.

Christa: I love that sustainability and safety are central to your work. Thank you so much for this conversation.

Nidhi: Thank you, Christa and Traci.

Traci: We wish you all the best, and thank you for your time.

Christa: Join us for the next episode, where we’ll celebrate engineers contributing to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: Today we’re here with Alice, who graduated from Cornell with an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering as well as an MEng in mechanical engineering. Alice, welcome.

Alice Yan: Hi, Christa, so nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Christa: It’s great to have you. Alice, can you please start by telling us a bit about your career path and how you transitioned from engineering to regulation?

Alice: Yeah. I guess it started out from the very beginning. I’ve always wanted to do something in the healthcare industry. In high school, I wanted to be a doctor because that’s the only thing that you think of when you think healthcare at a young age, not knowing much about the world. It wasn’t until the tail end of high school that I learned about biomedical engineering. I realized that biomedical engineers were the brains behind the cool technologies that doctors use, and I wanted to be the person to create those technologies.

I was fortunate with timing—just before my freshman year, Cornell officially announced biomedical engineering as a major. I was super excited. I later pursued an MEng in mechanical engineering because I wanted more specialized experience in R&D.

Where everything started to change was during my MEng when I realized that engineering didn’t suit my personality and career ambitions. At first, I was really worried—had I wasted five years and my parents’ hard-earned money on something I didn’t want to do anymore? I tried to make it work, but I realized it wasn’t worth it if I wasn’t fulfilled. I learned that it was okay to try something new.

I did various internships and co-ops at medical device companies, still knowing I wanted to be in healthcare. I explored clinical research, quality, and product management—everything I could think of. At the end, I worried that my resume was fragmented, with no clear story. But then I realized that my story was about trying different things to find what I was truly passionate about.

My first full-time job out of college was at Abbott in their medical device division. It was in regulatory operations—again, something new. I enjoyed regulatory work because it was complex, especially international regulations. I realized I loved solving challenging problems, digesting complicated requirements, and creating efficient processes.

However, something always bothered me at Abbott. It was difficult to make improvements and changes. I’m not someone who can sit still—if a process isn’t efficient or a system is broken, I want to fix it. But at a large company like Abbott, where processes have existed for decades, change is difficult. After two years, I decided to try working at a startup, which led me to where I am today.

Traci: I love that, Alice—the complications of finding fulfillment along the way. It can be very hard, especially when, as you said, the path seems fragmented.

Alice: Yeah, I think a lot of times, especially in college, you assume that what you major in is what you’re supposed to do for the rest of your life. So stepping outside of that can be really scary.

Traci: I often tell my engineering students that engineering is a systems way of thinking. You highlighted that when you described seeing the larger system and how to fix problems within it. You mentioned leaving Abbott—how did you find your way to your new role?

Alice: I had heard of Forward before. To back up, I now work at Forward, a health tech startup. I keep a note on my phone with my dream companies, and Forward was on that list because I admired its mission to fix the U.S. healthcare system.

When I saw a job opening for compliance operations, I thought, this is my dream job. I was passionate about the mission, felt qualified, and had experience under my belt, so I applied.

The interview process was a great indicator of what it would be like to work there. I expected stress, but I actually looked forward to every interaction. If you don’t enjoy the interview process, you probably wouldn’t enjoy working at that company—and that’s okay.

One of the final rounds involved a case study presentation. I was on vacation at the time, but I got so sucked into the project that I spent the entire vacation in my hotel room working on it. I didn’t have to—I could’ve worked on it for a few hours—but the problems were so interesting, and I realized I was having fun. I couldn’t remember the last time I had fun working. That was a huge indicator that I would enjoy the job.

Christa: I love that concept of enjoying your work so much that you get lost in it. Not that we want people to skip vacations! But having that level of engagement is a great sign.

Speaking of inspiration, I’d love to hear how your work contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Alice: Forward’s mission is to build the world’s best healthcare for billions—for free. Full stop. The best addresses quality, billions implies scale, and free tackles accessibility. It’s an ambitious goal, and we know it will take time, but that’s what every single person here is working toward.

Our current model is a $149-per-month subscription for unlimited in-person and telemedicine primary and preventive care. A key tenet is that we don’t take insurance. We believe the current insurance-based healthcare system creates the wrong incentives. Right now, most care is reactive—you only go to the doctor when something is wrong. There’s no financial incentive to keep people healthy.

At Forward, primary care is a flat fee, so you get the support you need—whether that’s one visit a year or every day. It’s about building long-term relationships.

Another key difference is how we leverage technology. In most service industries, costs rise over time. In contrast, technology gets cheaper and is scalable. We use AI and automation to improve care, allowing clinicians to focus on higher-level decision-making rather than administrative tasks.

Traci: That’s fascinating. Forward is clearly a disruptor. Do you feel that sense of disruption and urgency at work?

Alice: Every day. Our office culture is intense but mission-driven. We’re fully in-person, which fosters collaboration.

We also have no hierarchy—no managers, directors, or C-suite. Everyone is on the same level. We treat each other as peers, regardless of experience.

The decision-making process is also unique. We debate ideas rigorously but don’t own them. If my idea isn’t the best, I want to know—because our goal is to find the best solution, not to protect our egos. That’s a mindset shift from traditional workplaces.

Christa: You’ve found fulfilling work in a collaborative, mission-driven organization. What have been your greatest challenges?

Alice: Learning how to be a leader. At Abbott, I was mostly executing. At Forward, I drive decisions. That shift—from following instructions to creating processes—was challenging.

Another challenge is uncertainty. At a big company, everything is well-defined. At a startup, resources are limited, and no one necessarily knows the answers. You have to become the expert. Learning to embrace uncertainty has been key.

Traci: Looking back, what do you wish you knew as a sophomore?

Alice: I wish I had known that careers aren’t linear. Do what excites you, not just what you majored in. It’s okay to pivot. Life is about discovery.

Christa: Final question—if you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?

Alice: Probably deejaying! I started during COVID and love it. But for now, I’m focused on Forward’s mission.

Christa: Love it! Thank you, Alice, for this insightful conversation.

Alice: Thank you for having me!

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

Christa: Welcome, Matt.

Matt Gellert: Thanks.

Christa: Yeah, it’s good to have you. I’m going to introduce you. Matt is a Biosystems Engineering Manager for Square Roots, an urban farming company based in Brooklyn, New York. He studied Biological Engineering at Cornell University and Software Engineering at Flatiron School before going to work in the agriculture industry, first for AeroFarms and now for Square Roots. So Matt, can you tell us more about your work?

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Christa. So at Square Roots, we design, build, own, and operate indoor vertical farms. We are a vertically integrated vertical farming company. We are working to develop a distributed network of lean farms that sell high-value, high-quality, and high-impact products.

I lead the hardware engineering team. We design productive, space-efficient systems that can be manufactured and commissioned quickly and affordably. We partner with food distributors like Gordon Food Service and UNFI. We build our farms directly on their campuses, minimizing cold chain transportation impact and providing us access to their network and resources.

My team develops all the growing systems, operational tools, automation equipment integrations, and modifications. We collaborate with nearly every department—plant R&D to optimize grow recipes, farm teams for feedback and technical support, software engineers to optimize farm control, and manufacturing teams to scale designs from prototypes to production. We love making elegant and functional designs come to life using 3D printers, metal and plastic fabricators, and machine tools.

Traci: Coming from a farming community in Southern Idaho, I’ve seen the rise of indoor agricultural ventures. Can you walk people through what differentiates your indoor agricultural model from traditional farming and where you see it going?

Matt: Absolutely. The biggest differences are ones you’ll hear from anyone in the industry—we use significantly less water, usually 90% or more less than traditional agriculture, and significantly less fertilizer. We avoid soil degradation, biodiversity loss, runoff, and pesticide use. Additionally, we can grow year-round in almost any climate using artificial lighting.

Another key advantage is nutritional content. Our produce is fresher—it’s harvested and on the shelf the same day, sometimes in hours. Additionally, crops are grown under ideal conditions with tailored genetics, enhancing their quality.

Energy use is an important factor. While indoor farming requires non-solar energy inputs, studies show that when traditional agriculture produce travels over 1,000 miles, the energy used in transportation balances out the energy used in a controlled indoor environment. Most produce travels at least 1,500 miles to reach consumers, making controlled environments a competitive alternative.

Traci: The intersection of these sciences is fascinating. You have both software and bioengineering experience—how did you arrive at this unique combination?

Matt: I studied Biological Engineering at Cornell. At the time, the program was transitioning—today, it’s more biomedical, but agricultural engineering is regaining prominence.

I gained exposure through faculty mentors like Dr. Michael Timmons, a pioneer in aquaculture and aquaponics. Renting space in a Cornell greenhouse gave me hands-on experience. I also interned at a venture capital firm, analyzing tech investments, which exposed me to early industry leaders like AeroFarms, Bowery, and Plenty.

One particularly formative experience was a class called Entrepreneurial Management for Engineers. Our class collectively wrote a business plan and designed an aquaponics farm to support an orphanage in Chile. I led the engineering team and gained exposure to design, social impact, and business development. The multi-disciplinary nature of the work really appealed to me.

Traci: You likely worked with Dr. Rick Evans on the aquaponics project. That was an amazing initiative with lasting impact.

Matt: Absolutely. That project was a fantastic experience on multiple levels and helped steer my career.

Christa: Your resume and experience are impressive. What would you recommend to undergrads or M.Eng. students interested in this field?

Matt: Start by growing something. Buy a basic hydroponics kit and experiment. It helps you understand the system and identify what interests you most—whether it’s electrical, automation, genetics, or environmental controls.

If you’re interested in the electrical side, you might get into Raspberry Pi or Arduino for control systems. If you’re curious about plant science, you’ll focus on genetics and optimal growing conditions. Curiosity will naturally guide you toward a specialty.

Traci: You’ve highlighted various skills. Are there specific experiences or activities you’d recommend to undergraduates?

Matt: Computer-aided design (CAD) and engineering software are invaluable. We use them for mechanical simulations, fluid simulations, HVAC modeling—so much can be optimized digitally before physical prototyping.

Additionally, exposure to food production and biology helps, but it’s not essential. This industry is multi-disciplinary—mechanical, electrical, software, biological engineering, business, and marketing all play a role. There’s room for everyone with an interest in the field.

Christa: Your work contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and sustainable world. What’s your vision for the future?

Matt: The industry aims to reduce food waste, lower the carbon footprint, and produce food closer to where it’s needed, particularly in food deserts. Many people in the U.S. lack access to fresh, nutritious food. We want to supply it sustainably—not replacing traditional farming, but supplementing it.

We’re expanding beyond leafy greens and herbs into tomatoes, strawberries, and other crops. Another issue is the aging farming workforce—the average farmer is over 60, and younger generations are less inclined to take over farms. Indoor agriculture offers skilled job opportunities that integrate technology, attracting a new generation to agriculture.

Ultimately, our goal is to produce more nutritious, fresh food in a sustainable way.

Traci: That’s an inspiring vision. The generational divide in farming is a critical issue, and I appreciate you shining a light on it. What people and organizations are important collaborators for you?

Matt: I follow research from academia—Cornell’s Neil Mattson, Dr. Chieri Kubota at Ohio State, and Bruce Bugbee at Utah State. They share valuable insights on platforms like YouTube. AgSci Café by Dr. Kubota is a great resource.

There are also industry conferences like Indoor AgCon and regional agricultural consortiums where professionals exchange ideas and innovations.

Traci: We’ll share some of those resources for our listeners. What was the biggest challenge you’ve faced in your work?

Matt: I joined Square Roots on March 9, 2020—right before the COVID-19 lockdowns. Two days later, most of the company went remote. We had just begun designing a major new farming system, and the sudden disruption affected supply chains, workforce coordination, and production timelines.

We had to pivot—finding alternative materials, redesigning parts based on availability, and coordinating with contractors remotely. I spent months in Michigan overseeing farm commissioning. That project is now in production, but navigating the uncertainty of COVID-19 was a major challenge.

Traci: Looking back to your sophomore year, what do you wish you had known then?

Matt: Try different internships and extracurriculars. Even if they seem unrelated, they add up and help clarify what excites you.

Also, consider software bootcamps. I attended Flatiron School for 15 weeks, which gave me strong software skills applicable to automation and controls engineering. Bootcamps are a great investment, even for students still in college.

Traci: That’s great advice. If you weren’t doing this work, what would you be doing?

Matt: As a child, I wanted to work in automotive engineering. But growing up in a rural town, I developed a deep connection to agriculture. If I weren’t in indoor farming, I’d probably run a traditional farm or a hybrid of indoor and outdoor systems.

Long term, I want to build a prototyping workshop to help others develop their products. But I’ll always stay connected to agriculture.

Christa: That’s an exciting vision. Thank you, Matt!

Traci: Thank you so much for sharing your journey with us.

Matt: Anytime—come visit a Square Roots farm!

Christa: Thank you for listening. Join us for the next episode, where we’ll celebrate engineers driving a more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to Engineering Career Conversations. I’m Christa Downey, Director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

Traci Nathans-Kelly: And I’m Traci Nathans-Kelly, Director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

We are here today with Abena Ojetayo, a Cornell graduate with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering with a focus on sustainability and infrastructure, and a master’s degree in engineering management. She is now a local government executive in Tallahassee, Florida, where her work intersects sustainability, equity, and community-building. We are eager to hear more.

Christa: Abena, thank you so much for joining us today.

Abena: Thank you so much for having me, Christa.

Christa: It’s a pleasure.

Traci: Well, I get to start today’s questioning. We wanted to know currently, because we were very intrigued about the crossover that you’ve experienced in your career, what you’re doing at your current work, and how it relates to the degrees that you got at Cornell?

Abena: Well, I never would have imagined it. If you told me years ago that I would be here, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. I work in local government, as Christa mentioned, and I’m an Assistant City Manager, currently, and previously a director. I started in local government as the Chief Resilience Officer, which was more familiar to me.

As a Chief Resilience Officer for a city, you work with leadership and multiple stakeholders, both internal to the organization and in the broader community, to develop a strategy for how the community would deal with disruption, shocks, and stressors. This includes everything from identifying root causes of disruptions to planning future mitigation or adaptation for a new normal. The Chief Resilience Officer role is relatively new but closely related to sustainability officers and sustainability managers.

I’ve always been interested in this work as an engineer. I meandered through multiple sectors but have always followed the idea of stewardship—taking care of what we have while looking ahead to future challenges. Sustainability work often centers around the natural environment and climate, particularly climate adaptation and mitigation. Resilience planning builds on that by focusing on disruption and disaster preparedness. It influences how we organize ourselves, build cities, and develop programs to address systemic issues so that our communities can thrive.

That’s how we weave sustainability, equity, and community into this work. I’ve always been drawn to building better communities, which led me to engineering—specifically civil engineering. Out of all the fields, civil engineering is the one that most directly influences the physical structure of society at a visible scale, and that was incredibly attractive to me from an early age. Cornell nurtured that passion and allowed me to connect disparate pieces that didn’t always seem to align. That experience set me up for my current work, where I frequently bridge gaps and make connections that aren’t always obvious.

Christa: What does that look like on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis? What are the things on your to-do list, and what are some projects you’ve worked on recently?

Abena: As a Chief Resilience Officer, which I no longer wear exclusively but is still very much part of my work, a lot of my focus was on worst-case scenarios and crisis preparation. While that may sound daunting, I found it to be an essential starting point. Understanding the worst-case scenario helps ground discussions and encourages proactive problem-solving.

There’s something about the urgency of crisis that brings people together in new ways. That’s how resilience work connects sustainability and community well-being. It’s all about preparing for disruptions while ensuring that everyone in the community can thrive.

Day to day, my work varies widely. One day I may be working with multiple departments to develop our clean energy future. Our city is transitioning to 100% net renewable energy, which requires significant planning for utility conversion and fleet electrification. We operate our own electric, gas, water, and wastewater utilities, which gives us the ability to execute this transition.

On another day, I might be facilitating a mental health crisis response unit. Through resilience planning, we identified adverse community experiences and childhood trauma as root causes of disruptions in public safety. That led us to create innovative partnerships among social workers, law enforcement, and human service providers to respond to 911 emergencies together.

My role as an executive is to bring teams together, lead strategic planning, and secure resources so that our teams can do their work effectively. I get to think of ambitious ideas, see people’s shocked reactions, and then work alongside them to make those ideas reality. It’s incredibly rewarding.

Traci: I’m fascinated by this intersection you’re at. I’ve worked with UN disaster management teams, but I really appreciate your reframing—shifting from disaster management to resilience planning. That wider lens, integrating sustainability and mental health into public safety, is incredible.

Abena: It’s encouraging to see federal and state governments waking up to the importance of mitigation. Emergency response is critical, but it’s expensive—not just in terms of lives and property but also in time and resources. FEMA has found that every dollar spent on mitigation saves six dollars in emergency response and recovery. It makes economic sense to invest in resilience planning.

That said, crises can also unleash creativity. When communities face multiple shocks—whether from climate disasters, public safety issues, or racial unrest—it forces them to rethink business as usual. These moments push us to innovate.

Christa: I love that framing. This is such important work. Is this type of resilience-focused role becoming more common in local government?

Abena: Not as common as we would like. The Chief Resilience Officer role started trending about five or six years ago, with support from groups like the Rockefeller Foundation. At its peak, there were only about 100 worldwide, which is very small considering the thousands of cities globally.

Our city created the position after a devastating hurricane that revealed weaknesses in our emergency response systems. We have an enormous urban tree canopy—something we cherish—but about 50% of our utilities are above ground. A category one hurricane took out significant portions of our electric infrastructure, leading to long outages. Instead of merely rebuilding, we took a comprehensive approach and started planning for long-term resilience.

Similarly, public safety concerns had been a top issue in our community for years. Our law enforcement is known for its community-oriented policing, but national conversations on public safety pushed us to be even more proactive. In local government, it’s impossible to isolate any single issue. Everything is interconnected.

More cities are now doing resilience planning alongside climate adaptation and sustainability plans. Universities were early leaders in sustainability efforts, but today, local governments are taking the lead because they’re the closest to the people. The tangible, everyday impacts of resilience planning make it a priority for more communities.

Christa: That’s inspiring. Abena, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you for sharing your insights and the tangible impact of your work.

Abena: Thank you so much. It’s a privilege to do this work, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it.

Traci: Thank you for your time today. This has been an incredibly thought-provoking conversation.

Abena: No squirrels or mosquitoes were harmed in the recording of this podcast, though I thought long and hard about it.

Christa: Join us for the next episode, where we will celebrate excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

Christa Downey: Welcome to engineering career conversations from Cornell University. My name is Christa Downey and I am the Director of the Engineering Career Center. My co-host is Tracy Nathans Kelly, who is the director of Cornell’s Engineering Communication Program. Hello Tracy.

Traci: Thank you, Christa. We are excited to launch this new podcast series where we will explore many aspects about early career and mid-career topics and opportunities.

Christa: We hope you will join us in the coming weeks and months as we speak to Cornell alumni and current students celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world. Join us for authentic, genuine conversations with people who are doing this every day.

Traci: Christa, now, this podcast was your idea. Do you want to tell us more about the mission of this podcast series?

Christa: I would love to. I’ve been doing this work for the past 20 years, I see the possibilities for people to apply their strengths and skills to work that really matters to them, and has a strong impact on the world. I want young people to have access to these stories, the resources available to help them forge their own path.

Traci: Now, I have to say I was really honored that Christa thought to bring me in on this project. Like her, I’ve been in the business of engineering communication for about 25 years now. I work daily with undergrads and practicing engineers, helping them to communicate their brilliant ideas to a variety of audiences. Like Christa, I love my job. I have the privilege of working with people who are smart and driven, and innovative every day. And my hope is with this podcast that we can capture their stories, tap into their perspectives, and learn more about the arc of professional work in the wide and varied fields that we call engineering. That’s why I’m here. And I’m really looking forward to seeing these stories and conversations unfold.

Christa: So we welcome you to join us on this adventure. Please be sure to like, subscribe and share this podcast. You can contact us through the website and our podcast notes.