I see the gap before it's a problem

I started as a lab tech — running tensile tests, prepping metallographic samples, learning how materials actually behave. The technical foundation matters, but what stuck with me was everything around it: what it's like to be the person doing the careful, detailed work, what gets glossed over by the people relying on it, and how technical expertise actually translates into results the rest of the business can use. Those lessons shape how I lead now.

That foundation carried me through seven years in medical devices, into Houston building a quality management system from scratch and getting an energy-sector failure analysis lab accredited, and into engineering leadership at A-dec, where I manage the materials and clinical engineering function for a global dental manufacturing operation.

The pattern across all of it: I see the gap — no lab, no quality system, no process, no data — and I figure out how to stand it up, prove it works, and make it stick. Sometimes that means pointing the gap out to people who haven't seen it yet. That's meant building an ISO 17025 QMS from scratch, turning around a plating line that was scrapping 90% of parts, standing up a BSL-2 microbiology program, and developing EU MDR compliance strategy for a $140M device portfolio. The technical work is half of it. The other half is building the team that takes it further than I could on my own — engineers who trust each other, who stay, and who become the people their colleagues call when something's broken.

I hold a BS in Materials Science & Engineering from the University of Utah. ISO 13485 auditor trained, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt coursework. Selected from 7,500 global engineers to present original research at TE Connectivity's annual conference in Prague.