Recognizing the Female Superstars Leading the Transformation of Digital Manufacturing on International Women’s Day 2020
By Joanne Moretti, Founder and CEO of JCurve Digital
Today, on International Women’s Day 2020, I’ve been contemplating the influence of some amazing women, all that I am lucky and proud to call friends and colleagues, that are shaping the digital transformation of the manufacturing and supply chain. They are examples and heroes to us all and they exemplify the theme of this year’s activity of #EachforEqual, where an equal world is an enabled world.
Here are a few of the amazing women shaking things up in the world of digital manufacturing. Kudos and thanks to all of them and to every other woman in technology, helping to change the industry and to motivate the stars of the future.
Senior Vice President at Dell Technologies, Cheryl Cook spearheads development and strategy for the Global Partner, Embedded and Edge Solutions Marketing organization. Beyond her main global responsibilities for branding, partner program marketing, channel events, partner communications, and MDF/BDF program investments and execution, Cheryl drives long-term partner marketing strategy, together with regional Commercial, Enterprise and Infrastructure Solution business teams. A vocal advocate for the partner community, Cheryl is known as an innovative, collaborative leader who creates compelling business solutions that accelerate partners’ success.
A contributor to Fortune Magazine’s 50 Most Powerful Women’s community, Cheryl is an active proponent of women in business and technology. Cheryl is the founder and executive sponsor of the Dell Technologies Women’s Partner Network, an initiative that supports and empowers our community of women partners. Cheryl also contributes to Dell’s Women in Action and Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network. Honored by CRN numerous times as one of the Power 100 Women of the Channel, 50 Most Influential Channel Chiefs and Top 100 Channel Sales Leaders, as well as Channel Partners Top Gun 51, Cheryl serves on the board of directors for ARC Document Solutions, is a member of Channel Focus Club 50 and holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Florida.
In her own word: “At Dell, we recognize that diversity is not only the right thing to do, it’s also a business imperative. We know that the role of women, really, the role of diversity, in digital transformation is critical. The speed at which technology is advancing and transforming our lives and culture is truly fantastic. To succeed at this incredible speed of change requires relentless innovation, which requires diversity of thought, perspective and experience. To put it succinctly: diversity drives innovation, and innovation fuels success. Technology may be moving at a rapid pace today, but just think of the speed we could obtain, and of the diversity of ideas and perspective we could hear, if we enabled and empowered the women in the world!
Heather Andrus leads a corporate innovation team at Fortive, working to bring accretive growth to Fortive’s portfolio of industrial businesses. She has been leading product development and innovation initiatives for three decades. Her passion for product development grows from a deeply held belief that creating great products positively impacts people’s lives. Heather grounds her work in people: understanding met and unmet needs and working to fill these by balancing technology, design and business.
Heather has previously worked at IDEO, Apple, 3Com, Jabil and Altitude (an Accenture Innovation X.0 company). She has a BS from MIT in Computer Science and Engineering (with a minor in Cognitive Science as well as pre-med coursework) and an MS from Stanford in ME (Product Design).
In her own words: “Digital transformation changes the way we work every day. With a portfolio of brands located around the world, being able to innovate with cross functional and diverse teams means embracing digital tools to collaborate and rapidly develop innovative solutions.”
Fictiv COO, Jean Olivieri has over 22 years of expansive experience in hardware product development, operations, and strategic business development. New Product Introduction is the backbone of her career, and she has held executive leadership positions in operations at Fortune-500 companies such as Apple, Motorola and SpaceX.
In her own words: “Fictiv is actively changing the way innovation occurs, delivering hardware at the speed of software. We passionately embrace diversity and are extremely proud that close to half of the Fictiv team are female, and at all levels of the organization. It is truly an inspirational place to work where change is a part of daily routine. A diverse approach has delivered an inspirational team, they are the real heroes!”
Eduarda Ferreira is the founder and President of 434 Creations, a 3D printing company with a focus on full-color 3D printing. 434 Creations offers full-color 3D printing services and is also working on developing its own multi-material 3D printing technology. They provide 3D printing services to fund R&D to develop their own 3D printing materials (powder and binders) to cut costs and provide full-color 3D prints at a much lower price compared to what’s currently on the market.
In her own words: “Women have been transforming additive manufacturing since the beginning and there are many role models in the industry that I admire and look up to, such as Jennifer A. Lewis, Harvard Professor and Founder of Voxel8 and Marina Hatsopoulos, Z Corp.’s founding CEO. Role models of women changing the future of manufacturing are very important to attract more women into the industry.”
Laura M. Marsden is Digital Health Lead at Jabil Healthcare. Her passion is leveraging ethnographic research and innovative digital solutions to provide patients, clinicians and researchers with real time data and meaningful insights. Her roles in patient advocacy, healthcare improvement implementation, and Medical Device Research and Development have provided a unique perspective, and customer-centric approach.
She has extensive experience in the strategic business and product development of complex surgical systems, and is a champion of usability and risk management practices in accordance with FDA guidance and international medical standards. Her expertise in analysis and effective translation of data and insights to actionable, agile product development of intuitive devices ensures the safety of both user and patient.
Laura is Co-founder and member of the Massachusetts General Hospital for Children’s Parent & Patient IBD Advisory Council. She serves an appointment to the James M. Anderson Center for Health System Excellence Pathway to Mastery Steering Committee of Improve Care Now; an international pediatric initiative to transform health care costs, and patient outcomes of children and young adults with IBD through a sustainable, collaborative chronic-care network of parents, patients, clinicians and researchers. Laura earned a BFA in Industrial Design and HF from Rochester Institute of Technology and has been practicing for 25 years.
Carolyn Rostetter is a Digital Transformation Leader with over 20 years of experience in some of the world’s leading organizations. She provides vision and expertise in Strategic Planning, Intelligent Automation, Client Services, Revenue Optimization, Productivity, Quality, and Change Management. Carolyn has an MBA in Finance, and she is a certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt.
In her own words: “The top leaders today in Industry 4.0 are driving transformation for real. It’s an exceptional time for our industry as manufacturers are embracing digital, empowering their employees, and seeking to change how they deliver value to their customers.”
Charla Serbent is Vice President at Dell leading the Global Operations Engineering & Quality team responsible for ensuring end-to-end Supply Chain readiness to deliver Dell products.
Previous roles at Dell included Director Desktop Procurement, Executive Director Supplier Quality Engineering, VP Global SQE and Manufacturing Quality, and VP Client Procurement. Prior to joining Dell, Charla held various sales and sales management positions at Nalco Chemical Company and GE, where she was a black belt. Charla also held various executive positions at PPG Industries including General Industrial Sales Director for North America and General Manager of PPG’s Industrial Coatings business in Asia Pacific. Charla is located in Singapore. She previously resided in Shanghai, China for 12 years. She has a degree from UT Austin in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from Wharton.
In her own words: “We generate tremendous amounts of data in Supply Chain, Manufacturing, and Quality activities. Digitalizing end to end processes means we can gain insights faster, cheaper, and better than ever before. It also means getting past averages and aggregate data to meaningful analytics and machine learning allow us to make better decisions. It is an exciting time to be in our profession!”
Julie Willey enjoys shipping products that delight and inspire. She has close to 20 years of engineering experience; ranging from designing ASICs and systems design at Leapfrog toys, heading up the HW team at Tile, an internet of things, BLE key finder, and now a Sr Systems Engineer in Facebook’s ARVR team. She has a wonderfully supportive husband (SW engineer) who is a true partner in raising their 5 kids (age range 11-18).
In her own words: “My passion is learning. I love to learn about high tech, low tech, where and how things came from; learning about learning. There are so many fascinating things around us and not enough time! I have the privilege of working in an amazing team focused on bringing compelling personalized experiences into market. We have the capability of providing personalized software experiences. It is natural for users to want to have this customization extend to physical experiences. This challenge requires us to use known manufacturing methods as a grounded reference and from that, explore and invent new processes. Digital manufacturing enables us with the tools to help bring this into mass market. As we are trying to deliver compelling customized experiences its critical to engage a wide range of life experiences and perspectives in all the phases of design and execution, not just as the target consumers but as the engaged creators.”
Avis Mullen (pic to follow) is Global Business Unit Director for the Energy, Industrial and Building division at Jabil and has over 27 years of experience in the Manufacturing industry with the majority of my expertise in Operations and Business Management. She started her career at Solectron as a Test Technician/ Electronic Engineer. Her degree is in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, obtained from Dundalk Institute of Technology, in Ireland. Avis moved to Jabil in 2002 as Corporate Operations Development Manager, rolling out best practices to all sites and supporting site management and customer accounts globally, requiring onsite residence in Reynosa MX, Louisville, Memphis, Poland, Hungary and Coventry. Today, Avis has responsibility for relationship management, strategic and tactical planning and budgeting, providing comprehensive solutions to complex problems and contract negotiations. I believe building loyalty, by creating a true partnership with our customers, is the key to success for both sides.
I play an active part in our Jabil Joules Community, mentoring and encouraging women in all regions to step out of their comfort zones and into the jobs that the really want.
In her own words: “The digital transformation of the manufacturing industry is opening up many new positions that are not predefined to be typical male/ female roles. The capability set and education that is required to execute advanced operations is more multidimensional than it once was and has more in common with what is valued in IT, R&D, finance, and business analytics, therefore becoming a vehicle for greater gender diversity. I feel the playing field has finally been leveled and the need for more women in this new era of manufacturing is more crucial than ever.”
Stephanie Whalen is a Mechanical Engineer and Product Design Maven who provides engineering, design, and product development services to the world’s top brands and startups. Stephanie specializes in product design and mechanical engineering, and has demonstrated excellence at every stage of product development, from product conception to shipping the dang thing. Many of her favorite products and projects are consumer electronics and medical devices.
In her own words: “Women are an incredible asset in an industry confronted with monumental change. One of our greatest strengths lies in our transformational (over transactional) leadership styles, which increase trust and thereby creativity in our organizations. Empathy and flexibility are key for transitioning traditional manufacturing teams into the new era of digital manufacturing, and boosting hardware-as-a-service, connected healthcare, and mass customization into the mainstream. It’s really exciting to be a part of that! I specialize in engineering and product design, especially for consumer electronics and medical device. I emphasize value-based communication between strategy, experience and industrial design, engineering, and fabrication teams, in order to deliver holistic solutions to users and product stakeholders.”
Kyra White is a sophomore at Southern Methodist University where she is double-majoring in Mechanical Engineering and Music. From a young age, she has followed her fascination in robotics by participating in camps and workshops. In high school, she was a founding member and head programmer of her school’s second all-girls robotics team; she co-captained the team to its first World Championship. Both then and now, Kyra balances a diverse set of extracurricular activities ranging the STEM and arts fields. Currently, her focus lies in her academics and in Theta Tau, a co-ed professional engineering fraternity, where she holds an executive position. From this, she witnesses and participates in the values of collaboration and communication firsthand. When she is not busy learning dynamical systems or how music evolved throughout history, Kyra enjoys singing in a local church choir and embroidering shirts.
In her own words: “Being the only woman on my robotics team, I find that I am bringing new ideas incorporating the concepts of multiple people. I look up to women in leadership positions as they bring their team to higher places through their hard work and dedication.”
Libin Huang is a strategic thinker, a problem solver and an experienced leader in developing and implementing strategy, building effective teams and managing complex programs in the healthcare industry. She held various leadership roles in project management, strategic planning, supply chain optimization and mergers and acquisitions. Currently she is responsible for development and implementation of high impact strategic initiatives to improve gross margin in Global Instrument and Reagent Manufacturing Network for a Diagnostics Product company and pursuing her 2nd master’s program in MIT Supply Chain Management focused on digital transformation.
In her own words: “The healthcare industry is at the cusp of transformation from a traditional “fee for service” to “value-based” model which the provider is rewarded for efficiency and effectiveness. At the same time, regulators around the world are changing how to regulate the safety and efficacy of medical products from a reactive approach to proactive anticipation and mitigation. Women are taking a stronger leadership role in the end-to-end organizational digital transformation contributing to the future healthcare system that delivers the right product at the right place, the right time and the right cost. Women in operational roles are involved in transformative implementation of digital solutions that improve and reduce the cycle time for manufacturing, ensure inventory availability while eliminating waste and maintaining state-of-the-art product performance to help companies ensure patient outcomes.”
In her own words: “I’m grateful to have met and worked with innovative and inspiring women in manufacturing and look forward to continued innovations. I look forward to seeing more energy efficient manufacturing initiatives as the manufacturing sector accounts for roughly one-fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Let’s continue to innovate for better companies and for a better planet.“
Karen Escoffery is a motivated Sales Executive Professional running Enterprise Sales Exec at SailPoint. She has over 20 years of experience highlighting the delivery of innovation, full-spectrum solutions across mid-to large size enterprises. She can expertly navigate complex selling motions, comprised of multiple decision makers, diverse partnerships and numerous competitors. Karen is a passionate Sales Leader helping customers to mitigate risk and maximize efficiency with Identity Governance.
About the author:
Joanne Moretti has 30+ years experience in the Banking, High-Tech & Manufacturing industries, holding C level roles as well as Business Unit P&L responsibilities in Fortune 200 companies. Recently she took her years of successful commercial know-how and a team of top commercial experts, to start her own firm called JCurve Digital, a growth consultancy focused on helping companies realize digital transformation investments, to leap up the “JCurve” , enabling returns that investors expect. After only 12 months of operation, JCurve Digital is working with startups and mid-sized companies in the FinTech, Manufacturing, High Tech, Cybersecurity and CRM markets.
