I am responsible for providing strategic leadership for facility operations, and I lead the regional engineering and safety operations for the Americas portfolio of sites.

My career to this point has had a lot of depth, but not a lot of breadth. I wanted to understand what else there is to this industry, and to see the end-to-end process. This role placed me as a leader in the development and commercialization of a product. It gave me exactly what I wanted -- to see the holistic process from development, through clinical trials, and into commercialization.

I believe a key to success for any organization is to deliver rapidly. Leveraging standard practices can ensure right first time start up, increased safety awareness and lower safety risks, and lower costs. This role gave me the opportunity to introduce new processes and technologies with the freedom to fail. I was able to visit sites and companies both in and outside the industry to find the best way to deliver and then introduce it at Merck. Through my efforts, I was able to save > $15MM in one year.

As Senior Manager, I had the joy of managing and mentoring staff. I worked closely with my team to ensure that we not only delivered on the technical aspects of the job, but also that we delivered on their careers. One of the most rewarding parts of this job was watching a staff member realize what they wanted in their career and then helping them get it. Not only did I get to see the team grow into a high performing team, but I also got to see the individuals grow into themselves. I continued to strengthen my own technical skills by continuing to increase company revenue through maintaining, modifying, and designing the infrastructure and process equipment used to manufacture biopharmaceuticals. As a team, we also provided the daily support for the facilities, troubleshot deviations, and introduced standard work and innovative technologies.

My previous roles up to this point in my career taught me two things: (1) I want to do capital projects and (2) I want to understand the process. This role gave me the opportunity to do both. I played an integral part on converting a single product facility into a 14+ product facility. I did this by executing facility fit assessments, leading technical transfers, and managing capital projects to retrofit not only the process equipment, but also storage, utilities, and automation. The depth of my career comes from this role where I became a facility, equipment, and process subject matter expert.