Dr. Kim Houchens is the Director and Sr. Principal of technical product development for Amazon, and in her current role she is creating enhanced employee experiences in health/wellness, financial, and educational employee benefits. Kim has been with Amazon +8 years and specializes in creating automated mechanisms to eliminate waste in industrial processes. She is passionate about Amazon culture and serves as a Bar Raiser (a unique part of our hiring process).In her prior roles, Kim led technical product development, science and user experience for AWS, grocery automation/robotics, and outbound packaging for Amazon operations. One of her and her team’s largest contributions to Amazon was to reinvent packaging and fulfillment processes for the e-commerce marketplace, by creating machine learning engines that reduced wasteful packaging, creating more compact packaging to reduce air shipped, and by creating advances in material science to replace plastics with novel recyclable materials. These innovations scaled across +12B shipments/year, and drove a 38% reduction in the weight of packaging, delivering significant manufacturing efficiencies, enhanced sustainability, and cost savings.Prior to joining Amazon, Kim was the Senior Director of Innovations in machine learning and enterprise analytics for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., creating innovation in data science to drive change through fulfillment software systems, and the development of new technology for the retail sector. Kim has also led R&D and manufacturing optimization for: packaging for the pharmaceuticals, food and beverage industry; textiles and films; military; medical; and aerospace products.Kim holds a B.A., Assoc, M.S. and Ph.D. in product development, engineering, and industrial manufacturing technologies.