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38 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2023 nities in engineering, I went to LinkedIn and found OMRON. ey have everything—robot- ics, vision, motion, safety, industrial automa- tion, and more. As a young engineer, I thought, "Okay, that's perfect. I can learn everything." I had an interview with Carrie Lee (who's now my manager), and then an interview with the vice president of sales. ose were great con- versations. I knew it would be a great place to work, and it has been. All the engineers said that it's a great place to be. I believed them. It's been almost a year now and it's true. Obviously, the elec- tronics industry is going through a transformation into more robotics, and this is an exciting time. It's a good time for you to be launching your career in this area. Are you seeing a lot of interest in robotics? For sure. A robot can replace repetitive tasks with accuracy and repeatability; that's really where they shine. What advice do you give a customer who wants to bring more robotics into their factory? When you hear robotics, you might think there are a lot of crazy equations to figure out, like, "How would that motion work?" But it's not as tough as you might think. ere is a learning curve, of course, but in my experience, it's not terribly hard to pick up. Tell us about the path that that led you here to this industry, and what advice would you have for a young person looking to start a career path? It's always been my goal to be in industrial automation. I've always liked robotics. I am pretty blessed, and I got lucky with how things turned out for me. Something big that gets in people's way, especially young people, is the imposter syndrome. You hear that a lot. You don't think you know enough to actually be in that career field. But I can tell you first- hand that you don't have to be a genius to get into industrial automation because you'll real- ize that whatever you need to know you learn on the job. You'll never know exactly what you need to know when you first begin. A lot of people just get scared. How important is the company that you choose to work for? It sounds like OMRON is supportive, giving you a lot of advice, mentors, and training. I would say it's def initely impor tant. I can't speak about other com- panies, but at OMRON, they assigned a mentor to me and he's a great guy. I keep in touch, and he still helps me out when I need it. e training program here is great. I want to learn and be as good as him. In your first year, what has been the greatest challenge for you? ere's just so much. I have it in my head that I always want to be number one, I want to be the best at what I do. I understand that I'm new and I'm not there yet. But just learning everything has been the challenge. I don't like not knowing how to do something, especially when it pertains to my career. ere's just so much to know, which I'm sure is true for any job. A robot can replace repetitive tasks with accuracy and repeatability; that's really where they shine.