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JUNE 2026 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 63 standards. We are constantly looking for more people who meet our standards. We turn away more trainers than we accept. Our worst trainer rating is a 4.6 out of 5. To say we are the Ivy League of training excellence is not an overstatement." Gilman is obviously proud of his employer. "When someone comes in for training with us, it is important that they understand it is about more than the PowerPoint," he said. "We have custom- ers who come away from our training and say that they learned a lot about how to train, in addition to the course material that brought them in. That's quite a compliment." He is primarily responsible for EPTAC Profes- sional Services Group, a long-offered service that is now formalizing and expanding to meet the growing industry need. Solving "micro-problems" is a big value-add for manufacturers, he said, and broader than the standards to which they train and certify. "There is nothing we've said no to if it touches, at all, on IPC (standards)." Helena Pasquito has been a trainer with EPTAC for 16 years but is a "legacy" in the industry. "I tell people I grew up in the industry, you know, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth," she said. "In the 1970s, there was a push in electronics. Things were changing by the minute. It was truly the place to be." This was a time when electronics became big, not just for large companies and the government, but for everyone. Pasquito worked for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) while still in high school. "If you look at the archives of where the computer began, it was DEC and IBM." DEC helped Pasquito earn her electronics tech- nician certification, and she's cognizant that it was less common for women to earn degrees in electronics at that time. "DEC sent me to school as an 18-year-old, and I was pushing it forward," she said. "The edu- cation that I got at the beginning was just incred- ible. Who would have thought I'd still be soldering eons later?" Her first turn at training came while working at MACOM Tyco, where she became an internal trainer and earned the Certified IPC Trainer (CIT) designation. MACOM touched all product classes, including aerospace and defense. "I was coming to EPTAC to get my certifications," Pasquito said. "You could be working on the beginning of cell phone technology in the morning, and then you could be talking to NASA in the afternoon. Boeing was also a big partner for us, both aircraft and satellite systems. On the third floor, we had DARPA, all the secret military applications. We were also one of the first companies to have dancing robots—Spot. It was so varied, and it was such a cool business." MACOM sent her back to school for her second and third college degrees, in business and educa- tion, perhaps foreshadowing that training would become an even bigger part of her professional life. After 16 years at EPTAC, the passion and enthusi- asm have not diminished. "EPTAC is a great orga- nization," Pasquito said. "I love working here. We have grown leaps and bounds over my 16 years. We're now, of course, in this beautiful space here in Salem, New Hampshire, with 14,000 square feet." She teaches almost everything that EPTAC offers, and is excited about the new, large classrooms. I teach IPC-A-600 for bare PCBs, 6012 for rigid boards, A-620 for cable wire harness, J-STD-001 soldering requirements and A-610 for assemblies, which is still my favorite, and something I was train- ing others in long before coming to EPTAC." Additionally, EPTAC does non-IPC training, custom training programs, and a five-day hand-soldering certificate, one of Pasquito's favorites. "I'm still sol- dering my heart out and sharing my wisdom and love for this technology in the process," she said. Finally, I spoke with industry veteran and firecracker Leo Lambert. Though all EPTAC Jonathan Gilman Helena Pasquito Leo Lambert