Interview with Julie Orlando

I met Julie when she was still a student doing a co-op at a major rubber company. By the time she graduated she was already in demand. My time working with her since then has been rewarding in so many ways. Here is a conversation we had about that.

Matthew: I can’t believe that we have known each other for 6 years, and at least a few of those working together. Paul Roossin told me that at IBM research they had a policy to always hire smart people regardless of specialty. You are a polymer engineer, but working at Nanotronics because you are a smart person. Do you feel the transition to microscopy, semiconductor technology and now even life sciences a challenge, and how do you adjust?

Julie: I have always had an interest in learning about new things. I think that was one of the driving forces that ultimately lead to an education in polymer engineering. From a young age, I learned about the integral role polymers play in our everyday lives and wanted to learn more and be able to contribute to that knowledge and technology. That initial interest lead to a passion that grew during my career in the rubber industry. Everyday became fascinating and exciting, with new problems to explore and solve. I was very thrilled to learn more about the field of semiconductor technology, microscopy and life sciences and also a little nervous about the challenges I would face being new to it. I knew right away, when you first spoke about nSPEC® that I wanted to be a part of Nanotronics. nSPEC® is such a valuable product for so many reasons and I realized I could contribute to the company. It does get frustrating sometimes when certain tasks seem to take a lot longer than they should. Knowledge of specific subject matter can always be learned. Having the ability and mind set to work hard, solve problems and motivation to continually learn, has helped this adjustment come naturally in a way for me.

Matthew: You left a good job to join us, even though we were a tiny start up. What gave you the confidence to do that, and what was attractive about our little company?

Julie: I have always been very fortunate to have great mentors during college and upon graduation had a great opportunity to work with you and your father at Tech Pro. It was such a fun job; I traveled across the world training and teaching customers, giving technical presentations at various conferences and learned about new products and technologies in the rubber and plastics industries. The familiarity of working with you and your father again and with the product you developed is of course what really drew me in. I strongly believe that Nanotronics will be a complete success. It’s that core belief in the company and the products that gave me all the confidence I needed. It’s so incredible working for a company as its first starting up. All of the hard work, thought and care that is put in on a daily basis from the development team here in Ohio is amazing to observe and be a part of.

Matthew: Your days involve so much multitasking, from working on software and hardware to maintaining a website, to training customers and new employees. Do you ever feel like locking yourself in your office to focus on a single issue that interests you in our field? What would that thing be?

Julie: It is great to multitask and work on many things at once, I really like that aspect of my job.  There is never a dull or boring day.  Although, I can’t say there haven’t been times I wish I could completely focus my thoughts and energies on certain subjects without interruptions. The first part of your question refers to “our field” that’s interesting in itself.  Our field is so expansive and can include microscopy, software, automation control, semiconductor technology, life sciences… It’s hard to think about what single issue would interest me enough to ignore everything else at the same time. That’s difficult for me to do and even hard to imagine.

Matthew: Everyone says that customers are always right. We know this to not always be true, but we never discount customer feedback. How do you balance the need to learn from our customers, and to teach them?

Julie: Customer feedback helps to drive the direction of development for the overall product.  I have had the opportunity to learn many things while working with our customers the past few months. At times it seems like the more I learn from our customers, the more we have to set additional guidelines for working with our products.  It becomes very important to standardize and promote consistent user operation. We will encounter numerous customers using nSPEC® for a lot different applications in the future. In addition, customers will operate the system with various educational backgrounds. The development team at Nanotronics is very reactive to customer needs and makes it easy to establish great learning and teaching relationships with our customers.