What I've Learned from my STEM Career and Why I Would Do It All Again! - Carlonda Reilly, PhD

Thank you very much, Christina. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to ACS, the Indiana Section. You'll see in a couple of minutes why it's a little near and dear to my heart. I've been asked to talk about what I've learned from my STEM career and why I would do it all over again. So I'll get right into it. I work for Kennametal. Kennametal is a tooling and wear solutions company. We do a lot with design, material science, and materials in order to develop tooling solutions for a variety of industries. For example, if you have flown on a Boeing jet, the actual engines of that Boeing jet most likely utilized our tooling in order to make the engine and engine components, because you really need to have high precision tooling to make those jet components. Or if you've ridden in a GM or Ford car or automobile, most likely the engine components were machined by tooling that Kennametal has made over the years. So a lot of science, technology, chemistry, material science, and engineering goes into what we do here at Kennametal. So let's get on with it. Just an introduction to myself and why I am so excited to talk to you. I am a Hoosier at heart. I was born and raised in Terre Haute, Indiana. Matter of fact, I was just there over the weekend attending a funeral. I love Indiana, and it's always near and dear to my heart. There in Terre Haute, I attended Warren Elementary School. It no longer exists; it's now an apartment building where I grew up. I kind of grew up on the other side of town, if you will, or the wrong side of the tracks. I think they were the right side of the tracks, but sometimes people talked about it that way. Very proud of that fact. I also went to Chauncey Rose Middle School. Chauncey Rose no longer exists either; that school has been torn down. I still stand as a testament of a graduate from both Warren Elementary School and Chauncey Rose. They gave me a really good foundation. Terre Haute North Vigo High School is still there, and I'm very proud of the fact that I graduated in 1986 as the valedictorian of a class of about 520. Very proud to be a North Patriot, very proud to be a Hoosier at heart. I decided I wanted to study chemical engineering in my junior year in high school. I was taking science class, loved chemistry, liked math. I ended up doing a research paper on any topic that we wanted, science related, in science class my junior year, and it was on fractional distillation of crude oil. That was by Carlonda Russell, my maiden name as of April 1985. I fell in love with that. I fell in love with what a chemical engineer would do: they make stuff. They use chemistry and math, and they bring that together and they make stuff. So that's what I decided I wanted to do when I went to school. After my junior year, I said I'm going to apply to a variety of colleges. I really only applied to two colleges, but I really wanted to apply to one. That was really my first lesson in diversity and inclusion in STEM education. I wanted to apply to Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology there in Terre Haute, a great engineering school. My grandfather was a janitor at Rose-Hulman for 40 years. He would always say, maybe you'll grow up and get to go to Rose-Hulman. He never lived long enough to see me go to college. I really wanted to go to Rose-Hulman and live in my hometown. It's an awesome school, but at the time they weren't accepting women. It was not a co-ed college; it was only a male college, and they were not making exceptions to even give applications to women. So my fate was somewhat sealed that I was not going to be a Hoosier or at least live in my hometown forever because I could not go to Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. They have since gone co-ed since I think in the early 90s, and I was really happy to hear about that. Whenever I go home to visit, many times I will go to the campus. I love to visit the campus; it's a great campus and a great school. My choices ended up being Purdue, fantastic school there in West Lafayette, or Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Here's another lesson in diversity and inclusion, in one of the areas where you really have to know in your heart that you can achieve something. As I was applying to MIT, I had a classmate. I'm not sure why he said this given the fact that I had a 4.0 in high school and was doing really well in classes. He told me that if I got into MIT and if I made it through my first semester, he would be the first to shake my hand. I always remembered that. I probably packed it away somewhere, but in the heart of me and who I was, I knew I liked chemistry and math. I got into MIT, I was very excited about that, and I decided to go there. That's where I ended up doing my undergrad. I'm glad that I did not listen to or get scared away from what was in my heart, and it turned out to be a really good decision for me. So maybe that's one learning: have a belief in yourself in terms of your capabilities and what you know you can do. There will be naysayers along the way, but I think you can overcome those things. When I got to school, I worked hard, learned, had fun, and networked. If you notice, the fun and networked are in small letters. Some students go in, they want to have fun and network, and those are the big letters. Going through school, working hard, having that work ethic, and learning is very important, but also having fun is important, and the networking was very important for me. I spent some time in our career office at times, and I wanted to get a summer internship. That was a great way to learn. One time in October, I was in our career development office, and one of the leaders there said, I got someone I want you to meet. I met with a guy named Henry Elekko from Mobil Oil. I sat down with him and told him about my experiences in high school. I remember I still had blue jeans on and a blue jean jacket; I wasn't even ready for an interview. He hired me on the spot for a summer internship. I did all of my summer internships with Mobil Oil while I was an undergrad at MIT. That's where I really learned. Having that job and also loving my classes at MIT, I wanted to do research. I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to go into academics because I liked the aspect of teaching, but I also really liked industry. I thought that I really wanted to go into industry, and I got to see what researchers do and what leaders do in R&D groups. I started to formulate as early as 19 that I wanted to lead a large R&D organization, and that was through my experiences at Mobil. I went through MIT because I wanted to go into R&D. I knew I wanted to get a PhD eventually. I applied to and got into University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin, Berkeley, and then the University of Delaware. Because of the topic that I was really interested in, I ended up going to University of Delaware for my grad school education and got a master's and a PhD there. From there, I knew I wanted to go into industry by that point and looked at a variety of different companies. I had the opportunity to go to work for DuPont, and that's where I started my career. I ended up spending 22 to 23 years at DuPont in a variety of roles: R&D, operations or manufacturing, business leadership, marketing leadership. Then before I ended up having the opportunity to come to Kennametal. Now talking about the things that I learned over my career, this is spanning throughout DuPont, and I continue to learn now. I'm in my early 50s at Kennametal; I've had a career now for 26 years. First of all, I think it's important for anyone to begin to develop a vision and a belief that you can accomplish it. When you go into a company or any kind of role, you might have the vision: I want to become the CEO. I think that's a great vision. Not everybody can be a CEO of a company. There may be other ways you can get there. Maybe you want to be a researcher and continue to be a researcher for the rest of your career and develop that way, and you just love the science and never want to go away from the science. Perhaps you want to lead an R&D organization. Maybe you want to go to academics and become a tenured professor. Maybe you haven't figured all that out, and you just kind of know the areas. You have to have a vision for certain parts of your life because if you're not sure where you're aiming towards, it's hard for not only yourself but for others to help you get to that point. When you develop a vision, you can look at what you like to do, what your strengths are. One way of doing this is to learn what others do, learn how others have done it. Lifelong learning is a big piece of any career as you shape the things that you want to do. Many times when a person comes into a company, they want to take this road and run to the top pretty quickly. I'm not saying that can't happen, but the typical career starts with baby steps. You start learning, understand what this company is about, what they do, what this university is about, what they do. Watch others, begin to develop what you could do and what you like to do, what you're good at, and continue to develop what you're good at. You'll take that road, and you'll progress down that road. You'll get opportunities. You might have to climb some hills, but you're eventually going to get there. That's fantastic. You just have to believe that you can achieve that. Know there will be naysayers, those people who say, even if you could do that... If you end up getting your first promotion, I'll be the first to shake your hand. I hope that you don't have a lot of those people in your lives. Hopefully, there will be more people who will support you, who will be champions, who will be friends along the way and teammates to achieve the goal, as you also work and help your teammates achieve their goals as well. That would be the first thing I say: develop a vision and a belief that you can accomplish it. I can't tell you how many times I talk to people in organizations, and I am mentoring some folks right now who've been in their careers after seven years, ten years even. I ask them, what do you like to do? I don't know. What do you think you might want to do? I don't know. It's really hard for me to help that person. I can give them feedback on what I think their strengths are, but at the end of the day, if you're telling me you don't know what you want to do, I wonder just how much you even want to do something different or if you want to have an opportunity. It's always great to be able to talk to somebody who can at least tell me what their interests are or what they might want to do. Then we can talk about how we can find opportunities to let you demonstrate the skill sets in that area. I would really encourage you to develop a vision. It doesn't have to be the end vision, but it can be some next steps type of vision, or a vision of what I think I might like to do and I'd like to try this or try that. Keep that in mind as you progress. I think in a career, what I've learned, there are differences in mentors and there are differences in sponsors. Do you know the difference? There is a difference. I used to think that my mentor was my sponsor, and sometimes your mentor can be your sponsor. But sponsors... Mentors can sometimes be outside of your company or the place you work or outside of your organization. A sponsor, though, is probably somebody that's in your organization that knows of your capabilities. A mentor is a trusted advisor. A mentor is someone who can give you some navigation help. They answer questions. Quite frankly, you need to trust your mentor enough so that you can ask questions that you may think are stupid questions. I would say no question is a stupid question, but you do have to be careful. You want that person to be a trusted advisor. You go to a mentor, you want to be able to be honest with them. Maybe that's a person in your organization. If that's great, if you have a trusted advisor in your organization, that's great. Sometimes that person can be outside of your company. I still mentor people from DuPont who call me on a regular basis and ask me career advice. I mentor people in technology or R&D, I mentor people in supply chain, I mentor people who are in the business. They come and ask me questions, and I try to provide a safe space for them to ask the questions and get advice that I can give. A champion is someone who can influence on your behalf or help you to your next destination. They are someone who might have influence within an organization. They are someone who has seen you work, who knows your specific skill set and capability. They are the ones that can really speak for you in a room somewhere where people are making decisions. I've tried to be a champion for folks as well. At various points in my career, I've had mentors who were not trusted advisors because I went to them and they didn't keep my questions confidential. I learned that lesson very distinctly. I made sure that when I had a mentor, I could really trust their advice, trust them with my concerns and things like that. I also had champions, but there are times where my champions all retired or something in a matter of months, and I had no one. That was a kind of difficult time. You're always learning and talking. They call it networking; what I like to call is active learning, just getting to know people and understanding what they do and what their capabilities are. That's how you begin to learn and can develop within yourself those things that you like, the things that you know you can do well, the things that you say, I think I could do that too. If your sponsorship dries up, you're always meeting people and always doing what I would call networking, but not networking for networking's sake, really networking to learn and to get to know others. That's number two. My number three thing would be that whatever you end up doing at any point in your career, learn and improve as much as you can in your current job. I can tell you, there have been some of the naysayers in my career that have said, you're getting a job, the next thing you want is you look at your next role, you've got an eye on your next role. Quite frankly, that's not been my heart at all. My heart has always been I want to get in a job and I want to do the very best I can, and I want to learn. That's how I approach it. I think it's really good to have that kind of mentality. When you get into a job, you're going to get planted into a planter, and you're going to grow. You're going to gain experience. I always think about becoming all you can be within that framework that you are. Be a positive contributor wherever you are. You can always find a way to be a positive contributor and also lead from your pot. You don't have to have people reporting to you. You don't have to be a manager. Some of the most effective leaders in an organization, some of the most impactful leaders, have never had people report to them. They are influencers, they're great team players, but they can step forward and also take on responsibility. They're flexible. The next thing you know, when you're doing all these things, you're growing, you're gaining experience, you're becoming all you can be. That's what I call blooming where you are planted. Doing that, believe it or not, sometimes you might be in a role or situation that is not really your best role, but you're still learning, you're still meeting people. You can bloom where you are planted and take those opportunities to show those other skills, other than the technical skills, to gain more and more experience. I have to tell you, I've been at this now 26 years, being in my early 50s right now. I know that I am a much better leader now. I am a much better leader, manager, mentor, champion now, not because I'm CTO, but because of my experiences that I can share with others and how I can help others work through some of their issues and needs in their own careers much better now than I was when I was in my early 30s. I probably would have told you when I was in my 30s that I knew more than I would tell you I know now. So it's incredible. There's a balance of confidence, but then there's a balance of just taking the time to bloom where you're planted, learn as much and improve as much as you can where you're planted so that you'll be ready for something bigger as it comes along. My number four point, I've got five points here, are the three doors. There are three different types of doors. There are probably others, but here are the major doors that I found in my career. I'm just going to give you some advice on the doors that you might come across. I'm probably talking to a lot of folks who may not have watched a lot of Star Trek or Star Trek: The Next Generation. When I was coming along, when Star Trek: The Next Generation was on, Captain Picard would walk and the door would just automatically open and then shut. It was the wildest thing. You might find that you have a door. You're working in your role, and then this door opens, and you might find that it just opens automatically. It's great. You have to make decisions. You need to consult with not only yourself, your trusted advisors, perhaps a sponsor. Should you walk through that door? Because not every door is... there may be some trap doors on the other side. There are opportunities that I've had several times in my career that came up. There was maybe one time where I just knew it wasn't the right opportunity, and I did not take it. Quite frankly, it was because it required moving to an area of the country that had some racial tensions. I am an African American. I did not want to subject my family to that area. We decided not to move. That was just a personal decision. I could have gotten a career advancement by making that move. It was early in my career, and I did not take that opportunity. I figured it wasn't worth putting my family at risk. But there have been several others where the door just opened, and I've been really grateful to walk through it, and I've had great opportunities in doing that. The next door is what I would call the unlocked or slightly ajar door. Those are the doors where you might have to try the doorknob and push the door open, or you might have to push the door open if it's slightly ajar. Those are the times in your career where you might have to ask questions, where you might have to go and apply for a job that's on a job board in your company, or you might have to talk to people and make it known that you're very interested in the job. I know there have been times in my career, for example, I'm in technology, I've been in R&D, but I felt like I wanted to be a more well-rounded R&D leader. For me, I wanted to have an experience in the business. About five or six years into my career, as I was having conversations with leaders and learning more about what a business leader did, I talked about wanting to have an experience at leading a business or working in a business. I took a couple of steps. I was a technology leader for business, then I became a marketing leader, and then I actually ran a business for a couple of years. That was a really great experience for me to learn about customers, really driving customer focus, learning about business finances. I took various courses in order to prepare myself. When I got that opportunity, I kind of opened that door and I walked through, and I really enriched my own learning as a leader by having that opportunity in my career. You have to really be looking out for those times where you might be able to take a door. You might have to slightly push it open; it's not going to just open up for you. You might have to figure out how to make your desires known and do the things before you actually walk through the door in order to even be able to access that door. I would call those the unlocked or slightly ajar doors. Then there's door number three, the locked door. Sometimes I have known people who have tried to break down the door, put a battering ram against the door. Probably in the same company or organization that you're in, that may not be the best strategy. Those types of things are kind of far and few in between. When you end up doing that, there's some memory that's left over in the organization, and it's probably not a good thing. You can find ways to perhaps get it unlocked, working with mentors and with your sponsors. You might need to take some other doors before you get to this door that would open for you. Maybe there are doors outside of where you are, outside of the company, outside of the area. Maybe it's locked for a good reason, locked to you for a good reason. You have to really understand that. As you take more and more opportunity, as you gain more and more experience, I think you'll understand how to navigate when you do come up to locked doors. Quite frankly, I'm going to be very honest with you. There have been times in my career that I've come up to a locked door. I wanted a position, really felt like I deserved it, had gotten all the experiences that I pretty much needed, but that door didn't open for me. Time after time, it wasn't opening for me. I actually went to a mentor, a trusted advisor who happened to be outside of my organization, who knew something about the certain situation. I asked point blank, what do you think? It was their assessment as well that they didn't think this door was going to open. That was all of my understanding. So I found another door outside of that organization, and I took that other door and was very, very happy to have taken it. You do come up to those situations sometimes, and it takes being thoughtful. The one thing that I would say of the three doors: don't be too hasty to go through any various door that comes along, whether it opens automatically for you or whether it's locked or whether you just have to kind of push it open. You never know what's on the other side. It could be great on the other side. It could be a door that gets you to your next opportunity, or it could be a trap door, it could be something that's a dead end. I'll be honest with you again. I've had a few people leave my organization in the last year or so. They went to other companies. I can say three people that has happened to, and within a year, two of them have come back. They're in the organization. We were very happy to bring them back; they're excellent folks. So it's not always the grass is greener on the other side of the door. If you get the experiences, if you learn everything, you apply these principles that I'm talking about, and if you're getting all the information that you need from your advisors, your mentors, you can make a rational decision on which door you're looking at and what to do about it. That brings me to point number five, which I think is an important point for all of us. It's just around enjoyment. Have fun. The pictures here are silly, but it's not a silly kind of have fun. It's really nice to enjoy your job. I know people in my organization right now; they're spending a lot of time on the road, they're traveling, they're practically living at some of our plant sites, and they're away from their family, but they love what they do so much that it's not a burden to them. We have people who are very dedicated, and I just love working with them. I have the greatest organization here. I love working, and I love doing what I do, and I have a passion for it. I think it is important to have enjoyment with what you do because I do think that you can do your best work when you're really enjoying it and you're taking the time to learn, celebrate the wins, and be with your teammates. If things are going through some hardships, but then also be there to celebrate and have fun when you have the successes. I think it's so important throughout your career. If you're not having fun day after day, week after week, then it is time to take a look at your doors and your options and what you might be able to do next, and to really think about what would be good for you, your family, and all the other choices that you might have to make along the way. So those are the five key lessons I've learned throughout my career: develop a vision and a belief that you can accomplish it; get a mentor and a sponsor wherever you are; learn and improve as much as you can in your current job, the concept of bloom where you're planted; remember the three doors, don't be too hasty to walk through the doors; and then to have fun. Those are some nutshell things that I've learned along the way in my 26-year career in industry. And finally, why would I do it all over again? Well, when the right door came along, I felt like I was really ready for it. When I got a call from a recruiter that said, would you like to look at this opportunity? This is an opportunity for the Chief Technology Officer of this great company. You have all the skill sets, you have the experience. I took a gulp and said, yeah, I really want to look at this. I was ready to interview, and I was ready for this challenge. I've been at Kennametal for three years, working on a lot of great things and innovations and making a difference in our world. That's why I've enjoyed my STEM career and why I would do it again. All the ups and downs and the learnings that I've had, I would definitely do that again to get to the point where I am right now, where I'm having a lot of fun and hopefully helping a lot of people in their careers as well. So with that, Christina, that's all I really had prepared to share.

Well, it really depends upon what you mean by all of the things that they enjoy. If you can learn about various positions, for example, if you are good in technology but you also like business and have a knack for business, there is a role called new business development where you've got to have some technical capability but also apply some good business discipline to develop a new area, a new application, or a new business. In academia, there are new business development people. In industry, there are new business development people. I think there are ways to find jobs that bring together different skill sets more than you might think. If you like technology but also like to play basketball, you might need to go into an industry that mixes sports medicine with technical fields, like kinesiology with sports. I think there's always a way to combine at least two, maybe three interests. If you have a bunch of different interests, you might want to consider where your primary area is, the two or three areas that you really excel in. I'd be surprised that you couldn't fashion or find an industry or a role that could take advantage of that. There are a lot of different things to do out there.

We actually lost a couple of candidates to a postdoc experience. I think that if you want to teach or go into academics, certainly a postdoc would help. But going into industry helps as well, getting that practical experience for a couple of years, and then if you want to go into academics, that also helps. Even vice versa, we just hired someone who was a professor at one of the local universities in our powder metallurgy group. I'm always happy to have those exchanges. If you're looking at making a decision, if you wanted to look in a different science area or an expanded science area and go into more depth in that science area, you might want to go into a postdoc. That's a great way of expanding your fundamental science areas. If you get into industry, you might end up doing a little bit more practical R&D. So if you really want to stay more fundamental for a couple more years, a postdoc would probably be a good place for you to go as opposed to industry. But if you're ready to get out and think you might like industry, I think it's a great way to understand everything you've learned in graduate school. Do you like to apply? Do you like to see new products get out in the marketplace? Then that's when I would say, yeah, I'm ready to start my industry career and apply everything that I've learned into industry. So it really depends if you want to continue to go deep into the fundamentals. I think the postdoc probably would weigh a little heavier than industry.

I'm looking over here at my home library. There's a book, and I forget who writes it, but it's called How to Toot Your Own Horn Without Blowing It. Tooting your own horn without blowing it. When I meet people who are blowing their own horn, you get kind of resistant to that. A lot of times in industry, your work can speak for itself. But in that book, it talks about making your elevator speech, talking about yourself in a way that talks about the things that you've learned as opposed to what I did. The things that the team did and then what you learned in the team. Getting to the point of talking about what a team did and then how you contributed to it, but not taking all the credit for it. I think it is very suspicious if you start talking about something that happened in a team and that you did it all. Humility and humbleness is always a good thing. Really think about what you did bring to the table, think about all the great things that happened around it, and then very succinctly be able to say, this great thing happened, we worked as a team, one of the things I'm very proud of that I contributed to was X, Y, and Z, and I really worked very hard to support that. That's one way of tooting your own horn: what did you do to help the success of that team, but not trying to take all of the credit for it. People see through that very quickly. It doesn't bode very well, at least for me. In industry, people ask people about people. If you're telling a person something about yourself that they're not hearing from others, that's kind of a no-no. You want to have good credibility with teammates as well as with the leadership. There are ways of talking about your contribution to something or how you stood out versus taking credit for everything, and that's going to be found out anyway, so don't do it. So yeah, toot your own horn, don't blow it.

So you mean like an early stage professor? Yes. If you started off as a professorship, that's a great way of showing your entrepreneurial spirit. You're writing grants, you're trying to get funding, you're selling your ideas, you're selling ideas to your grad students. When I was in grad school, I went to work for a great professor. He had a vision for what he wanted to do. He gave me a lot of leeway to develop my leadership skills. He wasn't always putting his thumb on me. You've got skill sets of managing people, managing budgets. You're developing all of that. Maybe you want to go to a company after that and spend some time. You would probably enter a company not at the engineer level; you might actually be at a manager level because you've learned all those skills, and you can work your way through the system. You might start your own company. I know several professors, certainly at MIT, have started their own companies and were the CEO of their own company. There are ways of getting the business aspect of it, whether you officially get an MBA or take some fine business finance courses that really help you understand that aspect of it. In any career, you have to be looking for some of those open doors to areas that will help you learn and expand. It may not always be A, B, C, D, E. It may be A prime; maybe you'll skip to C. Keep your eyes open, learn as much as you can. I think you'll find those natural progressions, those natural doors to give you more and more exposure to the things that you want to do. It's great to think that you want to do that, and maybe you can orchestrate some of those doors. You're going to have to open some doorknobs. As you do that, as you learn, you'll find how you can maneuver your way into exactly what you want to be. I never said I wanted to be a CTO of a company in the C-suite. I never even thought that it was even possible. My goal that I had for myself was to be a technology leader or R&D leader of a larger organization, a couple hundred people. That was my goal. But as I learned more and more, I saw these other opportunities. The door to come to Kennametal was more of a Star Trek door for me.

I would say that I'm a generalist. I'm a chemical engineer that has a really strong chemistry leaning. At DuPont, I was more chemistry oriented, single molecule kind of person. Then I got into polymers. I ended up either leading projects or managing organizations that were more polymer oriented, so I learned a lot about polymers so that I could be a better leader there. I always had that process technology perspective from the engineering background. I worked in a variety of different industries: polymers for products, titanium technologies, I ended up working in nylon and learning a lot about that with our ethylene copolymers business. I got a wide variety of exposure to a lot of different technologies. I also worked in titanium technology, the coatings business. I have a lot of really good practical knowledge. Then I come to Kennametal, which is a materials company, more of a mechanical engineering company. I think that building a foundation and having a good foundation as a good technologist, certainly if you become a leader, you can begin to ask questions and understand or do research in areas that have some of the similar fundamentals, whether it's chemistry or material science. There are consistent things. If you really have that good foundation from a technical perspective, you can move into various areas. If you want to be a researcher, maybe the steps are a little bit more gradual. I've known people who have done polymer like nylon and then ended up working in biochemistry at the end of their career. If you have the will to do that, it is possible. It's a lot of self-learning and continuous learning, and you can make those changes if you have that will within you to do that.

I'm sure you will hear from various people. As you meet people, you're always learning, always seeing what other people are doing, seeing what the possibilities are. There's not one career that's the same; they all have their individual fingerprints on them. The value of networking is you meet different people who have had different experiences. You're taking that all in so that you're becoming a more well-rounded person and you understand the possibilities so that you're not just networking for the sake of networking. You're networking to understand people, to understand how to interact with people, because that's what's going to be required when you go into industry or in academics. You have to work with all kinds of people. The more people that you meet, the more personalities that you get exposed to, the more you're going to know how to handle those situations.

We just hired, within the last year or two, we've hired two postdocs. I think it really depends upon what your desire is. If you want to continue that a little bit more fundamental, if you want to maybe lead a lab or something and get that exposure as a postdoc, that's fantastic. We hire people directly out of grad school. We hire people who are postdocs who are fantastic because they come in very mature and hit the ground running. In our additive area, we hired a postdoc from Virginia Tech a couple years ago. In any company that I would belong to, and I think I could speak for many industry folks, we'll take all of these experiences because they bring a different type of value. It's really about where you've walked and all the experience that you have. I want a diversity of people. I want people who've had that experience in postdoc. We have BS engineers and master's engineers who are doing research. We have PhDs who are doing research. I want them all because I think they bring a different perspective to the problems that we're trying to solve in industry. I think all the smart technical leaders in industry would say the same thing.

Well, thank you for inviting me. I wish all the best to all of you on the phone. It's too bad we can't be more interactive. I love doing this type of thing. Good luck to all of you guys. Keep an open mind and just remember: work hard, but also have fun.