As a 5th daughter, Karla Loera did not follow in her sisters’ footsteps. Karla was raised in Juarez, Mexico in a middle-class family. Her mother stayed home to raise the kids; her father was an accountant. Her elder sisters attained degrees in business or computer science. She had no idea through middle school or her first years of high school that she would eventually become an engineer. When she attended grade school in Juarez, there were no STEM-related programs. Very few females pursued engineering collegiately.
Toward the latter years of high school, she met a young man who drove a nice vehicle. She decided to investigate his career path so that she too could drive a nice car and have a lifestyle in which she didn’t have to worry about having enough money to pay living expenses. She found that her new friend was pursuing engineering as a career and was already working as an electrical engineering student in the field. His primary advice to her was that she needed to be motivated and would do well financially as a result. At that point, she embarked on a career path in engineering and started taking stringent math and science classes.
In her final year of high school, she applied to a newer collegiate program at a public university in Nuevo Leon. Although the Technologico de Monterrey was the premier university for engineering in Mexico at the time, her family could not afford the private education. The program at The Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon outside Monterrey was her choice pick as it was very well-respected and had new, specialized mechanical and electrical engineering programs not offered by other public schools in the country. However, it was also very selective and students from across Mexico were applying for entry. The admission test took about 5 hours with approximately 2,000 students testing, though only 150 were accepted into the program. Fortunately for Karla, she scored extremely well on the test and was accepted into the program.
While in college, Karla had a job translating various manuals into English. As she was raised on the US-Mexico border, her English skills were strong; she had a language advantage over many other students from southern Mexico who spoke no English. She translated C++ and CAD manuals into English to earn spending money. Between her job and her long two-hour, one-way commutes between her apartment and the school located in the outskirts of the city, she did not have time for much else other than her studies.
After the first six months of school, she received a scholarship from the university to help with expenses. Since she attended a public school, her tuition was free (funded by the government). Her parents helped with living and food expenses, which were then also augmented by the scholarship. Her focus was to maintain high grades so she could continue receiving scholarship funds, which were limited to the top 100 students of the approximately 10,000 enrolled at the school. She took basic classes during her first two years of study, then specialized in engineering courses and attained a degree in Electrical and Communications Engineering.
At the time she was enrolled, the population at the school was heavily dominated by males. There were only 500 females to the 9500 men on campus in the engineering programs. Although there were so few females comparatively, she was not negatively impacted by the male to female ratio and worked with males or females, as necessary, to complete her studies. She thinks the ratio at the school was representative of what she would later face in industry so if anything, she learned how to communicate well and work with both groups. The school was conservative. Everyone needed to focus on studies to survive; students were not permitted make-up, skirts, nail polish and needed to wear long hair up in classes.
After completion of her degree, her first job was at Global Harness Systems, Inc. in her hometown of Juarez, Mexico. She worked in both process and product engineering, as well as in quoting. She was the only female engineer at the company at that time. After a few years with Global Harness, she spoke to the owner about growth opportunities. Due to the small company nature of the business, there were not many training programs in which she could participate. With the blessing of the owner, she opted to take a senior project engineering position across the street at Mercury Marine. There, she achieved Green Belt Certification and completed other training courses. She worked in various positions, then secured her first management role as she directed two technicians and a drafter. She was responsible for project management and customer service.
After a few years, she returned to Global Harness Systems. During her second stint of employment there, the company was acquired by Electrical Components International, ECI. She left for a two-year period to work as an analyst at Acquisition Life Cycle Management LLC in Warner-Robins, Georgia. In this position, she worked with the Department of Defense and Logistics. Shortly thereafter, she returned to ECI as a Senior Application Engineer. She analyzed customer harness drawings and reviewed them for manufacturability. She developed training curricula for customer service, sales, and new engineers. Karla also worked on cost reduction activities (VA/VE) and interfaced frequently with customers. She was later promoted to Senior Manager of the Transportation Business Unit. In this position, she had a wide array of leadership responsibilities and worked closely with customers as well as internal management.
From her early days at Global Harness where she supported school bus customers to her current assignment at Blue Bird Corporation, she developed a core competency in school bus wire harness manufacturing and support. While primarily focused on engineering in previous assignments, she is now a Senior Manager of Electrical Purchasing with Blue Bird. Her responsibilities include: supplier selection, working within multi-disciplinary teams at Blue Bird to synchronize production to supplier capabilities, leading cost reduction initiatives, finding solutions for part shortages, and lead time improvement planning, among others. Her experience working in the wire harness industry helps her to understand the concerns and roadblocks faced by the wiring suppliers. Not only is she able to relate, but she can also offer guidance and potential resolutions.
Karla’s career thus far is particularly intriguing because her engineering education and her bilingualism in English and Spanish led to unique opportunities. She performed varying roles from process engineering to product engineering, and from sales to purchasing. While she worked in companies not involved in wire harness manufacturing or cable assembly usage along the way, she developed a proficient expertise in harnessing through the years specifically involved in the field. She also had the opportunity to travel. In her words, “Being an engineer is very complex, challenging, and never gets boring. If you are ambitious about learning, this is the field for you.”
Karla has always felt welcomed at the companies where she has worked. Just as in college, there was never a discomfort due to being female. If anything, she felt powerful because she understood details that were often unknown to other males, let alone females. She has “superpowers” like better understanding how common household items work and fixing them rather than discarding them. Given the choice again, Karla would take the same path to engineering if she could go back in time to select her major and college. Without doubt, she recommends that other curious females select engineering as their collegiate major. She originally met a young man who introduced her to engineering, and now that engineering avenue has enabled her to drive the equivalent vehicle that she sought years ago. She envisioned success and made it happen through ambition and tenacity.
