(165c) My Career Path

My career thus far has been shaped by many factors learned early in life. It started in my hometown of Yazoo City, Mississippi. It was there that I had the job that I consider to be my first engineering experience which was working with my dad at Gainwell Tire Services. While there, I discovered that I had a fondness for hands-on work and gravitated toward working closely with people as part of a team. This was instrumental in not only my early career development but shaped my life as a whole. From there, while in high school, I worked at our local construction company, Parker Builders. During this time, I developed a strong partiality for repairing process equipment. Also, a sense of work ethic was formed as there were several days where I worked on a hot tin roof for hours. After graduation, I headed to college at Louisiana Tech University. While there, I was a part of the football team while pursuing my Chemical Engineering degree. This conceivably impossible task was made possible largely due to the work ethic learned early in life. It also helped further developed my team-membership skills.

Later, I transferred to Southern Arkansas University. It was here that I not only compounded upon my team-membership skills but developed into a team leader as a captain of the football team. While there I took on several internships which included stints in the chemical, aerospace, energy, and mechanical fields. One of those internships was Lanxess Solutions in El Dorado, Arkansas. The skills learned early in life helped me very much in many of the projects given during this time and were good enough to be hired full time as a Shift Leader upon graduating college. In this role, I developed many technical skills and gained an understanding of the operations side of the plant. After some time there, I went to New Orleans, Louisiana to work at Galata Chemicals as a Process Engineer. While at Galata, I was able to further develop technical skills as well as learn the safety aspect that is imperative in a plant setting. After spending a year and a half there, I was offered a Process Engineer II position at Oxea Chemicals, my current role. Thus far I have learned even more about the chemical field and continue to grow professionally with the organizational training offered.