Her Story
About Charissa
I've been working in the engineering and supply chain field for about 5 years now, and I'm still relatively new to the career space. I originally grew up in Haiti, where I did most of my schooling and everything there, and then I came to the U.S. for college and university, and then started working here. I work at Johnson & Johnson, where I started through their leadership development program for young, upcoming graduates. For the first 3 years of my career, they rotated me through a lot of different roles within the company so I could get an idea of what the whole supply chain looks like. I just started a new role about a month or two ago, but I've been working within the engineering space the whole five years, and I'm more in the supply chain areas right now. My typical day involves a lot of talking to cross-functional partners, speaking to people from around the world to get insights on our engineering practices and just general supply chain regional practices. My biggest achievement has been being able to give back to my communities. Working here at J&J, I've gotten a lot of opportunities to just give back to the community and teach people the same way that people used to teach me growing up. Being able to go back to my home country and just kind of show girls and show women that this is what you could become if you study hard and you work hard has been really meaningful and the nicest piece for me.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Charissa
01What do you attribute your success to?
I definitely attribute my success to having a wonderful community around me, both in the workplace and having a wonderful family behind me. I definitely wouldn't be able to put in the hours at work that I'm able to without my family. My family was the ones that kind of believed in me, invested in me from kind of a young age, sending me to school, making sure I'm getting the education and the resources I needed to be educated as I am. And I think within the workplace, it's just people seeing how bright-eyed and curious I was, and just deciding to give me their time, their knowledge, and kind of just sharing that with me. So I would say definitely my community has caused me to become the person I am today.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best piece of advice I've received is that people have told me to just keep being me, and keep being authentically myself in the workplace, and my people will find me. I've always been told, okay, you're a ray of sunshine, so don't ever stop being a ray of sunshine. So it's like, as long as I keep doing that and keep being me, I will achieve and be able to do whatever it is I want to do.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would definitely just say to them, just do it and don't be scared to do it. Reach for the stars, dream big as much as you want to dream, and it kind of all falls in your lap, as long as you're willing to put in the hours and put the hard work in.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I would say one of the big challenges that we see is we live in such a fast-paced world now where technology is speeding up. And you see all of these new AI enhancements, new things with machine learning, and we're, as a society, not able to catch up. There's a lot of processes that have been done manually, and there's a lot of technology that we can put in there, but it's kind of like bridging that gap of how do we get people to move from the old way of doing things to the new way of doing things. And I think, even though the technology's so fast, it's kind of training people and making sure people are kept up to date with what all is new and going. It's like every new day there needs to be a new tool, and it's so many new stuff are out there, I don't even know what to do with them all.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I would definitely say hard work, being authentic, being honest in all of your feelings professionally and personally. As long as you show up as yourself, people can't really get mad at you for that. And even when you make mistakes or any kind of issues happen, as long as you're just kind of just being honest, being humble, then it all works out.
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