Her Story
About Harini
My career journey started with an undergrad in horticulture back in India, but I was more interested towards the food manufacturing side and wanted to learn more in depth about food. I came to the US for my master's in fall of 2023 and completed my Master's in Food Science from NC State, graduating in May 2025. The entire master's journey was a big learning experience because the education system was entirely new, and all the courses I chose were entirely new and very practical in terms of how you can apply all of that in a research industry as well as in a manufacturing or industry setup. From June 2025, I started working as a food safety quality assurance supervisor at Comarco Products in Florida for about 7 months. Currently, I work at Sunrich Farms in California as a food safety quality assistant manager, where I've been for about a month. In my role, we make more than 5,000 different products, so I prepare certificates of analysis and conformances, prepare for regular audits, work on continuous improvement, and work cross-functionally with other departments. I also handle customer complaints, investigating what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again. Manufacturing happens 24 hours, and problems can occur at any point, so I need to know the approach for it, how to correct it, and how to prevent it from happening again. I've done multiple certifications in order to be eligible in audits - I did about 4 to 5 certifications in the last month. One thing I'm proud of is that straight out of college, I'm in an assistant manager position.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Harini
01What do you attribute your success to?
I would say my parents and friends have always been a big support. Along with that, the passion, determination, and wanting to achieve - being ambitious - has been really important to my success.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say that's the age where you can explore in terms of what you want to do in life. Talk to people, get everybody's advice and opinion, but at the end of the day, you do what you are interested in. Do not just go behind what the world is doing or what the world wants you to do. Choose your path, choose what you want to do. You don't have to have others define your life for you - define your own.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I feel the role that I'm in currently is really, really important because it directly deals with quality and safe food that reaches the consumers and the end consumers. The health of people is directly dependent on how we control it here in the industry. Food is what keeps everybody alive, and that's something this industry would never die. I feel the opportunity is vast here because it's a very important aspect. It comes with its own challenges, though. You have production running 24 hours, and you cannot keep an eye on everything. You have to get all of the other departments on the same page as quality, because everybody else has different mottos. For example, production wants to get the pounds out, marketing wants to get their product out, but ultimately, everything comes down to the safety of food and the quality of it. Bringing every other department on the same page as ours, I think is one of the biggest challenges in this industry.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
In professional life, I would say teamwork and communication are most important. In personal life, I would say it's just be nice to everybody. You never know what comes ahead of you. So, just be loyal, just be true to yourself and to everybody else.
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