Katherine Bychinski

I would attribute my success to my husband, he's definitely been a supporter the whole time. He's listened to me complain about things that he probably just doesn't really care, but he's allowed me to get those frustrations and things out to allow me to be able to go backwards and succeed. And then I would say my parents as well. They've definitely shaped kind of my work ethic. You know, as a kid growing up, they've kind of instilled how we should work, and just how to be the leader, and things like that.

The best career advice that I've received is, You're not growing unless you're uncomfortable. When you start to get comfortable in the position that you're in, it's kind of you've kind of run your course. You can't learn anymore. It's always trying to take that one step further and try and if you're uncomfortable, that means you're learning something. You can't be afraid to fail or learn something new.

Never give up, it's just keep pushing forward. Sometimes you feel like you can't push any further, it's just be consistent, and never give up, and just don't be afraid to speak what your thoughts are. There's no bad thoughts and things, especially if people are asking you for advice, just be like, hey, this is what I think we should do, is just don't be afraid to speak up. Don't be afraid to continue to push, don't be afraid to ask those questions. There's no dumb questions. Just if you don't know, I'd rather just be honest. Hey, I don't know, can you help me with this? Be honest, push more, learn more, and just keep going.

Being in manufacturing and operations, there's definitely a lot of different ways I can go. Right now, being a production manager and more in the operations side, I can really just kind of focus, learn. Next step would kind of be an operations manager, where you're kind of looking more at the whole picture instead of just a singular group of lines and things like that, and there's definitely an opportunity to just keep growing within that, whereas after an operations manager, you can take the picture even a little bit bigger. You can go to a plant manager, there's just all these little steps that just get you a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger, which is, I think, why I like the manufacturing environment so much, is just there's always that next opportunity that's lined up that you can work yourself towards.

Values is definitely, family is you heard me say it right, family is definitely a big value that I have. You only get, really, you know, one family, right? So it's just that family bond, and then just I guess it's not of value, it's just more of be your true self, right? Don't try and change yourself for other people, just be your true self to everybody, and let them just see who you are.