Her Story
About Lucretia
I've been in my field for 3 years, and I currently work as a lab manager at a custom rubber mixing company where we do formulation development and testing, working on scaling our lab formulas up for production. Each day, we review test data from previous days, decide if it's good enough to scale up for production or if further testing needs to be done, and check to see if the testing has met specifications. We meet internally or reach out to customers depending on the situation, and we help solve their issues by making the rubber and getting feedback from them to see if what we're developing will be a good fit for their part. Before this role, I worked at Gojo for two and a half years doing similar formulation work with hand sanitizer, which was my first job after graduating college in 2020. During college, I did internships with Sherwin-Williams and Lubrizol in testing and formulation, mostly working with paint. I transitioned to the rubber industry because I felt stuck at Gojo and wanted something more challenging where I could learn more, faster, and get outside my comfort zone. Within just my first 6 months in this role, I learned more than I did the whole time I was at Gojo because this is a faster-paced environment where I face more challenges every day.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Lucretia
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've received is that you don't always have to know the answer, but knowing how to get the answer and who to talk to really helps you solve problems. The more networking and collaboration you do will benefit you later, especially when you face challenges, because you can remember the different people you talked to that had that same experience. So you always have a lifeline when you have an issue. It's okay to not know everything, because that's why collaboration and networking is so important - you get with people, and everybody has their own expertise.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say to appreciate every challenge that comes your way, because that's how you learn the most and the fastest - that's how I've learned. When you face challenges, you're forced to learn, you're forced to think outside of the box, and you're forced to talk to people that you might not typically talk to on a day-to-day basis. So don't look at challenges as a bad thing, but as an opportunity.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge in my field right now is just the lack of technical people in the rubber industry. There's not a lot of knowledge that's readily available - it's a lot of digging through old papers and old specifications, and it's a lot of doing your own research. Most things about rubber, you can't just Google and find the answer online. It's very experience-based - you kind of have to have the experience to know what the outcome will be. So the lack of knowledge that's readily available is a major challenge.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The values most important to me are honesty, teamwork, loyalty, and respect.
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