Her Story
About Megan
Megan Harlow serves as Corporate Quality Manager in the manufacturing injection molding industry. With a career rooted in automotive quality, she manages the overall quality management system across six plants, overseeing audit certification roadmaps, customer satisfaction initiatives, quality problem-solving approaches, and variation reduction activities. She ensures alignment among plant quality managers and supports their professional development. Harlow earned her Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering from Cuttering University and completed an Executive MBA at Michigan State University in 2024. She also achieved her Six Sigma Black Belt certification at the end of last summer. As a member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), she draws on her background in mechanical engineering and a passion for systems thinking to drive cross-functional improvement in manufacturing environments. She attributes her professional success to an open-minded curiosity and a joy for learning new things.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Megan
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think it's a open-minded curiosity and a just joy for learning things. I don't need to be able to use what I'm learning for anything. ... that trait to my parents. I grew up where my dad would give us extra history lessons, you know, on the weekends.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Don't go through every door that opens just because it opens. Choose your opportunities, because they're the opportunities that make sense for how you see your career going overall. Just because something opens up doesn't mean it has to be the right thing for you.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Find other people who they see doing the types of activities that they think are exciting, and to be courageous enough to strike a conversation up with them. And really collaborate, and be open to how they could get to a similar role, and to not just focus in on one or two things, but to make sure to really evaluate the whole world that's out there.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
There's not a ton of quality movement in terms of upward rolls, and quality is a lot of times perceived as the bad guy internally within an organization that you're policing or keeping people from being able to take the path they would otherwise choose.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Openness, the ability to learn a new perspective from an open and honest place, and not be closed off to well, I think it must be this, and therefore there must be something that is wrong in how someone else is thinking.
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