Her Story
About Nyla
Nyla Owens works in customer service and project management within the manufacturing industry. She joined her current company after completing an internship at Woodland Foods, a private label food brand, where she gained experience on the manufacturing side, including production, plants, and sales bids. Having graduated from NIU in May, Nyla has been in her full-time role for approximately 90 days. Her responsibilities include processing customer orders into systems, coordinating with production and material managers across plants, and ensuring speedy service. She holds a digital marketing certificate specializing in Google Ads certification. Nyla is actively involved with Rockford Promise, a nonprofit that supported her education, and she donates regularly to the organization. She credits her professional foundation to her aunt, who has a PhD in chemistry, and her father, who works in sales, both of whom exposed her to business practices from a young age. Nyla values positivity in her work and advises young professionals to learn as much as possible and understand all aspects of their business.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Nyla
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think I have a lot of great people, my aunt and my own father, that have just shown me the world of business since I was really young. My dad does sales as well. Just that business aspect, seeing them and how they work in this professional way, has really influenced me now. It's just step-by-step watching them, how they build their foundation, and taking pieces of things that I don't, and through, like, has really just been the key cornerstone of my foundation right now.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Be ready to learn, and take all the information you can. And talk to everybody. Get to know all parts of how your business works, because the way the more you know, and the more knowledge you intake when you first step into this a new role or a new company. The more you're able to kind of figure away how you fit into that process, and understand your job role.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think a bigger challenge is a lot of employees at my company have been working there for so long that they're ready for retirement, and I think that we don't have a lot of newer people that have the same amount of knowledge, so I'm trying to soak in all the knowledge at once so that when they're ready to leave, there's somebody still left behind with all this great knowledge that they have.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Positivity. I'm a very positive person. I try to bring so much positivity, because working in business, sometimes we have to be very serious. So there's moments, you know. No, I'm just like, guys! You know, we're done with it, it's over, you know, take a deep breath, and let's just have a good time. I always love to bring a good, positive smile.
Join Influential Women and start making an impact. Register now.