Her Story
About Olga
I started my career journey after moving from Russia to the United States in the early 2000s. I began with Canon in Virginia as a manufacturing engineer working on fully automated robotic production lines for camera equipment and toner printer cartridges. After about 5 years, I moved into supplier quality with Canon for another 4-5 years. From there, I joined Tyco Electronics working on piezoelectric sensor manufacturing and cell phone components as part of the new product development team, launching products and preparing them for serious production over 6-7 years. I then spent a couple years with Stihl, the German power equipment company, doing strategic supplier development. My career evolved into supervisory and management roles when I joined Rip here, a mining company. I started managing their Supplier Quality Team for about 4 years before being promoted to general manager in 2019, right before COVID started. Now I oversee all quality functions for our operation that produces large open-pit mining trucks operating in countries from Australia to Chile. The role is very customer-facing and allows me to wear many hats, influence company processes, and work directly with customers, which I find both challenging and rewarding.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Olga
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think my key to success is that I don't stop asking questions and I always bring data to every meeting and discussion. My favorite quote is 'In God we trust, all others bring data' because it's difficult to argue when you have facts and figures - everything else becomes objective. That's kind of how I deal with things in my professional life. Being in a male-dominated industry like mining, where I'm one of only 14 general managers and the only female, it's definitely challenging sometimes. But I've found that coming prepared with facts and figures helps me navigate those challenges. It's also helped me stand out in a positive way, because a lot of people are surprised to have a woman in this industry.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Just don't give up. Sometimes there's a lot of technical challenge - you have to learn, you have to study hard, then you go into the field and you have to work hard, and sometimes it feels like it's just too much. But don't give up. Use the opportunity if something goes wrong or if you fail - use that opportunity to learn from it and get better. Failure is not a bad thing. Failure is a good thing because it makes you stronger. If you only have successes, sometimes the first challenge or failure destroys you. So keep studying, keep doing your thing, and also care. In my opinion, caring and taking ownership of what you do is very important. You can teach people how to do things, but you cannot teach them to care or to go that extra mile. That comes from personality, from your professionalism and your professional ethics.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
COVID brought major challenges with travel restrictions, which is very important for us since we do a lot of presence audits at suppliers, verification, and inspections. Not being able to travel to supplier sites meant we had to do everything remotely via Teams or FaceTime, which required setting up new tools and processes to continue monitoring quality at suppliers without physically being there. We also dealt with a lot of resource challenges and turnover while going through major expansion with a large project from Australia, so we had to grow the department while managing those limitations. Now, as we're developing our first electrical mining equipment, we're dealing with new technology, staying in touch with new processes, and managing new supplier commodity issues associated with batteries and battery operations.
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