Vanessa Santos

I started my career at 15 and went to aviation school at 16, which helped me get my first job in receiving inspection. They noticed I was able to do things a little quicker, so they started advancing me in different areas in quality. Over 26 years, I've built expertise across the aerospace industry working with major companies. At AAR Composites, I helped Sikorsky increase their delivery from one case per month to multiple cases, earning recognition from their customer manager. When the Boeing 737 MAX had issues after the Allegiant airline crash, Boeing called me to be the first source inspection team member in Wichita to figure out the root cause. We spent 4 months there doing a quality improvement plan, retraining engineers, looking at the whole process, and creating KPIs. At Pratt & Whitney through RGBSI, I reduced their 8-week turnaround time and brought their 75% rejection rate down significantly. They promoted me from quality engineer to lead quality engineer and internal auditor once they realized my background. At Source One Solutions as QMS manager, I built a clean room, created all the SOPs, got their AS9100 and AS9120 certifications for aircraft, their ITAR 2020 certification, and their HAZMAT certification. I trained all the inspectors and created their approved vendor list, which was critical during COVID when you couldn't buy from Taiwan or China due to counterfeiting issues. Now I'm at Space Machining and Engineering, a company that's been around since 1965. After the owner passed away and the banks got involved, they had conflicts of interest around quality, so they brought me in to clean things up. I've been there almost a year now and it's getting better, though I still have my battles some days.