Vera Bagurina

My journey in manufacturing began 14 years ago as a factory worker at a chocolate factory back in my home country. Even though my first degree was in teaching, I discovered I loved manufacturing and wanted to pursue it on a different scale. When I moved to the U.S., I joined Micron, a semiconductor company making computer chips, where I started as a tech. Within 6 months I was promoted to lead, and a year later became a process technician. At that point, I knew manufacturing was where I wanted to be - it's stressful and it's fun. I decided to pursue leadership rather than engineering, so I started working on my second degree in business management and got promoted to supervisor at Micron, managing a team of 10 technicians. My next role was a significant leap - I became plant manager at a fiber optic cable manufacturing company, overseeing almost 300 people. Going from a team of 10 to 300 people in a completely different type of manufacturing was challenging, but I did it for a couple of years. About 6-7 months ago, I received offers from both Lockheed and UVision for defense manufacturing positions. I chose UVision because it's more of a startup company here in America, though it's very popular in Israel. I'm currently the production operations manager, and I love that I'm creating all the procedures and processes from scratch. It's assembly manufacturing, a little different from what I did in the past, but I really enjoy it. I work a lot with ex-military veterans, and working with the government is fun. I come to work every day and there's always something to work on - procedures, ISO standards, people development. It's very creative and I love this place.