<	Catrina Vargo
	2011
	Industrial Engineering
	Rockwell Automation
	Associate Sales Engineer

What do you do in your current position? As a sales engineer, I help our customers accomplish their everyday business needs. Rockwell Automation partners with manufacturing facilities across the world ranging from health and beauty products to the oil & gas industry. We provide products, solutions and services to help our customers produce more efficiently with the latest technology. My clients are located throughout San Francisco and the widespread customer base makes every day different; every customer has a different problem they need help with. Each day I see different manufacturing processes. My day could range from a morning at the Six Flags aquarium to solve a pilot light problem to a day at a Napa winery helping the winery improve their throughput.

How has your PSU engineering education/experiences helped to get you where you are today? My IE degree and extracurricular experiences gave me a wide variety of tools and skills to prepare me for the environment I work in today. I get to use my degree a lot; Penn State helped me learn what types of questions to ask customers when learning about their business needs. Outside of class, I was able to acquire leadership and people skills from clubs in the College of Engineering and THON. Penn State is a university that inspires you to push yourself to gain leadership positions and experience new environments through internships and study abroad. I have always preached that our College of Engineering has some of the best resources to help create the best college experience. My favorite memories came from the opportunities to help grow organizations such as Engineering Ambassadors, Phi Sigma Rho and WEP alongside professors and students who shared the same goals.

How has your experience as an EA impacted your professional life so far? I am reminded of EA practically everyday both in my career and in my everyday life. From being an ambassador, I learned the value of communicating effectively and being able to put myself in my audience's shoes at all time. When we spoke with high school students, we spoke about how engineers affect the health, happiness and safety of the world around us because we believed most students were interested in helping people in their future careers. When I speak with my customers, I use what I know about their business and role to focus the conversation on how we can help them solve their business issues. EA taught me so much about strong communication and about myself. Most importantly, I learned what it means to be a Linchpin!