Michelle: We want to talk more about your career in manufacturing. So, to start off with, could you tell us a little bit about how you got started in the industry?

Aleigha: So I grew up around cars, automotive, and I've just always had a fondness with it, with my grandparents working on them all the time. So I tried to get into an automotive class in a vocational school during high school. There was some paperwork mess up and I ended up actually just getting into a class called metal machining technologies. And I just kind of went from there. So it was like a bridge for manufacturing, lathes and mills, CNC coding, and I just fell for it ever since. I'm kind of glad I'm not working in just a car shop right now, honestly, it'd be cold.

Michelle: Good point. That paperwork worked out for the best.

Aleigha: Yeah, absolutely. It was a good hiccup, I'd say.

Michelle: So besides the climate control, what do you like about your work today?

Aleigha: Everything, honestly. My roles every single day that I do day in and day out, the travel, I love the travel. I love the learning. I've been here at my job at ANCA for two years now, just over two years. And I am still learning every single day, every single week. It's something new. It's exciting. I’ve been all over the US. I can't say I've been to every state, but I can count less states that I haven’t been to than I have. And then I've also been to Germany and Australia for ANCA training, for SMB training, for ultra training, micro training, and then even for the applications conference for just knowledge sharing and everything between the applications engineers.

Michelle: That does sound like a lot of travel, especially within two years. That's a very big schedule.

Aleigha: It's really fun. It's great.

Michelle: I was wondering with the Australian roots of the company, if you'd been there yet. So that's cool. 

Aleigha: Yes. Yes, I just got back. I think I went in September, October. Yeah, the end of October. Yeah, that's great. You wouldn't think people joining manufacturing and like, oh, you'll get to go to Australia and Germany and almost every state that's a kind of unusual path. So that's great. Yeah. Yeah. They asked me when I first came here, they asked me, do you like to travel? I'm like, I don't know. I've never really, I mean, the furthest I've been really was Ohio at that point. So, you know, when they were like, would you want to travel? And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. Let's do this. Yeah.

Michelle: Okay, so for people who are kind of just getting started in manufacturing, is there any advice you give them or things you tell them to do or not do?

Aleigha: Yeah, absolutely. If you're just getting started, people here seem to really appreciate the honesty if you don't know everything. Knowledge is something that you can learn. Ambition and ethic is not, but not necessarily. So just be honest with what you do and don't know. If you don't check every single box on the indie post, still go for it. You don't need to know everything. A lot of companies are willing to train because then they know you're doing it right anyways.