Freeman Boatworks’ Post

Recently obtained my Career Champion badge from Merrimack College! I am committed to helping students pursue careers in engineering, not just focusing on their degree.

My first internship was when I was sophomore in college. It was at a Texaco natural gas plant in Alabama. When I arrived, I had to stay in the front office with the admins and engineers until the regional safety director from Houston trained me and cleared me to go out into the plant. 🦺The safety director, a gentleman who was exactly what you’d expect from an oil man from Texas (cowboy hat, boots, huge belt buckle, and a mouth full of tobacco) arrived and gave me some reading materials and a presentation. On his way out he said, 🤿“Before I let you back there, I need to know you can put on this SCBA (self-contained breathing apparatus) and walk out here to the rally point”. So he showed me how to put it on. Then I put it on and took it off by myself. 😰(Admittedly, it was hard. I was not prepared to walk around with a 30 lb gas cylinder on my back!) “All righty”, he said. 🏭🏭(Woot, I was excited…I’ll finally get to go where the action is!) “Do that every day for the next two weeks and when I get back I’ll check you and clear you to go back into the plant”. (Every day for 2 weeks!?) 😟😣I don’t know if I said anything, but the look on my face must have betrayed my thoughts. Because he spit his tobacco on the ground, looked at me, and said, 💡“Young lady, if you want to run with the big dogs, you’ve got to pee in the tall grass. I’m not letting you back there until I know you’ll be safe. So what’s it gonna be?”. 💪🏾So I took a deep breath and put the SCBA back on. He seemed satisfied with that so he said “See ya”. 🎉🏭Two weeks later he came back and I was good to go! ➡️25 years later, every time I come up against a challenge that I don’t want to undertake because I think it will be hard or uncomfortable, I remind myself, 🐕🐕“If you want to run with the big dogs, you’ve got to pee in the tall grass”. What is your tall grass today? #innovation #entrepreneurship #engineering #leadership #management #personaldevelopment

"I'll sell anything but insurance" If you're in sales and say some version of what Lexi Myers (Weber) AAI, CIC, CRM, TRIP said, you're cheating yourself from exploring one of the best B2B sales careers on the planet. Way to go Lexi (only wish I had recruited her)! #insurance #insuranceindustry #sales

"I'll sell anything but insurance" If you're in sales and say some version of what Lexi Myers (Weber) AAI, CIC, CRM, TRIP said, you're cheating yourself from exploring one of the best B2B sales careers on the planet. Way to go Lexi (only wish I had recruited her)! #insurance #insuranceindustry #sales

Summer student update! Check out what Veronica Valdez, class of 2025 has been up to this summer: Q: What's the name of the company you were working for? A: Barton Malow Company Q: Where were you located? A: Hawks, MI Q: What were your major responsibilities? A: Productivity Tracking, Remediation Logging, and Quality Checks in the field. Q: What was your favorite part of the experience? A: Being able to experience and learn from multiple scopes of work like Civil, Pile, Modules, and Logistics. The Amish bakery down the road has been pretty cool too.

I'll be honest, I don't know if this is typical or not - my gut says no - but this is clearly a company that truly believes each of those people is part of the San Francisco 49ers team. They don't play on the field, but this shows these individuals that you believe their work helped the team accomplish its goals. And while I could be wrong, something tells me they do more things like this that we don't hear about. #teamwork #leadership #teamdevelopment #culture

This is a great example of inclusive organizational #leadership! While it’s not always possible to fly every FTE to every event, I applaud the 49ers for setting an example here — especially in the era of hyper-segmentation and favoritism amongst teams. Finding a way to acknowledge the contribution of all employees, whenever possible, goes a long way toward reducing silos, decreasing intra-office resentment, creating healthy workplace culture, and motivating folks to do their best work. #Superbowl #inclusion #culture #belonging

I had a great conversation last week with an AM industry thought leader at #PowderMet2024. She encouraged us to continue telling the story of our journey as an AM contract manufacturer, and to refine our value proposition in the industry. Thank you Cynthia Rogers As an organization of 700 employee-owners focused on precision manufacturing, we’ve always had a high level of vertical integration to offer our customers. The reality is very rarely do customers use the full variety of our overall capabilities (Tool & Die, Precision Grinding, Precision Machining, Carbide Manufactuing, Stamping, Laser Cutting, Reel-to-Reel Plating, Plastic Injection Molding, Mold Design & Build, and Parker Majestic). Our true value-add for our customers is #VerticalKnowlege across our diverse set of capabilities. Our goal is the use this #VerticalKnowlege to refine the best manufacturing process to make products for our customers. We have been applying this value proposition to AM for the past 6 years. We are very proud of the unique, complex parts we have produced, and moved into serial production on first-in-the-world components that are solving highly complicated problems. With a large set of machining and post process capabilities, we are ideally positioned to support the growing demands of AM part production. We’re excited to be at RAPID + TCT 2024, and thrilled to be part of “Yinzer Corner” with the teams at #Neighborhood91. #Rapidevent #yinzercorner #precisionmanufacturing #employeeownership #metaladditivemanufacturing

Roll up, roll up!