EEDP Profile - Jihad El Allami

This week we are introducing Jihad El Allami. Jihad is currently a 3rd rotation member of the Edison Program. Jihad grew up in Morocco where she studied engineering. She moved to Dallas, TX about 5 years ago to pursue her Bachelors in Biomedical Engineering at UT Dallas with a focus in Electrical Engineering. Throughout her education and early career, she yearned to balance her passion for helping others and her deep understanding of technical concepts: biomedical engineering seemed to be the perfect match. Over her time here at GE Healthcare, she has learned about and gained a deeper passion specifically for service engineering.

Within the Edison Program, Jihad first worked as a Hardware Engineer on the MR Cooling Controls Team. During this rotation, she learned the immense importance of the people surrounding her throughout her career. Jihad explained that "before [my first rotation] I was mostly focused on the projects: I would think about my career in terms of projects that I wanted to be working on." After her experience with an excellent team and mentorship from Bill Bonneau and Barry Black (both EEDP alum themselves) she learned the value of surrounding herself with people who "have the skills of mentoring and helping you to reach your full potential."

Next, Jihad served as a Lead Service Integrator in MR. During this rotation, Jihad had the opportunity to see service from an engineering perspective and to experience service first- hand through a field visit. Since the beginning of her experience in the Edison Program, Jihad has been working with Christine Meier, who spoke to her class during New Edison Orientation, about service and ways to get experience with service. Christine and Jihad worked together to create an opportunity for her to shadow various Field Engineers (FEs) at five different sites over five days in the Bay Area. Through this opportunity, she learned the importance of designing for service and clarity in procedure writing. She was also confirmed in her passion for service as she spoke to different FEs and could see their passion for GE products and customers. 

"Field Engineers (FEs) are the ambassadors of our products; whenever FEs like and enjoy using our products, that excitement will roll over to our customers." -Jihad El Allami

Today, Jihad's third rotation is serving as a Service Operations Leader for the USCAN Service West Region. She is looking forward to being immersed in the service community at GE and the opportunities to come. As for others looking to learn more about service, Jihad's best advice is to show interest: "make sure your assignment leader and manager know the things you want to do." She is grateful for the support, mentorship, and inspiration she has received from Christine Meier since she expressed her interest and knows other Edisons could benefit from similar experiences. She believes that exposure to service can be beneficial to anyone, no matter what their interests, as everything we do at GE impacts customers and understanding how that impact looks is important.