Leveraging Professional Organizations for Career Success

Technical expertise gets you the degree. Networking and leadership gets you the career.

Join us for a special professional development graduate seminar featuring a panel of three industry professionals and one of your peers!  Discover how active engagement with professional bodies—specifically with the AIChE Management Division—became a catalyst for their success.

The interactive panel event will explore how professional organizations can help you find mentors and job opportunities, get tuned in to latest trends in industry, and set you up for a successful transition from graduate studies to industry engineering and management careers.  AIChE’s Management Division – often overlooked by students, being perceived as only for “seasoned managers” – provides an excellent example of this since it invites and includes chemical engineers across all sub-disciplines and specializations.

Our panel will bring together three industry leaders & one graduate peer with deep involvement in AIChE’s Management Division:

Gayle Gibson (B.Sc. ChemE, Texas A&M; MBA, European University) is a Senior Fellow at the Mission Possible Partnership. Before that, she spent most of her professional career at DuPont.  She is a lifetime member of AIChE, where she has served as Foundation Trustee, Division Chair of the Management Division, and on the LGBTQ+ & Allies Committee, among other leadership functions.

Cristina Thomas (B.Sc. Chemistry, La Universidad del Zulia, B.Sc. Math, La Universidad Nacional Abierta, Venezuela; Ph.D., ChemE, UMass Amherst) spent most of her professional career at 3M, most recently as Senior Director, R&D. She has been volunteering her time across many organizations, including as vice-chair of AIChE’s Public Affairs and Information committee (PAIC) and the Management Division’s award committee.

Robert Sovesky (B.E. and M.Sc., ChemE, Youngstown State University; J.D., Duquesne University) is Partner at K&L Gates LLP, a leading multinational corporate law firm headquartered in Pittsburgh, where he focuses on intellectual property law. He has been a long-standing member of AIChE and its Management Division.

John El Berch (B.Sc., ChemE, Universidad Simon Bolivar, Venezuela) is a final year PhD student in the Mpourmpakis group in our department at the University of Pittsburgh, where his research leverages computational chemistry and machine learning for catalyst discovery. John has been highly active as an AIChE member organizing sessions and serving on the board of the Management division.

Host. Dr. Götz Veser