Ya-Wen Lee
Senior Director of Technical and Manufacturing at Nestlé Coffee Partners
Ya-Wen Lee has over 20 years of experience in the food industry. She is currently the Head of Technical and Manufacturing for Nestlé Coffee Partners where she leads a team responsible for Internal & External Manufacturing, Quality, Regulatory, Engineering, and Safety/Health/Environment. Ya-Wen has held a variety of roles within Nestlé spanning across many different businesses and sites, including leading the Technical Packaging team across all of Nestlé USA. Outside of the office, Ya-Wen is an avid baker, a Macaroon perfectionist, and she also enjoys taking her motorcycle out to take in the sights of the Pacific Northwest!
At WE Local Seattle, Ya-Wen’s session, “Finding Balance: What Riding A Motorcycle Has Taught Me About Work and Life”, centers around how she learned valuable lessons applicable to work and life through a new passion, riding her motorcycle. Ya-Wen received her motorcycle endorsement 4 years ago when she was with Nestlé in Cleveland, Ohio. Her new hobby has enabled her to find and maintain work-life balance throughout her career in which she has moved from coast to coast.
Amanda Taplett Johnson
Director of Energy at Amazon Logistics
Amanda Taplett Johnson is the Director of Energy for Amazon Logistics (AMZL), Amazon’s Last Mile delivery service. In this role, she is leading a team to design, build, power, launch, operate, and support an electric vehicle charging network to support the electrification of Amazon’s delivery fleet of over 100,000 vehicles – the largest fleet electrification project to date. The electrification of Amazon’s fleet supports the Climate Pledge, a commitment to achieve net-zero carbon by 2040, ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement. Amanda has led engineering, design, and safety teams in AMZL since 2019. She developed the design standards and process standards that enabled the North America delivery station network to design and launch over 250 new buildings, while leading retrofit of over 100 existing buildings to bring them up to the new standards. In 2020, she took on the role as Covid Safety leader for AMZL, coordinating the integration of technology, supply chain, and operational changes to ensure safety of delivery station associates under the roof and on the road.
Prior to joining AMZL, Amanda led multiple programs at Amazon in Customer Fulfillment, including management of the “heavy, bulky” operations and “small & light” – specializing in products that are delivered outside of the normal distribution channels. Amanda moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2006 to work on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, where she spent 10 years in manufacturing, supply chain, and engineering roles. She managed manufacturing teams that built the first 787s ever assembled, then led suppliers in Japan, Korea, and Italy to implement design and build changes that increased production rate up to 10 airplanes per month. From the 787, she moved into the role of Chief Production Engineer for the Boeing 747 and 767 programs and led development of a new light-weight tooling design to support transformation of the 747 supply chain. Outside of work, Amanda is on the Executive Committee of the Thayer School Annual Fund and serves on the Board of EarthCorps, a Seattle-based organization that develops future environmental leaders through local ecological restoration projects.
At WE Local Seattle, in her session, “A Road to Sustainability: Building a Team to Launch the Largest Electric Vehicle Fleet in North America” Amanda will discuss building the diverse team of engineers, program managers, product managers, and business developers that is inventing a path to electrification in a way that it’s never been done before. Integrating across technical, logistical, financial, and policy constraints has required collaboration across multiple disciplines that reach far beyond sustainability and environmental engineering – electrical, industrial, mechanical, construction, and systems engineers are all playing critical roles in achieving sustainability goals.
Angel McMullen-Gunn
Director of Quality Compliance at Collins Aerospace, a unit of Raytheon Technologies Corp.
As a young mechanical engineer, Angel McMullen-Gunn had big aspirations at a small rural Nebraska manufacturing site. Twenty-plus years after her first co-op rotation with the company, she serves as the Director of Quality Compliance leading an international team that supports over 300 sites globally at Collins Aerospace, a unit of Raytheon Technologies Corp. A 2020 SWE Global Leader Award winner and Collins Aerospace Engineer of the Year Award Finalist, Angel McMullen-Gunn has been advancing her career, leveraging her SWE leadership and community volunteering efforts to lead successful teams in and out of the conference room. With a background in manufacturing engineering and quality management, Angel’s career expands over multiple business roles while balancing her active dual-career family and caretaker roles. Along the way, she has grown a passion for helping others develop their engineering and professional acumen, including spearheading corporate quality and operations rotational programs for early-career engineers and crafting training for Collins employees at all stages of their careers. She enjoys mentoring and sharing leadership strategies to succeed no matter the job market or location. Angel holds a BSME and MEng. from the University of Nebraska, and an MS Quality Systems Management with Six-Sigma Black Belt Certification from the National Graduate School of Quality Management in Falmouth, MA. In addition to her aforementioned honors, she is a past president of the Eastern Nebraska SWE Section, past lieutenant governor of region I, and earned SWE’s 2019 Emerging Leader Award, 2012 Outstanding Counselor Award, and 2011 Distinguished New Engineer. She enjoys the outdoors with her family, including camping and gardening.
Kristy Mandigo
Chief Engineer at Raytheon Technologies
Kristy Mandigo is the Chief Engineer on Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion Program (MP-RTIP) program, she started at Raytheon in 2003 and has had numerous technical and strategic roles that has led her to this chief engineering position. She is known as one of the SMEs and mentors for Digital Engineering, MBSE, Multi-CAD and Global PLM. Before her current role as a Chief Engineer, Mandigo held multiple roles from Technical Lead, Section Manager, Requirements Manager, Scrum Master, Program Management, Configuration and Data Management and Integrated Product Lead, and Depot Mandigo earned a bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering at Cedarville University and a Master’s in Business Administration and Technical Management through Phoenix University. She has more than 20 certifications in Engineering and Management from prodigious institutions. Mandigo is affiliated with Society of Women Engineering, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Disability:IN, Raytheon Management Club, Women and Disability ERG and Raytheon Innovation Center for work on a Patent. Mandigo has been honored with multiple awards ranging from Raytheon Technical Honor, Raytheon President’s Award, Women of the Year, Women of Distinction, Diversity and Inclusion, and Keynote Speaker Honoree. Mandigo was published in Diversity in STEAM Magazine and websites globally. She is a recognized face in STEM and diversity internal and external to the Raytheon. She is going to be featured in a Careers magazine in 2022. Mandigo also wrote a book “Ask Why, but Not Why Me”, through KMK Enterprises LLC and is the Executive Director of Non-Profit Disability:IN Southern California, as well as Epilepsy Advocate for the National Foundation.
