Engineering presents the most rewarding puzzles

“Engineering is like looking for patterns of information and making sense out of them—like a giant puzzle,” says Jessica.

Jessica began her career with Cummins Inc. as an intern in 1997 and has been going strong ever since. Whether she is piecing together a complex engineering challenge, or uniting a team around a shared goal, she has a talent for understanding how things fit together. Today, Jessica works within the Product Compliance and Regulatory Affairs (PCRA) group as Director of Technical Compliance and Certification on the Global Functional Excellence Team.

Jessica knew Cummins was a special place from the moment she started at the company. She had studied engineering in college, but says, “I didn’t know a lot about engines or about our products [yet].

But people were always willing to stop and answer questions; if they didn’t know the answer, they would find someone who did. I did internships in other companies, and it wasn’t like that.” Jessica took advantage of mentoring opportunities, and, today, she does some mentoring herself. 

Jessica loves working in a supportive environment where there are “no silly questions,” only “engineers helping other engineers solve problems.” She has actively built her leadership skills, taking advantage of Cummins’ robust training programs, even becoming a Six Sigma Black Belt.

Leading a team of 50 people, Jessica takes inspiration from those who helped her in the beginning, to now guide the careers of others. Her team works on global knowledge related to regulations of government agencies. It’s an ongoing learning process to keep up with ever-changing regulations. In keeping with Cummins’ environmental goals, they make sure everything they do leads to a cleaner, safer and healthier environment.

To achieve these objectives, Jessica emphasizes the importance of diverse ideas, accountability and teamwork. “I need to understand the technical detail,” says Jessica. “But I really like watching people grow and develop and seeing them succeed or learn from mistakes.” Like Cummins overall culture, she is dedicated to team building. She focuses on helping colleagues get to know each other on various levels, both inside and outside of work. Building relationships, she says, builds trust so that people value each other’s opinions when they work together.

Their team-building activities range from educational, like training activities, to recreational, such as scavenger hunts, to charitable. As an example of the latter, one group used their engineering skills alongside physical labor to build playground equipment for a domestic violence shelter. They were able to put their skills into giving back, while also spending time together and bonding.

Apart from encouraging the careers of others, Jessica’s proudest accomplishment with Cummins was working on a new engine program that spanned three continents. It involved building prototypes in the U.S., testing in Europe and manufacturing in China. In fact, this was the first Cummins product made in a Chinese plant to be shipped outside of China.

Jessica successfully built a team across those regions, collaborating across time zones and traveling often. She recalls: “even though we had challenges across languages and cultures, we built the team to work together really well.” They met their time frame and launched on schedule.

Regardless of whatever new project arises next on Jessica’s career path, her two loves remain constant: engineering and problem-solving as a team. Jessica shares: “One of my mentors said you want to do what gets you out of bed in the morning and excited to come to work. For me, that usually happens when I’m working on difficult engineering projects. We ask if what we’ve tried is working or whether we need to brainstorm something new. It takes creativity to figure out what to do next. This is a great company. We do a lot of innovation in engineering, but, more importantly, we have a strong value system.”