Women of the world – Part two

Welcome to the second post in celebration of International Women’s Day, which was on March 8. We asked women around Cook, worldwide, to share their individual stories about their careers, community involvement, and life adventures. We received so many responses that a team of writers was deployed to collect the stories, and we had to divide them up into multiple blog posts. This is the second post in a series of four.

Today’s post includes stories of interesting career paths and developing passions that turned into careers.

Sharing her love for science – Kristy Bielak
A long way from home – Natalia Budaeva
Engineering a breakthrough – Diana Fitzgibbons
Helping patients in paradise – Leslie King
An extraordinary assignment – Gail McDaniel
Strength through adversity – Martha Spicer
Reinventing reality – Belinda Love

Please let us know about your own career, travel, and volunteer highlights in the comment section below!

Sharing her love for science

From the time she was a little girl, Kristy Bielak remembers being interested in what we now call life sciences. Her mom was in nursing, and Kristy would dress up in her lab coat and put on goggles, pretending to be a scientist. Studying biology at Purdue helped her fulfill that dream. She worked in a toxicology lab after college, but didn’t feel like it allowed her to use all the skills she had learned. She heard about Cook Biotech when it was featured on the History Channel’s show Modern Marvels and thought working there sounded exciting. She applied to Biotech even though they didn’t have any openings listed. It turned out they did need a biologist, and she got the job in the discovery and biosciences lab.

Kristy enjoys giving hands-on demonstrations to groups that visit Biotech, such as student groups or companies interested in Biotech’s products and technology. But she wanted to do more and use her free time for something positive in her West Lafayette community. She found an opportunity to participate in Imagination Station, a local center supporting science education for area youngsters. Both boys and girls participate in events, and the organization focuses on underserved groups. Kristy has served on the board and enjoys getting kids excited about math and science. She said, “That moment when a child’s face shows they are excited about what they are learning, that excites me.”

A long way from home

Natalia Budaeva, project manager for Peripheral Intervention (PI), is a long way from home. After growing up in Eastern Siberia, Russia, she moved to Moscow at age 17, where she went to Moscow State University for a degree in linguistics. She worked for three years in marketing at Canon.

But she wanted to expand her education to earn a master’s in business administration (MBA). And, Natalia said, “The best business education is in the United States.”

So, she took a chance and left a successful career, moving 5,000 miles from home to live in Bloomington, where she recently completed her MBA from Indiana University. “I’m very thankful to my family for helping me make this happen,” she said.

Prior to finishing her MBA, she interned at Cook in the PI marketing department. Following her graduation in May this year, she was hired as a project manager in PI.

Now she is exploring more of the U.S., traveling around the country when she can. This past Christmas, she went to Alaska to see the northern lights. “Previously, I had only been to the U.S. to visit schools,” she explained.

But, being far from home has its disadvantages. She misses her family. “I hadn’t seen my family since July 2014,” she said. “But, last August, my mom and sister came to visit. It was great!”

Engineering a breakthrough

As a young girl, Diana Fitzgibbons, quality assurance manager at Cook Medical, recalls the dramatic Caterpillar Power Parade in Peoria, Illinois. The two-week event kicks off with an entire fleet of enormous track-type tractors roaring over a hill in a choreographed fashion.

Diana was given a front-row view because her father helped invent the raised sprocket design for the Caterpillar D10 drivetrain. At the time, the D10 was the largest crawler tractor in the world and the most powerful track-type tractor ever built. “During evening conversations at the dinner table, my dad would talk about his work on the D10 and tell us kids, ‘The blade was so big, it could dig an Olympic-size swimming pool in a single pass,’” Diana recalled.

Like her father, young Diana had an affinity for math and science. It ultimately led her to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering, a male-dominated career field. According to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, only 14% of engineers are women. That is up from 5.8% in the 1980s, when Diana attended college. “I was usually the only woman in the class,” she said. “Women remain underrepresented in the fields of science and engineering. But, the women in my family are trying to change that!”

Diana’s daughter, Erin, is currently a junior majoring in mechanical engineering at Purdue. She recently worked at Cook as a summer hire in the Engineering Test Lab and previously as an intern with Process Validation Engineering. In addition, Diana has two nieces who work as electrical engineers at Ford Motor Company and Ameren Corporation.

While the number of women earning degrees in mechanical engineering is still small, Diana feels relieved to see that the experiences of her daughter and nieces are more positive than her own. “The acceptance of women in male-dominated fields has improved over the last few decades,” she said. “While there is still some bias, it’s definitely not as prevalent as it used to be.”

Helping patients in paradise

Leslie King, project manager in Peripheral Intervention, has always had a passion for medicine. “I was drawn to it because of my desire to help patients,” she said. While pursuing a career in medicine, her life took an unexpected turn. “It ended up being the best thing to happen to me,” Leslie said. “I met my husband, Anthony, started my own company, lived in paradise, and helped several people have procedures that they quite possibly wouldn’t have been able to have.”

The unexpected turn started on a country road outside Indianapolis. “I had a seizure,” she explained. “I was taken to the hospital where I worked at the time. Because of a simple coding error, I ended up with an astronomical bill. Due to my experience working in the field, I knew who to talk to and what questions to ask.”

The idea to start her own business began with lots of talks with Anthony. “We developed a business plan around medical advocacy, signed contracts with the private hospitals in Costa Rica, and started there, with two suitcases, a 200-pound dog, and a one-way ticket.”

Through their company, they were able to help people get affordable medical care in a beautiful location. Many of the patients came for dental procedures. One young man had an oversized jaw and had a mandible replacement, which normally would have cost $150,000 in the U.S. His procedure in Costa Rica cost $17,500. “During recovery, he felt his jaw in relation to his nose, and a tear fell down his cheek,” she said. “He felt normal for the first time in his life.”

It was a defining moment for Leslie. She went on to help many more people during her time in paradise. “We expanded to Panama, where we worked with a large North American stem cell company affiliated with John’s Hopkins,” she said.

She learned about Cook and putting patients first and thought this was a way for her to continue her passion for helping patients get back to living, but from a different angle. “Now I work to ensure that the best products are available for patients typically facing their darkest time, which I have experienced myself,” she said.

An extraordinary assignment

After graduating from Indiana University in 1974, Gail McDaniel, manager of advertising and promotion compliance at Cook Medical, worked as a receptionist for the Marion County Republican Party headquarters in Indianapolis. “At that time, the Marion County office was the most well-oiled political machine in the country, second only to Nassau County in New York,” she said.

That experience led to her next job with Carlson and Company as an account executive working with the agency’s numerous political candidate campaigns, including then-California Governor Ronald Reagan’s race to become the GOP’s candidate for president in 1980. When their campaign came to Indiana, Gail was tapped to serve as site advance liaison to help coordinate media interviews.

Her role as an advance person for Governor Reagan turned into a yearlong adventure after he was elected president, and she was asked to continue working with his vice president, George H. W. Bush.

“I worked with his Secret Service, got security clearance for members of the media, and worked my press contacts in cities where they were campaigning,” she explained. The job eventually took her to Singapore. “They were very exciting times,” she said. “I was even given an official White House walkie-talkie for our events! It was awesome to see and be part of the little things that go on behind the scenes.”

She now has endless stories about her experiences with the Reagans, Bushes, Secret Service, press corps, and even a Princess Grace and Prince Rainier sighting. Back in Indiana, Gail also had an impact in her home state. She was the creator of the “Wander Indiana” campaign for the Indiana Department of Tourism. The slogan was even adopted for the state’s license plates in the early 1980s.

Over the years, Gail has certainly wandered Indiana…and beyond.

Strength through adversity

Martha Spicer, now a research technician at Cook Biotech, has always been good with her hands. For more than 30 years, she has been a hairdresser and owned her own business.

Prior to joining Cook, Martha was diagnosed with cancer. She went through treatment and has now been cancer-free for 15 years. After the treatments, Martha wanted to get a job outside her hairdressing business, for added security and to get out and meet new people. She started at Biotech as an associate in dry production, where she crossed-trained in many areas. “We make hernia repair and wound care devices and more,” she explained. “The product lines have grown a lot since I first started in production.”

Over the years, Martha continued to gain more experience and knowledge and applied for an opening as research technician. She plays a vital role managing the lab and handcrafting prototype devices used in animal studies or sent to academic labs and companies for research use.

One of her most challenging projects has been a device in development that requires hand-sewing tissue from pigs onto a tiny frame. “It’s very tedious work,” she said. “My hope is to someday actually see them go into humans and improve their lives. I will know at that point I truly made a difference.” Martha recently traveled to Boston to provide training on how to sew the product. “It’s good to know someone else can now do what I do,” she said.

In addition to her full-time job, Martha continues to work on Saturdays as a hairdresser. “I enjoy it, so I don’t want to give it up completely. But, I don’t take on new clients,” she added.

About six years ago, her husband, Bill, was diagnosed with end-stage liver disease and eventually was able to receive a liver transplant. She says that through her cancer and her husband’s health issues, she realized she is a lot stronger than she thought she was. Now she is grateful to have enjoyed 14 years at Biotech, have two grandsons, and be able to look forward to traveling with her husband while they are still able. First trip plans? “An Alaskan cruise!”

Reinventing reality

The end of her 28-year marriage left Belinda Love reeling. Now she is happy and settled again, working in administration at Cook Medical Australia, but at the time she was having a sudden identity crisis. Her 26-year-old daughter was off enjoying a successful life of her own. Her big family was supportive, but Belinda was realizing that she had no idea who she was when she was by herself.

Seeking a place to live on a budget, she set out for Asia. She said, “I packed my bags and teetered off on my high heels. You will appreciate how ridiculous that was when you realize that the place I ended up at was a sandy island named Koh Phangan off the coast of Thailand.”

There, she rented a tiny beach hut that she shared with mosquitoes and a large gecko who glowed with color when she shone a light on him. No hot water, no modern conveniences. The hut was smaller than the spare bedroom in the house she and her now-exhusband just sold. Her plan? To write a science fiction/fantasy novel and find herself.

“I had always been the story teller in my family, and this was an extension of that. I wrote songs and stories for my much younger sister and my daughter as they had grown up. Writing this book for pre-teens was a way for me to focus my imagination and hypothesize about my love of physics in a forum where rules don’t exist,” explained Belinda. Meeting new people and learning the Thai culture, so different from her own, helped put her in the frame of mind to flesh out characters and create alternate universes in her book.

The different environment also helped Belinda confront her inner self and question everything she had before assumed to be true. Belinda said, “I re-invented myself, found my true inner self, and morphed into someone that I value and love. Would I recommend it? Oh, yeah, I sure would. Be brave. Go find yourself. You could be amazed at who you might turn out to be.”

Writers Jon Hancuff, Valda Hillery, Ashley E. Jones, Debbie O’Leary, Bill Stephenson, and Jana Wilson teamed up to collect, compile, and edit these stories. A special thank you to all the women who stepped forward with their stories or who let us know about a co-worker with an interesting story. #goteamcook