1. You started as an engineer with Maury and worked your way up to CEO. Can you tell us about that journey and the benefits of growing up within the company from a technical position?
The credit goes to the culture within the company and all my managers from my past within Maury and before. I was always someone who was inquisitive and wanted to understand everything from the technical to application details, project management or roadmap or strategic decisions and my managers, with no exceptions, have been extremely supportive of that curiosity. As an engineer, it was easy to grasp the various concepts and it gave me independence in execution when it came to it. All I had to do was to be a sponge and accelerate my learning. Speaking to the culture within Maury Microwave, the company was willing to take risks and give chances to those who were hungry for growth and were willing to commit to business growth along with their career growth. I can name a lot of us at Maury who have experienced similar growth. I had the safe space to learn, make mistakes and eventually impact the business positively in every function within the organization. The undebatable benefit of growing within one organization is that you really get to see the consequences of your decisions short-term, mid-term and long-term. Sometimes, a seemingly good decision for the short term may, in fact, have hindered the overreaching long-term growth of the business. You don’t get to experience that pain if moved through multiple jobs. It raises a level of accountability and ownership that I have personally come to cherish.
2. What were some of the main challenges you faced in your career and how did you overcome them?
Let me get the stereotypical points out of the way first. As a young engineer, I initially faced some hesitation about my knowledge, which I think is fair as an initial apprehensiveness. As a women engineer, however, it escalated to another level where I felt that I had to prove to everyone else (and not just my managers) that I was indeed a capable contributor. I had to show my strength in engineering, problem-solving, learning and endurance to “earn” their respect. But in a way, those experiences fueled my passion to grow beyond those challenges. In the later years, as I started exploring roles in adjacent functions like operations and sales, I realized that I had to become a student all over again each time. The challenges then were making the time to learn the essentials and then creatively employing them into practice. I say creatively because there are several resource constraints in smaller companies. I worked within our teams and we had several fun side projects that were instrumental to our 3X organic growth within the last decade. I think it always comes down to the team you work with at the end of the day. We have evolved over the years and have had several amazing people and without their support, I wouldn’t be giving this interview.
3. We talk a lot about increasing women's engineering opportunities. How do you think the industry should address this and what recommendations do you have for women in a technical field?
I think it starts young and in our safest space, at home with parents. We need to encourage our little girls to tinker around. My dad would always want my sister and me right next to him handing him tools or learning about things as he was working around the house. It just breaks down the complexity and gives one the confidence to be independent. These days, there are some amazing programs designed to encourage girls in STEM. I think schools must make it more accessible to perk interest in their young minds to commit to an engineering career after high school. For young women engineers, I would say that it is a balance between inclusion and creating confidence to find their strength. I find too many young women too afraid to try and fail. As an industry, we can provide a safe space for them to explore and fail. We all learn best when we fail, irrespective of our gender.
4. Maury has a Chief People Officer who addresses their commitment to fostering a workplace culture that embraces diversity, innovation and collaboration and puts people at the heart of everything you do. How does Maury foster and maintain this culture?
Our values, S.P.A.C.E.S, are front and center of our culture. It is fundamentally about having a Service mindset that leads to solutions where the sum of the whole is better than the parts. We also believe in personal Accountability and are Committed to creating confidence through our deliverables. And most of all, we believe in nurturing employee growth just as much as we care about business growth. We make or break as a team and we value every individual within our organization. To this end, we make a great deal of effort to understand individual goals and align them with the business goals to create vested interests for both parties. We also recently instituted employee councils that help us connect with the larger team even while taking strides toward our goals. I hold this aspect of Maury culture very close to my heart and am grateful that we have a team in action working consciously towards fostering these principles into practice.
5. Who are some of Maury’s key partners and how do you foster business together?
I apply the same value principles when it comes to partners or customers. I see authenticity and creating a win-win for both parties as essential elements of any successful partnership (internal or external). To that extent, I am extremely grateful for the amazing partnerships we have had over the years. They have been instrumental in improving our time-to-market with partnerships like with Anteverta (who we acquired in 2015), Amcad and Vertigo Technologies and enjoy several healthy supply chain partnerships. We also share great chemistry with industry partners like Keysight, R&S, FormFactor, MPI and recently with VDI. Together, we have worked on solutions that solve critical characterization challenges in the RF through THz spectrum. I cannot overlook our channel partnerships that extend our presence with all the application spaces that need our portfolio of solutions. I respect and cherish those relationships immensely and thanks to their efforts, we continue to expand. Finally, I see our customers as partners that we lean on to learn from and support through effective solutions. We don’t shy away from ownership and that, I believe, is a critical element of long-lasting relationships.
6. Maury has acquired several other test and measurement companies, such as dBm and Wireless Telecom Group. How do these acquisitions fit into Maury’s strategy and product portfolio growth?
In its simplistic form, we are all about creating confidence in measurements for our customers. More specifically, we want to support the process of characterizing a device accurately and efficiently so our customers can get their products to market timely. We focus on difficult measurement challenges and create specific hardware or software solutions that address those needs. Our products and solutions are very targeted in solving such problems, ranging from phase stability through our phase stable cables to characterizing devices like transistors through our advanced load-pull solutions or satellite transceiver performance through channel emulation hardware.
7. What are the major growth markets and applications you are addressing as a company?
There are certain obvious growth markets and applications that we are all benefiting from advancing mmW measurements for 5G/6G applications, next-generation semiconductor technology characterization, space exploration, cryogenic characterization for quantum computing and several A&D initiatives to expand efficiency in communications and radar and EW applications.
8. What new technologies are you working on that excite you the most?
This is an exciting phase for Maury Microwave and I will create a sense of suspense with my response. We have several new products in the making addressing the needs for the application spaces that I just described. I can’t wait to come back to you during IMS and throughout the year to speak of them. The team is feverishly working towards several solutions and I will shout out to our engineering and operations team for giving nothing short of their best!
9. How do you see Maury evolving over the next few years?
The beautiful thing about Maury Microwave is that we have stayed resilient over the changing times through the decades of its existence and have found our path each time to establish our legacy with each turn. We now again have a similar opportunity with our new acquisitions. I see us evolving and defining new solutions and partnerships that will solve the characterization challenges for the upcoming technologies as they evolve and embed themselves into practical applications.