Nancy Jaster Brings Manufacturing, Design Background to Designers Council

Estimated reading time: 18 minutes

Jaster: Yes.

Matties: I know nothing's set in concrete, but why don't you share some of your conceptual ideas.

Jaster: The first thing is: I don’t know, and I don't think anyone at IPC knows, the status of all the chapters right now. So, the first thing I really want to do is a reach out to all the chapters and introduce myself. Say, "Hey, here I am. What can I do for you? Is there anything you need from me? Can you tell me how active you are? When you have a meeting, let me know, and I will make sure we will send an email blast to let people know about this."

Matties: Just provide good support.

Jaster: Support. And the first thing for me to do there is to understand who's currently active, and who isn't. Then if I see there's a big area where there may not be a chapter, or a chapter may be struggling, maybe help that chapter try to get a little more support to get them going and moving again. Because, as I'm sure you know, designers are aging, so we need to get newer people in and some younger people learning how to do the design work.  I think Designers Council chapters can help do that in getting people the experience that they need to move forward in their careers.

Matties: Let's just talk about this point for a moment then. IPC is a global association. Are your chapters global?

Jaster: We're starting one in Italy now.

Matties: Because you're right. If we look in North America, the United States specifically, you're right. There's an aging population of designers. If we go to India, or we go to China, it’s not the case. We see where the young designers are. So as a global association, shouldn’t we be having chapter meetings there too?

Jaster: Yes. And we actually do have a Southeast Asia chapter.

Matties: Are they active?

Jaster: I just got an email from them, so I would say that they are active. But again, I need to reach out to them. I would assume we have one in India, but again, I don't know the activity level yet, and then we have one in Australia and we're starting one in Italy.

Matties: Now the needs of the regions will be different. So that'll be interesting to see the contrast that you come up with. I'd like to know more about that, as time progresses.

Jaster: Talk to me in six to eight months, and I may have a totally different story for you.

Matties: That would be interesting. Because when I think of Designers Council chapters, it's always been a U.S. kind of thing. You don't really hear about the rest of the world, yet we're a global industry, a global economy, and we're all connected.

Jaster: Well, we now have a staff liaison, specifically a standards development manager, Andres Ojallil, working out of Estonia, who supports standards development activities in Europe. The other part of my job is I'm a staff liaison, and I do support a number of standards. So if we build European chapters, I will be looking to Andreas to help me with those chapters. Just like we have a team in China, I would hope the IPC staff in China would be able to help me. And the staff in India that I've actually gotten to know through the NetSuite project I was working on, hopefully the folks in India can help me as well. I think IPC's got the bones of the structure there to do that. I'm just not connected enough in at this point to make it happen overnight.

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