Women’s Leadership Program to Discuss the Importance of Lifelong Learning during SMTA International 2022

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The Women’s Leadership Program (WLP), an SMTA-sponsored organization that strives to promote diversity and inclusion in engineering and manufacturing fields, announces that it will host presentations about technology innovations and career advancements from 1-3:15 p.m. CST on Tuesday, November 1, 2022.

Co-chaired by Tanya Martin of the SMTA and Jessica Molloy of ZESTRON, the first presentation will take place from 1-1:45 p.m. Carolyn R. Duran, Ph.D. from Intel Corporation, will discuss Leaning into Lifelong Learning. As a society, we are in state of rapid change in how we innovate, develop, and deliver new technologies and products to the world. Only those that embrace lifelong learning, adapting, growing and learning, will truly thrive.

Carolyn will share some key tools she has developed to explore and succeed in dramatically different roles within her company. With each new role, there is new opportunity: what you bring to the table to help the new organization’s success, what you learn in your new role about the business, and what you learn about yourself. Through her own career journey Carolyn will demonstrate the value of this learning as she returned to where she started, technology development, after gaining valuable lessons in supply chain management and product development.

Carolyn R. Duran is a Vice President and Engineering Manager in Components Research at Intel Corporation. In this role, Carolyn leads advanced process and materials research to invent, develop and demonstrate viable revolutionary technologies necessary for Intel’s continued leadership in the industry.  She also leads her organization’s strategy for external engagements including academia, consortia, and supply chain.

Duran joined Intel in 1998 as a process engineer in research and development, moving to supply chain management in 2007. In this role Carolyn oversaw Intel’s supply chain sustainability efforts spanning chemical regulations and policy, human rights and labor, and the company’s responsible minerals sourcing program.  She moved to the Data Platforms Group in 2017 to lead a corporate charter in Memory and IO technologies responsible for the pathfinding, development, implementation and broad industry enablement in these areas.  In 2022, Carolyn returned to her technology development roots to lead the Process Engineering team within Components Research.

Duran is currently serving as the President of the Materials Research Society and sits on the Materials Science and Engineering academic advisory board for Northwestern University, where she is also an adjunct professor. She has held chair positions for both the Responsible Business Alliance board of directors and the Conflict Free Sourcing Initiative (now the Responsible Minerals Initiative). A recognized industry leader, Duran was named on Fast Company's "Most Creative People in Business 1000" list in 2016 and ranked no. 2 on Business Insider's "Most Powerful Women Engineers in the World" list in 2014. 

Duran received her bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and her Ph.D. in the same field from Northwestern University. She holds five patents in the area of semiconductor process engineering.