Automotive News - November 9, 2015 - Supplement - 84W

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11/6/2015

10:48 AM

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84W * NOVEMBER 9, 2015

L E A D I N G

SONIA RIEF

●

Director of Vehicle Program
Management | Nissan Technical Center
North America | Farmington Hills, Mich. |
Age: 39 | Education: B.S., mechanical
engineering, North Carolina State
University; MBA, University of Michigan
● What attracted you to the auto industry? I
came in through car racing. I'm from Raleigh,
N.C., and I got involved with Legends racing
during college. Then I got into autocross track
racing. General Motors came to interview at
N.C. State and I ended up getting hired in
1998.
● First automotive job: Working at General
Motors' Proving Ground in Michigan in 1999.
● Big break: The big moment was moving into
a chief engineer job at Nissan, on the Frontier
and Titan pickups.
● Who has had the biggest influence on your
career? There was a vice president of r&d here
at Nissan who always had great insight and
good advice for me when I was trying to make
choices. He helped me move into my first chief
engineer job. He just retired a couple of years
ago.
● What should be done to encourage women
to enter the auto industry? It's a perception
problem. The industry needs to do a better PR

W O M E N

●●●

job. We need to let people see that it's not an
old-fashioned conservative culture. We need to
make sure young women see that creativity
and innovation are fostered here. We women
need to advertise ourselves better. We need to
make ourselves more visible to show the world
that there already are a lot of us in critical
roles in the industry.
● Tell us about your family. My husband and I
are both from North Carolina. We moved up
here without any family. He works for an
automotive supplier now. We have a daughter
who is 7 and our son is 9. We're a team of
four. None of this works if your family isn't
happy.
● What's your favorite weekend activity? My
first preference is always something the family
can do together, preferably outdoors -
camping, biking, skiing. A great weekend is
taking the kids and riding our bikes to Dairy
Queen.
● If you could have dinner with anyone, living
or dead, who would it be? Ayn Rand.
● If I had it to do all over again, I'd ... Do it
the same way. I like what I've got going.
● What advice would you give your child?
Don't decide you can't - make someone else
tell you. I give that advice to women here. I see
them sometimes self-censor. They say, "I'm
not ready," while their male counterpart will
just jump in and say, "I can do it."
- Lindsay Chappell

LARA HARRINGTON
Chief Engineer, Automotive
Development | Honda R&D Americas
| Raymond, Ohio | Age: 51 |
Education: B.S., aeronautical
engineering, Ohio State University
● What attracted you to the auto
industry? My dad isn't a professional
mechanic, but he always loved to work
around cars. So I spent a lot of time
around vehicles; I loved fixing cars, loved
working on them, loved working with my
dad. I loved the smell.
● First automotive job: Design engineer,
body engineering, in charge of outer body
structure of the 1994 Accord station
wagon
● Big break: Being the design leader for
the 2003 Honda Pilot. That's a role where
you're in charge of the body, interior,
exterior, chassis, electrics systems, etc.
You're responsible for the entire team of
people and insuring the vehicle meets all
the performance, safety, cost, design and

●

quality targets. Basically you're in charge
of everything on the design side of the
development of the vehicle.
● Who has had the biggest influence on
your career? Probably my father.
● What should be done to encourage
women to enter the auto industry? When
you look at the data, you can see most
women engineers are drawn to areas like
medicine and biomedical engineering, and
I think that's because there's more of a
feeling of helping people; it's ingrained in
those positions.
Why I got into the auto industry is because
I've always been fascinated with cars and
also the relationship people have with their
cars; that emotional connection has
always been interesting.
I think we can do a better job as an
industry of highlighting that we can make a
product that people love and connect with.
If women understood this then they could
relate to that aspect of that industry. It's
not just hard and dry mechanics, we are

708,946

making a product that we want to inspire
joy in our customers.
● Tell us about your family. I'm married. I
have one daughter, who's in college and
very career-oriented, very proud of the work
I've done in this industry. My husband is a
police officer.
● What's your favorite weekend activity?
I do a lot of biking and spend a lot of time
with my family. I'm an avid road cyclist. So
on Saturday and Sunday mornings I'm out
riding early; that way you still have the
whole day when you're done. I do about 80
to 100 miles a week.
● Are you able to maintain friendships?
Maintaining friendships is important to me,
and I am fortunate that my closest friends
share my love of travel. Last summer, my
best friend from elementary school and I
journeyed through the mountains of
southern France on bicycles. The summer
before that, I spent two weeks in Ireland,
hopping between bed-and-breakfasts with
my roommate from college.
● What's your guilty pleasure? Chubby
Hubby Ben & Jerry's ice cream.
- David Undercoffler

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Automotive News - November 9, 2015 - Supplement

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