{"id":76262,"date":"2023-02-02T22:20:32","date_gmt":"2023-02-03T03:20:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/?p=76262"},"modified":"2023-02-02T22:20:32","modified_gmt":"2023-02-03T03:20:32","slug":"iep-alumni-feature-when-opportunity-knocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/iep-alumni-feature-when-opportunity-knocks\/","title":{"rendered":"IEP Alumni Feature: When Opportunity Knocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robyn Johnson  <\/span>\u2019<\/b>20
\nSpanish IEP and Industrial and Systems Engineering<\/h2>\n

When the pandemic sent me back home to the Midwest in March 2020 halfway through my final semester at URI, I wasn’t sure what the future would hold. I had finished my year abroad in Chile with the IEP in Fall 2019, and it had a huge impact on me – I was actually hoping to return to continue working there after graduating. However, with the uncertainty of the pandemic at the time, I decided to apply for jobs close to home. <\/span><\/p>\n

I found a position with Nestl\u00e9 based in St. Louis, Missouri within the digital manufacturing field, deploying new technology to improve factory efficiency. Although it was difficult to begin my first full-time job completely remotely, I joined a very supportive team where I was able to learn a lot very quickly. One advantage of joining a global company is the opportunities it holds for international assignments. It just so happens that Nestl\u00e9\u2019s global hub for the manufacturing technology I was working with in my role in St. Louis is located in Barcelona, Spain. After expressing interest in relocating and fulfilling the requirements to be qualified, I was able to move to Barcelona in the fall of 2022. In my current role I am working with the same digital tools as before, but focused more on enhancing the applications for the future rather than simply deploying them in factories. <\/span><\/p>\n

My experience studying and working in Chile with the IEP has helped me tremendously to settle down here in Barcelona. In addition to being able to utilize my Spanish, I also felt more prepared to work with colleagues from different professional backgrounds – almost everyone on my team here is from a different country around the world. Most of all, it gave me the confidence to pursue opportunities in my career such as this one.<\/span><\/p>\n

At this point, I plan to spend the next year or so in Barcelona, then bring the knowledge I gain from my time here back with me to my role back in the US.<\/span><\/p>\n

Through my connections at my office in Barcelona, I hope to establish a relationship between my company and the IEP in order to help other Spanish IEP students land an internship here before I leave. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robyn Johnson \u201820 shares about her career path post-graduation, how she landed a new job in Barcelona with Nestl\u00e9 and how her IEP experiences in Chile helped prepare her for this next chapter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4861,"featured_media":76268,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-iep"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}