Spending all day Saturday riding her Harley-Davidson Softail Deluxe is Aimee Vessell’s idea of a great time. Blue sky overhead, an open road, and buddies for company–that’s what satisfies her free spirit. When she took her new post as Harley-Davidson’s manager of international projects in Milwaukee last fall, she knew winter weather would curtail her riding season, but she was ready for a new career challenge.
Vessell came to MIT to attend the Leaders for Manufacturing (LFM) program, hoping to refocus her career on manufacturing. After earning a bachelor’s in environmental engineering from Northwestern University in 1995, she had spent 10 years as an engineer, traveling constantly to jobs ranging from hazardous-waste remediation to demolition. “Manufacturing is very much like a construction site,” she says. “You are managing people and money and operations–there are a lot of moving parts. And it’s a good balance between tactical and strategic work.”
As a grad student at MIT, she focused primarily on supply chain management and operations. A six-month LFM internship at a Harley-Davidson plant confirmed her direction. She loved the work and the company, and she accepted a permanent job before returning to campus to complete her degree. After graduation and several short assignments with Harley-Davidson, she started a job in 2007 managing 150 people assembling Sportster motorcycles at the company’s plant in Kansas City, MO.
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