Episode 74: Louise Wilkinson, Quality Manager, Integral Group

March 17, 2020

Which career allows you to marry environmentalism and data science? Being a quality manager at an engineering firm! Louise Wilkinson is our guest on the podcast for this episode, and she shares how she ended up in her dream job after working full time while in university. You’ll also hear how her initial choice of career was drastically different from where she ended up, how her fur baby is her best support; and she gives us hope for a present and future where companies are focusing on the environmental impacts of their work.

Guest: Louise Wilkinson (LinkedIn)

Louise Wilkinson has 20 years of industry experience predominantly in laboratory operations and quality assurance, and is now working in corporate sustainability as well as quality assurance - focusing on utilizing her research skills, and love of excel to calculate corporate greenhouse gas emissions for a multi-national firm. She has worked in a variety of industries throughout her career; from polymers to pharmaceutical, food and supplements, animal feed and cosmetics, to healthcare and technology and now in built environment systems engineering. She started her career as a bench technician, gained experience doing research & development before moving into analytical testing and being introduced to Quality Assurance. Her initial experience in QA was in HPLC method development and validation, cosmetic manufacture process validation, equipment performance validation and cleaning validation. After 8 years of bench work, Louise took an opportunity to manage a laboratory start-up in the UK, where she helped grow the business for 7 years before moving to Vancouver, BC. She has a BSc (hons) in Applied Chemistry from Manchester Metropolitan University (UK), and an MBA from Simon Fraser University. Working in many standardized industries, Louise has become a specialist in the application of international standards by creating and implementing Quality Management Systems, from GMP to ISO/IEC 17043 (and many others in between) in small to medium-sized companies, is studying for her Six Sigma Black Belt in her spare time, and is IRCA lead auditor trained. Louise is in her 4th year as a board member for SCWIST and has held the posts of Secretary, Director-Membership & Volunteers and is currently the Vice President and Director of Policy and Impact. She is a great believer in empowerment as a strategy for leadership, loves working collaboratively towards targets and making decisions based on data. In her spare time, Louise enjoys baking and staying active.

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