Sarah Wakumoto, Dow Chemical | Women Breaking the Mold 2024

Sarah Wakumoto is known for doing what's needed, including helping others learn and thrive in the engineering field and the industry.

A sought-after project leader, she is well respected by her team members for her organized drive for results and her desire to create openness within her teams. After struggling for years to find her voice professionally, Wakumoto is especially sensitive to ensuring her teams allow all voices to be heard.

She is a Process R&D Engineer at Dow Chemical and the current president of the Mid-Michigan SWE professional section. Wakumoto graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical and Biological Engineering in 2020. Wakumoto started her professional career at Dow Chemical in Midland, Mich., where she has continued to demonstrate her strong technical and leadership abilities.

Starting as a production engineer for silicone rubber, Wakumoto was responsible for the safe and reliable operations of eight assets; managing maintenance activities; and tracking key process performance metrics to increase operational efficiency. After observing normal operating conditions in the first few months, she identified an opportunity for improved data-based decision-making and created a PowerBI dashboard to help monitor the building processes.

"The opportunities at Dow have been varied and fulfilling," Wakumoto said. "I have had the opportunity to move from manufacturing to R&D, which has been rewarding and allowed me to learn a different side of the same technology. I'm also thankful to have had opportunities to travel to other sites in the U.S. and abroad, take training on advanced data analysis software, and work on cross-functional teams to support core business functions and ERGs."

In her second year in production, Wakumoto requested an experienced project leader to support a particularly challenging quality problem, none were available. Wakumoto volunteered to receive coaching and lead the project herself to ensure the root cause of the quality issue was addressed.

She led the project, recruited R&D to support lab trials, coordinated manufacturing trials, and engaged relevant subject matter experts to help with advanced chemistry and process understanding.

Within just a few years, Wakumoto pursued a role in Process Research and Development (PR&D) also in silicone rubber where she quickly became a project leader for PR&D. She recently led a sustainability project to evaluate and manage a global intermediate change that impacted over 900 products and spanned sites in the U.S., United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and China.

"Stepping up in situations that are less comfortable has allowed me to learn and grow quickly," Wakumoto said, "I have found that my familiarity with a task does not necessarily correlate with my success in that task, and I would absolutely recommend others stretch themselves when the opportunity arises."

After seeing firsthand the struggles women and minorities face in the field of engineering, championing women in STEM has become a favorite passion. From small things—poor-fitting PPE and microaggressions—to larger things, such as workplace harassment and unequal pay, Wakumoto has been galvanized to address these issues and create a more inclusive environment.

"Promoting and supporting women in STEM has been a passion of mine since college. There have been vast improvements in equity and inclusion since I entered the industry, but there is a lot of work in this space yet to do. I think it's important to continually make progress on making a career in STEM accessible for anyone that is willing to put in the work to pursue it," Wakumoto said.

In her production role at Dow, Wakumoto served as a leader in inclusion and diversity (I&D) by becoming the department's Inclusion Focal Point (IFP). In this role she was responsible for promoting employee resource group (ERG) events, preparing inclusion moment content for meetings, and providing feedback on various I&D initiatives.

Wakumoto created a site-wide newsletter that promoted ERG events, local activities and educational content for over 2,000 employees. She led new member integration, which included individual discussions to educate people on local resources and I&D expectations.

Wakumoto's community outreach has been through SWE, such as IAGE (Introduce a Girl to Engineering), where Wakumoto served as a role model and worked with groups of 5-10 middle school girls to coach them through experiment workshops related to solar-powered cars and bridge building. She also participates in local Habitat for Humanity builds with her teams.

One of her recent favorite activities was becoming a mentor for the Midland ACS (American Chemical Society) "Day in the Life of an Industrial Scientist" event. Wakumoto coached high school students through a technical challenge and answered the highly varied questions they had. Wakumoto also visited middle school students to discuss STEM careers.

Seeing an opportunity to support her local chapter she ran for Secretary for FY23. From her position on the executive board, Wakumoto implemented "SWE Meets" which are informal opportunities to network and meet with other local engineers. Feeling she had the capacity to take on a higher profile leadership role in Mid-Michigan SWE (Society of Women Engineers), she was recently instated as the FY24 President.

"I decided I wanted to be a chemical engineer because of male mentors, but I was able to be successful in completing my degree and starting my career because of the community of women I found in SWE," Wakumoto said. "SWE has done an exceptional job of promoting women in engineering, from supporting outreach activities for girls to learn about and be inspired by the field, professional development opportunities to advance careers, and advocacy on the national and international scale. I found most of my jobs, mentors, and even some of my bridesmaids through SWE."

After being asked by a local university, Saginaw Valley State University (SVSU), about helping them start a collegiate section, Wakumoto offered to augment their efforts by partnering with Mid- Michigan SWE, extending event invitations to SVSU students, and helping them network with local professionals.

Years with company: 5

Years in rubber industry: 4

Initially I ended up in the rubber industry by chance. I enjoyed working for Dow as a co-op and happened to be offered a production role in silicone rubber after graduation. However, I feel lucky that I ended up in this area. I love the variety of products and applications that our materials go into, from infant care to electric vehicles. It has been very rewarding to work on materials that the average consumer uses every day.

My favorite thing to challenge co-workers and the company on is our assumptions. Dow is over 250 years old and the silicone rubber business goes back over 70 years. With that much history, it can be easy to get stuck in old habits, but it can be so rewarding to challenge ourselves to seek improvements. Those improvements could be a more efficient way to run an asset, more productive ways to run meetings, or more inclusive ways of communicating with our colleagues. "We've always done it this way" is rarely good reasoning and I have found that colleagues are open to trying new things where it makes sense to do so.

Leadership includes clear and open communication, gathering team input, and listening. I think it is extremely important to get to know a team and get their buy-in. I try to demonstrate leadership by creating space for all team members to speak, making decisions with sufficient team and stakeholder input, and following through on my commitments.

I would recommend Ted Radio Hour from NPR. They are well-curated, hour-long podcasts that bring together multiple Ted speakers around a common theme. I find the episodes to be a great way to learn about something different that I likely would not look into on my own.

I've had a few hard-won learning opportunities at this point in my career, but one that stands out was misattributing the root cause of a process temperature profile change that I observed. I initially believed the root cause was inadequate cooling. To address this, I directed time and resources into maintenance and process changes which kept the process running safely, but negatively impacted the production volume. Eventually, I learned that the true cause of the shift was due to the length of the temperature probe, and after installing a new probe of the correct length we were able to resume the original processing conditions. I learned a lot from this experience, including the importance of verifying measurement systems and the difficult nature of troubleshooting in production environments. I also learned that it's OK to be wrong as long as you acknowledge it, learn from it, and move forward.

For me, winding down usually involves an intense lifting workout followed by a nice walk. I am a big fan of getting outside and enjoying time in peaceful outdoor settings.

Success looks like continually making progress toward goals, learning and communicating what we learned to others. It is also important that, at the end of the day, I feel accomplished and have the capacity and energy to work on things I enjoy outside of my career.