What she does: Underwood is a project manager at Nestle Health Science plant in suburban Pittsburgh, a plant that makes vitamins and supplements. She meets with clients and pulls together a team of scientists to create products – that can mean everything from formulating and assessing a supplement with certain claims to package design and production. “You have to have a technical background to work in this role,” she said. “I have to have an understanding of each part in the process.” Her favorite part of her job? “I really like to go to the store and see a product that I worked for so long put on the shelf.”
Her greatest challenge: Her first job as an engineer involved plugging oil wells. “I am a young, small, Middle Eastern woman, and I am often the only person who looks the way I do.” In the oil fields, that could put her in a tough position. “I had to go up to 60-year-men and tell them what to do. I had to insist that either we do it my way, or we’re going home. I cried every day. It wasn’t a place for a woman.” Some colleagues and co-workers refused to talk with her or believe she was the site engineer. “I thought we were past that.” She said she is much happier now in a diverse environment, where many of her team members are women from diverse backgrounds. “The smells in the lunchroom are amazing.”
Her passion project: “I gutted my house and used all my engineering knowledge figuring out the plumbing and the HVAC myself,” she said. “It’s my real-life application. My whole team was myself and my family.”
How she mentors: Underwood also enjoys mentoring young women. She has taken over the Instagram account “Letters to a Young Scientist” in which she showed how taste-testing and formulation works and how to fix or change a product, like make it easier to chew for an elderly person. She also works with Pittsburgh City Parks, tutors children and hosts Girl Scout troops at the plant. Her parents came from a background that encouraged her to become a doctor or engineer, but she knows that’s not true for many children and likes showing them the world’s possibilities.
I really like to go to the store and see a product that I worked for so long put on the shelf.