Pragmatism combines with passion for the automation industry when Alicia Gilpin is on the scene.

Alicia Gilpin — known on her popular podcast Automation Ladies and LinkedIn as Ali G — is the CEO of Process and Controls Engineering LLC. More than that, Gilpin is a champion for a more approachable and egalitarian culture in engineering.

It wasn’t an influential engineer or family member in the field who encouraged Gilpin to pursue a degree and career in the field; rather, it was the specific coursework that drew her. “Neither of my parents or close family members were engineers. In fact, there was no one; an engineering career is just what I thought I wanted. English is my second language, so I was drawn to the certainty that math could provide.”

In college, Gilpin studied chemical engineering and always assumed she wanted to spend her whole career in that subspecialty. But just a few years into her work, her position was downsized … and Gilpin was forced to find other employment.

When asked how she chose to pursue systems engineering when her chemical engineering position was eliminated, Gilpin is pretty frank: “I didn’t have any other options. The place where I lived — Phoenix — was dominated by the semiconductor industry, from which I was rejected because my college GPA was not high enough.”

After a lot of job hunting, Gilpin took work with a systems-integration firm that was hiring engineers like her as well as others without such degrees — or, in some cases, with technical training gained during U.S. military service — to educate them into industrial- automation and control-system specialist positions. In some cases, the control-systems and connectivity work produced by these employees was just like that produced by professional engineers … except it lacked the P.E. stamp.

This experience informs Gilpin’s views today. On the topic of ways to make engineering more accessible to workers sorely needed in the industry, Gilpin has decidedly proletariat leanings: “Please God, help the people see that associates will save us from ourselves. In the engineering industry, we have a strange stigma [against those with these degrees], and I’m sick of it. If a person gets an associate’s degree, I accept them. I’m not going to worry about the rest of the world when it comes to this topic.”

When asked how industry might maintain quality work should it slowly come to employ workers with a greater variety of degree types (such as associate’s degrees), Gilpin had this to say: “Our industry is massive. That’s why I created the OT SCADA CON event — to expose people to automation knowledge they don’t yet have and would probably love.”

After her control-systems position, Gilpin pursued field-engineering work, initially traveling the country to design and initiate control systems for coffee roasters. Assuming responsibility for system startups gave Gilpin insights into how design and field engineering need to be connected. In 2018, after yet more work, including a stint that had her essentially running a control-panel shop, Gilpin founded her process and machine controls-integration business. However, it was a few more years before she quit her job to dedicate herself to her fledgling business full time. Within months, word of her new availability had spread through Gilpin’s professional network, and she had her first large purchase order. Hurdles in the form of insurance, documentation, quoting, bookkeeping, and contract requirements cleared one by one, and the business took off.

Gilpin cites her comfort with the possibility of failure — always looming in the earliest days — as a core component of her success. Today, her business continues to grow and evolve.

Making engineering more practical

Gilpin is passionate about increasing participation in engineering by young people from underrepresented communities. “There are wonderful people out there pushing a fabulous agenda — including the founder of the New American Manufacturing Renaissance, Andrew Crowe. Likewise, my engineer co-host Nikki Gonzales and I built our Automation Ladies podcast to help show various representations.”

In yet another effort to support her contacts in the industry, years ago, Gilpin began curating and sharing on social media interesting and educational animations and other YouTube videos on how automation components, processes, and systems work. In fact, those efforts are in part the reason why her professional network is so large today.

Gilpin has also founded a 501(c)(3) nonprofit called Kids PLC Kits that procures donations of real industrial-grade components such as PLCs and HMIs from component suppliers and sends them in packages to young people.

Some goals of Kids PLC Kits are to familiarize young people with real industrial and automation control design (just like European students in formal programs); remove the stigma of industrial-related technician and trades-type work involving programming and wiring; impart marketable skills at an early age; and spread more awareness about careers in automation and industrial controls.

Of course, young folks new to the field must gain confidence in engineering over time. “First, one must understand that an engineer’s job is actually to serve people first and then processes. My confidence rose after years of predicting what engineering problem was coming next.”

Gilpin also recommends certain safeguards to anyone aiming to minimize mistakes: “Humans are mistake machines. Skilled engineers just have lower mistake rates because they analyze their own data.”

“In engineering, the best approach is to maintain really solid communications practices. So, say a project is going to go bad. Well, the sooner someone brings that up, the better the outcome will be for the whole group,” adds Gilpin. “If people are afraid to show management slips, when it comes down to crunch time, the whole team will suffer.”

To connect with Gilpin, visit AutomationLadies.io.