(226a) Women in Chemical Engineering Community (WIC) Breakfast and Keynote

The Women in Chemical Engineering Community (WIC) invites you to attend this interactive breakfast event. This networking event aims at bringing WIC members together in an informal setting. Members will have the chance to network together, exchange ideas and share knowledge while having a buffet style breakfast on round tables. During breakfast, WIC is honored to have Dr. Cristina Thomas give WIC members a keynote presentation covering impactful leadership from her chemical engineering and management career as well as becoming a STEM Equity trailblazer. Dr. Thomas is an amazing industrial leader at 3M. Dr. Thomas’s research accomplishments are inspiring. Her abilities to fuse innovations with business strategies and commercialization are intriguing. In addition, Dr. Thomas has always been an AIChE volunteer, particularly with WIC, the Management Division, PAIC and the K-12 Community. We welcome you to this event as we all learn from Dr. Thomas inspiring lessons on integrating life and career while leading. After the keynote, attendees will have a chance to ask Dr. Thomas questions.

Meet our keynote speaker

Cristina Thomas

Dr. Cristina Thomas has more than 30 years of experience in R&D organizations including in the Venezuelan oil industry, IBM (New York) and 3M (Minnesota). She has degrees in Chemistry and Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering. Her 3M assignments have included Global R&D Services Senior Director, R&D Global Process Owner, Strategy Manager, Laboratory Manager, Commercialization Manager, Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) Technical Black Belt and Group Leader of the Materials Modeling Group.

She became an early leader in the molecular and materials modeling community (AIChE’s CoMSEF Forum). At 3M, she led the invention of 3M window-film products, of pavement markings retroreflective solutions and of connected safety platforms. She is a coinventor in 20+ patents. She received the 2019 AIChE Industry Leadership Award, the 2019 AICHE Management Division Award, and is an ACS fellow and an ACS PMSE fellow.

She has a passion for moving new technologies into markets and for education of underrepresented students and women in science and engineering and co-leads 3M STEM and Skilled Trades initiatives. She is a member of the AIChE Corporate Council & Industry Leader's and the Government University Industry Research Roundtable (National Academy of Science). She lives in Stillwater, Minn., with her husband Scott, her dog Dulce and three adult children.