Succeeding in the engineering world as a leader is about having really great mentors, a strong framework, and a process for managing business and projects. Troy Venuto '21, M.S. Engineering Management, shared his reflection of the journey he took from the engineering world, to the fitness world and then back to the engineering world.
"In the educational journey, it's the learning that you take away and the increased efficacy you will have, and maybe a little bit some justification for wanting to move forward or up. It's not just a piece of paper. It never has been, of course."
About UMBC's M.S. in Engineering Management
The Engineering Management graduate program at UMBC will help you maximize your technical and business skills. Our program is best suited for engineers working in technology-oriented enterprises or government programs.
https://professionalprograms.umbc.edu/engineering-management/
Succeeding in the engineering world as a leader is about having really great mentors, a strong framework, and a process for managing business and projects. Troy Venuto '21, M.S. Engineering Management, shared his reflection of the journey he took from the engineering world, to the fitness world and then back to the engineering world.
"In the educational journey, it's the learning that you take away and the increased efficacy you will have, and maybe a little bit some justification for wanting to move forward or up. It's not just a piece of paper. It never has been, of course."
About UMBC's M.S. in Engineering Management
The Engineering Management graduate program at UMBC will help you maximize your technical and business skills. Our program is best suited for engineers working in technology-oriented enterprises or government programs.
https://professionalprograms.umbc.edu/engineering-management/
Dennise Cardona 0:00
Welcome to this episode of UMBC Mic'd Up podcast. My name is Dennise Cardona from the Office of Professional Programs. We are joined by a recent graduate of our engineering management graduate program, Troy Venuto. We hope that you enjoy this episode. Troy Welcome to UMBC Mic'd Up podcast. It's really great to have you here.
Troy Venuto 0:19
Thank you. Thanks for inviting me,
Dennise Cardona 0:21
can you tell us a little bit about yourself in terms of your professional endeavors and educational journey tell with UMBC
Troy Venuto 0:30
I'll try not to take up your whole podcast with this. So I, I graduated from the University of Maryland in College Park, mechanical engineering, in December of 2000, for most of my engineering experience has been in, you know, heavy research and development, fast paced, prototyping, really quick design turns low quantities never meant for any sort of production, government contracting, you know, for defense, and automation materials handling such and such like that. However, I did start a fitness business in 2008. And I worked that full time from 2012 to 2016. So I was away from engineering for that time, running my business. And then in 2016, I came back and kind of picked up where I left off with government contracting and automation. So I guess it didn't take too long, but it feels like a winding path for, for me, yeah, I
Dennise Cardona 1:30
would imagine going from the engineering world to the fitness world. And then back to the engineering world, again, that that is quite like a kind of, I wouldn't call it a circular, more of like a zigzag type of pathway, which is really cool, because it opens you up to new experiences, new ways of viewing things, in terms of why you chose to go back to graduate school, was it primarily to kind of like revamp some of your skill sets? and things of that sort to help you enter the workforce again, in the engineering world? Or was it more of a curious mindset?
Troy Venuto 2:03
So I think it's one of the I think you've nailed the curious mindset, you know, I tend to always be have a project going on, you know, the fitness business was a project that kind of grew into more, I came back into engineering first, before coming to the graduate program. But you know, when you run your own business, you're kind of the manager by default, and it's a little bit of a trial by fire. No one tells you if you do anything wrong, you know, you have feedback from how well things are working. But as I said, it's a trial by fire. And I had the benefit of having some good mentors in that business. But I think I benefited heavily most by frameworks, right frameworks on how to think about training, or how to think about the business itself, or what, what it is I was really doing in business. And so, you know, as a return to engineering and look to kind of move into more of a leadership role in this world. I think I needed those frameworks, and, you know, not really having any immediate mentors. In that way. I felt like I needed to kind of seek seek professional help. As I would tell my clients, perhaps, if there was something I couldn't help them with, and that I didn't have that where I was, and so I needed to, to go out and acquire it. So that's what I that's what I found the the engineering management program at a UMBC.
Dennise Cardona 3:22
Yeah, and, you know, it's all about processes, right? Whether you're managing an organization of your own, whether you're managing engineering as a process, it really does come down to a process a systems systems approach to the way that you run a team, a project or a business.
Troy Venuto 3:42
Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. And you need the framework, you know, even above that system to, you know, what's it all hanging from, to really know wording to what leverage need to pull or what's missing? Otherwise, it's really hard to, hard to tell,
Dennise Cardona 3:57
that's a really good point that you made in terms of like an aerial view, in a way like looking at it from a bird's eye view, to be able to see there are so many different elements to what you're managing, sometimes I become so invested in a specific project, that I become siloed to it. And from a management perspective, it really requires you to step back and view it from a very different perspective, where you see all of the stakeholders who are, you know, involved in the process and what that actually means and what the team's actions actually mean to the vitality of the project at hand.
Troy Venuto 4:29
Agreed. And I think that that's one thing that kind of links engineering and fitness, which are very different, you know, very different endeavors. But I think there's that kind of what you hinted at is a top down and bottom up approach, right? You need to look at it both with a magnifying glass as well as the telescope. You need to get in into the nitty gritty in both out to the system, because if you stay in one zone for too long, you'll lose what's going on kind of holistically. And so I think that that's a something that links too, and I think I like synthesizing both in and out down from the tolerance level, if we're talking mechanical engineering, up to, you know, philosophy of what the design is supposed to do, especially when you're in the industries that I've been in, where, you know, I'm given a whole design, I'm not. If maybe if I was an automotive engineer, I'd be given one little part. But, you know, I'm given the big thing that does something. And, you know, I go from the choice of the fastener up to, you know, how I think the thing is going to work overall. So, I think that the ability to, you know, zoom in and out at the same time is extremely helpful.
Dennise Cardona 5:35
Yeah. And it's so interesting to me, the broad nature of engineering, it touches most every aspect of life, doesn't it? The fact that you were in the fitness industry, maybe still are, I'm not sure. But we're in the fitness industry. And those skills are very transferable. Can you talk a little bit about the transferability of skill sets between what you were doing in terms of leading an organization of your own versus leading the purview of engineering management within an organization? Yeah.
Troy Venuto 6:05
So I think that there's a lot of transferability, like you mentioned, I think that, you know, coming from engineering and moving to maybe a softer discipline, like fitness, I think that kind of that systems mindset, and the rigor, I think rigor, you know, people used to joke, I was always correcting my coaches on very minor points. But it's very important to be rigorous and understand, you know, the real science behind what you're doing. Because, you know, I talk about mechanical systems that I design here. I mean, a human body is a mechanical system, and there are things that it does and things that it doesn't do. And fortunately, in much of the fitness industry, there's not so much rigor in a lot of what you might read. And so I think bringing that rigor to the table. And I think that was why I want to getting this degree, because I needed that rigor of speech, I needed to know, you know, what was the correct way to describe a structure of, you know, organization, or the way we might tabulate the finances of this project, I didn't have that rigorous way to speak about it, I had the rigorous way to speak about and think about, you know, my mechanical designs, right from my mechanical engineering degree. And learnings. After that degree, of course, I didn't have that rigorous way to speak about or even understand, if a project wasn't going well, or a workplace wasn't running smoothly, the Diag really diagnose that problem. Once you get those frameworks, you can see what's missing, it makes it much easier makes it very glaring, when you have the book, it's almost like a cheat sheet, right? You don't have to muddle through it, you have the Engineering Management Body of Knowledge, the inbox is something we reference back to frequently because it has such a, you know, complete list of, of various frameworks, and there's not even one but if you had that framework to go back to you can you can see where your holes are, or how your process is pretends to conform to but does not truly conform to it. And I think that all of engineering is trying a prototype and seeing how it works and, and tweaking, right, you're never going to get it perfectly right the first time. But if you have your good fundamentals, then you'll hopefully understand what's not working about it and where you need to move to. So I think that that is true of both, again, mechanical designs and, and organizations and projects, you can, you can see where something's not running well, and you have the the rigorous kind of framework to back it up, you can diagnose the nature of that problem and come up with a way to fix it.
Dennise Cardona 8:35
Wow, yeah, you put that so eloquently, you really did. It shows the passion that you have for engineering. And so I'm always interested to hear from people who are in a specific field. What do you love most about the field of engineering? What what is it that gets you up out of bed in the morning and gets you into that office and says, Hey, I really can't wait to roll up my sleeves and do this work today?
Troy Venuto 8:57
Yeah, I think that, you know, the the sense that there is a solution to this thing, you know, this problem that's out there, it's not impossible, we're not being asked to do anything impossible. You know, there's a solution that's out there, there's not one, there's many, there's a good way to do it an elegant way to do it. And I think always refining down to that, how's the best way to do this, that, you know, the user IDs is the most friendly to the user? You know, I've never, or not often asked to make it the most cost efficient, you know, but maybe if someone else's in industry, or if I was in a different industry, it would be how do you make it a little bit cheaper to make. And so I think that, you know, knowing that people in some way are going to be interacting with these things. And that the better job I do, the better that's going to be, you know, until it comes out of my brain and onto the paper and through a machine shop and through paint shop and put together by somebody, you know, it didn't exist. You know, it's some of the same things that I liked about the fitness industry. helping people improve. Luckily, mechanical designs don't often fight you. They they do what you say. So that's a little bit easier from that standpoint. But yeah, I think it's the creation of something novel and the knowing that there's a good way to do it and that if you have the frameworks, it's merely just a way of, it's just a matter of paying attention to how things are going. And you know, there's always a solution. There's there's no real failures, there's just a refining.
Dennise Cardona 10:29
Oh, that's powerful statement right there. That refining No, no failures, just refining and finding those solutions. That's really a solutions based approach is a is a it's just a powerful approach to anything in life, regardless if it's engineering, fitness, or just, you know, relationships, anything, anything that that is a really great approach. Can you talk about your what you're doing currently in your role?
Troy Venuto 10:53
Sure. So I work for a company called Teledyne FLIR that came into being when Teledyne acquired FLIR Systems. I work in an integrations group of FLIR where we integrate, sometimes our own sensors, and sometimes subcontractor sensors on to oftentimes military vehicles, or sometimes other unmanned vehicles, we also do a heavy unmanned and robotics system here. So I think, you know, it's a lot of novel parts that have never been created before, novel things to combine to two systems together. I'm currently working the Army's NBC RV vehicle, which is the nuclear, biological, chemical reconnaissance vehicle to vehicle that gives the army better eyes and ears really better knows to sniff out, you know, chemical and nuclear threats, so that they can keep the soldier safe. And so again, going back to users, you know, what, what better user to, to wake up and think about improving their lives every day than someone who's, you know, trying to keep everyone safe. So that's the, that's the current role there.
Dennise Cardona 12:06
Yeah, that's, that sounds like an amazing role has such purpose. And I would definitely be something to get out of bed in the morning and roll up the sleeves and do the work, because you're really you're out there helping people who are helping the greater good of this country as well. So it's like, it's a beautiful cycle, you have, it sounds like an incredible experience to be able to share with your peers in a classroom. And that is, to me, one of the most important elements of graduate school is being able to learn from your fellow classmates and faculty, of course. And it's that rich experience, that dynamic experience of being able to share ideas from very different types of roles that we have out there in the world. Can you talk a little bit about what that peer engagement looked like in the classroom?
Troy Venuto 12:52
Well, I mean, as you might have guessed, it did change. Throughout my time, it's UMBC. Originally, I was in classes, and it moves, really, to remote for the rest of the, of my, you know, my semesters, many of the professors did it really, you know, a Herculean effort, I guess you would say, to make sure to retain that peer to peer, you know, communication with discussion boards, we were always encouraged to make a discussion posts on the outside readings. And I think that was always very helpful to be assigned a book and just read it on your own is one thing, but to be assigned to book in chapter by chapter have to post a learning, or something. And even if there's something that you don't agree with, you get to, you get to test your theory of why it's not correct or against other people who will critique it. And I think that that's just like a design review. For mechanical engineer, you had a idea of how this is going to go, you know, and you're going to go into a room and present that and argue for it and have other people argue against it, not because they want to discredit what you did, but because they're trying to poke holes in it. And if there's no holes, then you move forward with it. So I think that's just a great way to look at that not necessarily adversarial, but the ability to have a safe space to challenge each other, you know, and play with concepts, right? There's not one good way to do a mechanical design, and there's not one, you know, perfect way to think about any of any of these engineering topics, or management topics or financial topics or leadership topics or whatever. I mean, if you go into the Ambach, you know, the body of knowledge, there are contradictory things within that. And it's, you know, acknowledging that tension and, you know, trying to find a way to wrap your head around how both ways could be useful in different scenarios. You know, I think open mindedness is what I'm getting at here is not to assume there's only one good way to do anything. And I think that only by interaction with a lot of people. Can you really stress test those things? If you only had, you know, one or two people to bounce your mechanical design off of it might work but it's probably not going to be The best it could be the more people you have with different backgrounds and different experiences to show, then I think the better these things get over time because again, it's not, you know, you can't be afraid to be wrong. You just got to test out your ideas and both for again, design work. And just thought work, which is really kind of, it's nice. I, I'm, I'm a big fan of it, I'll stay in the thought realm for as long as anyone wants. And that's what it is when you're, you know, doing classwork, it's, it's all theoretical, it's not, you know, your decisions you make are not actually going to change anything. For me, it was an interesting experience. You know, I was, I was going to class with people who, you know, were born when I was in high school. So, you know, it's interesting to get their perspective. And, you know, they had a very different educational experience than I did. You know, and I think that, although Mechanical Engineering might be one of the older, more staid, maybe what some people do to static disciplines, not like software engineering, or something that is constantly changing. I do think there's always things to learn methodologies and tools that, you know, weren't even discussed when I was going through my undergrad. Yeah,
Dennise Cardona 16:18
that's a really good point. I had that conversation earlier with somebody about technology. And just the fact that when I was graduating from college, YouTube didn't even exist. So, you know, the fact that I didn't even realize, I mean, I landed in this role at UMBC, where I am with video all day long. And this wouldn't have been this wasn't even something I could conceive back then because it didn't exist. So I totally get that. Yeah. Imagine somebody a student is not sure they're maybe on the fence about should I? Is this engineering management program at UMBC? worth going to? Why should I? Is it necessary? What would you say to that person?
Troy Venuto 16:57
I don't think anything's ever necessary. You know, I've worked with mechanical engineers that don't have a mechanical engineering degree. You know, I think there's always many paths to what you want to do. I think I would look around and, you know, what is lacking? Right? I mean, if you are lacking technical mentors, then maybe you need a technical masters, if you want to get into a specific technical area. But if you're lacking, you know, mentorship, in management, in organization, in leadership, I think that this is a great, a great program for really staying in the engineering mindset. But also having that, you know, softer, not in the pejorative term, but in the softer skill in the way to think about things of interpersonally, leadership wise, motivational wise, you know, obviously, like I said, I got that trial by fire in the fitness industry. But even so, I felt like I needed to still brush up on the frameworks that we would use in engineering in in larger business settings, which is where you're going to find most of your work, and what I think was the most useful mix of like business, business and technical instruction. You know, being a Masters of Science, I think it comes with that weight of, you know, you did technical work, as well, it's not an MBA, you know, MBAs I think are useful for some, but as far as staying in, staying in that technical zone, you want to keep your hand in the technical, you know, processes, that I think that, uh, this is a great route to go.
Dennise Cardona 18:33
So, what was your biggest takeaway from the program?
Troy Venuto 18:36
Yeah, honestly, I think, you know, coming back to academia after so long, you know, academia both leads and lags, you know, current practice and thought in different ways. You know, thinking back to, you know, my former roles, current roles, there's times that I could point to, you know, like page four of the Umbach and say, hey, look, we're violating this, you know, or we're not even did this role is missing here, you know, we say we're a matrix organization, but you don't even have this whole, you know, section here that's supposed to be there. And so I think, in those cases, that the program leads, what many an industry are actually doing, you know, some few of my managers have a engineering management degree, you know, they just kind of moved up through being a technical person a good good at their technical and now they're put into this and management role. They just don't have those frameworks. And so things are missing, not because it's malicious, or because they don't feel like hiring someone or all the old, you know, employee complaints, it's just literally they don't know these things should be should be there. And so, I think in a lot of ways, you know, engineering management is is leading those things someone a graduate of engineering management is going to you know, go into many businesses and be the better informed that a lot of their superiors on you know, the right way to be doing this project or the right system of organization for the kind of work you do, be it you know, job shop or heavy production or whatever the program is actually leading what's going on. Things are changing faster and faster, right, the rate of change keeps increasing, just like the amount of change. So, you know, it's not long before blockchain creeps into mechanical engineering and AI creeps into mechanical designs just from mechanical standpoint of things that could happen in the future. So it's critical to keep academia moving along, especially with a professional program that's already so focused on being useful, you know, outside of the program itself. And I think, you know, one of the big advertisements for the program was that only a few people actually work for the program, most of the professor's work in industry right there, they're out there. And I think that was hugely helpful. You know, when COVID hit I, you know, I was taking a class A manufacturing class with someone who managed manages manufacturing for Black and Decker, right. And so he's telling us in real time, how they're responding to supply chain disruptions. And so, you know, that sort of ability to, to learn those things real time and to know what's going on in the moment is, is hugely valuable. And one of the benefits of a professional program that's designed to not just be the end in and of itself. And so if that's the case, you know, staying on the bleeding edge of everything, you know, societal issues as well, I think is, is hugely valuable. And it's good to see when Dr. Winchester, he certainly has that in his crosshairs. Indeed, he does. Absolutely. It's funny, it's the end of year, you know, as we start to exit COVID, you know, and in fitness, right, you always take some time to reevaluate your goals, you know, you've you can't be doing everything. So, you know, this is the path you're on what you want to do, you know, the Olympics is coming up here, I love watching it just all the ways people decide to train into what they can make themselves do. You know, when the only thing that was different about these people is they just decided to do one thing versus decide the only difference between them, their marathon runner, and the thrower was one train throwing for a long time on one train? You know, they might have had some natural advantages that indicated one or the other. But, you know, it was that decision. And so, you know, taking time to take stock and do a quick review, what what was this whole? What did this whole thing mean? You know, what was the most useful? What was the least useful? You know, what, what are the little sticky notes, I'm gonna have to put on my monitor to everyday look at and say, you know, this is what you need to remember from this, this is what this program meant, or this is what this learning was, that's going to help you every day. You know, one of the big, big takeaways from the year, I think that that's a habit that comes out of fitness and sports and trading people, you know, because as the coach, you're doing the same thing? Absolutely. What was the big learning from training this person for the past year, what they thought was good and bad? What do I need to think about? Even if I don't even tell them what it is? Even if they don't need to know, I need to know that I need to keep that top of mind. And so the opportunity to do this interview was good to force that, you know, reckoning force that thought process and what is it? You know, what was the biggest takeaway?
Dennise Cardona 23:12
Yeah, absolutely. When you, when you're forced to kind of think that those things through, it really does help to give your perspective and give see the experience, breadth and depth, you know, just it brings that out. And now, like you said, you're charged you feel more charged with sticky notes, you can put all over your monitor.
Troy Venuto 23:31
Because there's no one you know, it's this is not something where someone suddenly beating down your door to, you know, hand you a big fat check for finishing, you know, there's no, you know, I know, you can walk away and nobody cares, right? It's, yeah, the learning that you take away and the increased efficacy you will have, and maybe a little bit some justification for wanting to move forward or up, or however you think about that, you know, it's not just a piece of paper never has been, of course, but that's the thing, it's, if you didn't get a good takeaway, or if you didn't have a, you know, a lot of aha moments or, or really some refined goals of where you want to move to next, then it might have been a little bit wasted. So to be as effective as possible, I think this this talk was helpful, helpful to have to hone those thoughts for good sound bites and for good, you know, just good. How do I relate what I learned to another person, the elevator pitch of the past three years of my life, you know? So why did you why did you spend all this money and spend all this time? You know, doing extra wires, he always good to have a good explanation for that?
Dennise Cardona 24:36
Absolutely. And now you'll have a 30 minute podcast episode to
Unknown Speaker 24:39
say hey, look, go subscribe to Mic'd Up, you don't need you to talk to me. That's it. That's funny already did this once. That's right.
Dennise Cardona 24:47
Absolutely. Thank you so much for being here today on UMBC miked up podcast. It's really been an insightful conversation. And I think helpful to listeners who are wondering what engineering managers It's all about and who are fascinated by the world of engineering as you are. So thank you so much for sharing your ideas and insights and experiences with being in the graduate program.
Troy Venuto 25:12
Oh, thanks for having me. It was a good talk. Like you said,
Dennise Cardona 25:15
Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this episode of UMBC Mic'd Up, we hope that you enjoyed it. If you'd like to learn more about UMBC his graduate programs in engineering management, please visit us at engm.umbc.edu