BROAD EXECUTIVE MBA
Removing The Hurdles
- Lori Hillman, Class of 2016
Vice President of Quality at Eaton, Galesburg, Michigan
Bold. Brilliant. BOSS.
Explore more stories from Broad EMBA Alumnae.
Name, class year
Article Title Here
Hear from Lori herself on her journey to executive leadership.
Being the only woman in a room is a familiar scenario for Lori Hillman.
Working in her field of engineering, Hillman has had her fair share of experience with the gender gap. But she doesn’t let that stop her.
“We need to give more women leadership opportunities, because our younger women need to see that representation and see strong women leaders to know they can be successful,” she said.
Hillman is currently the Vice President of Quality at Eaton, inspiring young women and girls in her community.
She describes herself as a driver of innovation, remembering when she was in this role and changed the company's data reporting scheme to be quicker and more effective.
They ended up expanding this idea to many departments across the organization.
“I like to drive learning,” she said. “I always want to leave my position in a better state than I began.”
Hillman has worked in engineering for over 20 years and said that being in the female minority is common. However, she wants to continue to inspire young women in the field by mentoring them and removing some of the barriers she had to break down in her path.
“I believe, as women, we should be removing those hurdles and making it easier for the next group that’s coming through in their careers,” she said. “We should be empowering women.”
In 2014, Hillman decided to pursue her MBA through Broad’s Executive MBA program in order to gain more insight and experience in the financial realm of business. She ultimately wanted to chase after her dream of running a business unit.
Hillman wants to show young women what the benefits of continuing their hard work can lead to.
“I felt I had the ability to be more strategic in my position, but I wasn’t perceived as having these skills since my background was technical in nature” she said. “I knew the MBA would provide the additional skill set that I needed to reach my professional goals.”
“Within the first year or two, we had live dashboards,” she said.