In an earlier email I posed the question “what have you done in the past ten years?” and I was pleasantly surprised to hear the response from many of you. Some climbed mountains while others founded companies. Some started families and attempted to balance life/family/work (I include myself here). Some have left large companies to join new ventures and others closed the door on a startup to join a large “more stable” company. Funny how much can change in ten years. Let’s not even talk about the changes in weight, hair color (or hair loss!)…
If you ask MEMS Industry Group what it’s accomplished in the past ten years, the list is growing. MIG was founded with five companies – two of which are no longer directly in the “MEMS business” (namely Xerox and Corning); now we are well over 100. Thankfully the other three founding companies are proudly achieving success in MEMS: Honeywell, Intel, and XACTIX. Thank you to our initial founders, who invested their time, money and energy into making the MEMS industry and MIG what it is today.
But to thank the companies would be an incomplete – as I need to thank the people. We’ve actually started a poll of our members – asking them to vote for the person(s) who they feel have made the biggest impact on the MEMS industry in the past ten years. But while you think about whom you’d like to honor at MIG’s annual meeting, M2M Forum March 16-17 in San Jose, I’ll share with you my list…
The first name that comes to my mind is Ken Gabriel, whose vision it was to create MIG and I had the honor of working with during the early years of MIG’s founding. Ken has now gone on to great heights and is Deputy Director of DARPA; that just shows you what an impressive, visionary and successful guy he is. Founding MIG is probably in small font on his impressive resume, but in my book, he’s in LARGE BOLD LETTERS. Thanks, Ken.
There are many others that I’d like to thank; and I’ll share my full list at M2M in a next week…but before I sign off I’d also like to thank a few more folks: Harvey Nathanson of Northrop Grumman, for his tireless support of MEMS technology and MIG; Cleo Cabuz of Honeywell for her incredible enthusiasm, support and guidance; Ellen McDevitt for being a great role model for me to take over the MIG leadership; Mike Mignardi of Texas Instruments for his honesty and integrity; for Steve Dwyer of EV Group for his guidance and advice (even when I didn’t want it); for Mark Martin of Analog Devices for his incredible business sense; and really to the entire MIG Governing Council who have enabled MIG to work at fulfilling its mission to be “the leading trade association advancing MEMS across global markets.” And lastly, I’d like to thank the MIG staff – namely Monica Takacs, Kacey Wherley, Maria Vetrano (of Vetrano Communications) and our new office manager, Shelley Petro – for their tireless and creative hard work. Thank you all for helping MIG achieve its impressive ten-year anniversary. Thank you Thank you Thank you
Karen Lightman, Managing Director, MEMS Industry Group
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