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Chandra Little is the Lead Mechanical Engineer here at Generac! She leads her team in the design and implementation of our tank monitors and moves us generationally forward as time goes by.
Q) Tell me about where you’re from and how you ended up in Massachusetts?
A) I grew up in Houston, Texas. I came up here for college because I wanted to be a real engineer, and I wasn’t super interested in memorizing thermodynamics equations. I pursued an undergraduate degree at Olin College of Engineering. It was really small so you got a lot of good attention from professors.
Q) What’s your professional background?
A) I spent my entire senior year working on a project for Boston Scientific. I was working on a machine that was going to automate thyroid testing. I worked there for a couple of years, and after that, I was recruited by someone I had worked with during my time at the startup. So I ended up working at Medtronic, a medical device company. After that, I did some consulting.
Q) Briefly describe what you do all day at Generac.
A) I’m in charge of our hardware. I make sure that everything is moving smoothly, from the manufacturing line that’s making new products, to field support and returns management. I basically oversee our monitors from the time they are born – they’re my babies!
Q) What have you gained from working here?
A) I’ve learned a lot about the software and data tangent to my job. I had never used SQL before I got here. Now I feel really comfortable using that! I’ve also learned Python and I have a special deep passion for a Python library called PANDAS which is designed to deal with data sets. It’s really good if, for example, you need to check in on 10,000 tank monitors.
Q) What are the 3 words you would use to describe Generac?
A) Fast-moving, practical, customer-focused.
Q) Tell us something that might surprise people about you.
A) Something that might surprise people is that I never learned how to ride a bike until I was spending the summer living in the Netherlands. I think I horrified about 15 Dutch people, but it worked out fine.
