Mechanical engineering alum Sandy Stelling ’91 was a recent guest on the Disrupt Yourself podcast, hosted by leading business thinker Whitney Johnson. In the episode, Stelling reflects on her work experience and discusses her current VP role at Alaska Airlines.
During her time at Lehigh, Stelling says she learned valuable lessons that would turn out to be essential over the course of her career. She credits one of her professors, Robert Wei, who led the development of Lehigh’s award-winning Integrated Product Design (IPD) program, with teaching her that the goal was not to get the right answer, but “to learn how to learn.”
After college, Stelling became a mechanical systems test engineer at The Boeing Company in Seattle. She then went to Alaska Airlines, where she started as a project manager responsible for IT infrastructure. She’s since held numerous roles with growing responsibilities over her 21-year career. Most recently, she was promoted to vice president of strategy analytics and transformation in November 2020.
In the podcast, Stelling shares advice that helped her climb her way to the top. “Set out goals, and make sure you are aligned toward those goals,” she says.
“When facing the unfamiliar, tell yourself, ‘I don’t know how, but I’ll figure it out.”
Listen to the podcast here.
