Liz Cuneo: Thank you, Charlotte, for joining me today for this Women in Packaging and processing video. I just wanted to ask, how did you get into packaging? Was that your lifelong goal and mission?
Charlotte Ashcraft: Thanks for having me. I actually did not start in packaging. I originally wanted to be an electrical engineer. I've always loved cars and I had a dream of working for Subaru one day when I was in high school. So I made it to my 3rd year of electrical engineering, and while I loved the more hands-on and applied classes like circuits, I was really struggling with the more theoretical coursework and especially the programming classes. So it just didn't click the way that I expected it to or really wanted it to. Eventually, I was kicked out of my major and I met with career services at my college and they suggested that I check out packaging science because they had so much success with placing students like me that were really missing part of that hands-on part of their engineering major.
So, I met with the packaging department head and immediately realized that packaging science was everything that I had been missing. It was technical, but it was applied. It was creative, but it was structured. So I actually filed the paperwork to switch my major the same day that I met with him and just never looked back.
Cuneo: Oh, that's awesome What a great story.
