If you TRY to know it all, you will HAVE to know it all!

We invited alumni and friends to share about their career paths and decisions at our 60th celebration in September.  Tonya Elium, ’95 grad and Rayonier employee shared some very insightful thoughts that we wanted to share with all!  Thanks Tonya . . .

It is an honor and a privilege to share about my career path decisions.  I’m the Quality Manager at Rayonier Advanced Materials in Jesup GA.  I have spent my entire 19 year career with the same company, although we now have a new name resulting from the spinoff of our Performance Fibers business from Rayonier.  My career path doesn’t take too many turns but I’m going to tell you about a sharp career turn, a U-turn and a couple of round-a-bouts, but definitely no wrong turns.

My first major career decision wasn’t a difficult one.  I only had one job offer:  to be a process engineer at Rayonier in Fernandina Beach, Florida.  The job market was a lot tougher back in the 90’s than it is today.  Most students only had one job offer not three or four like many of you will get.  I thought long and hard for about five minutes and decided I better accept.  I took off to Florida with my husband of eight days and began my career.

About a year later, Rayonier gave me an opportunity I will call my sharp career turn.  One of those curves where you better proceed with extreme caution.  I was asked to be a shift supervisor.  There had never been a female shift supervisor in the 57 year history of the mill.  I was breaking new ground at only 23 years old.  The man who trained me to take his place had been with Rayonier for 44 years, almost twice as long as I’d been alive.  He was at least 6’4” compared to my petite 5’3” frame.  His nickname was Iron Man and I knew his shoes were going to be hard to fill.  I knew I had to learn as much as I could from Iron Man.  One of the first things he taught me was that, “if you try to know it all, you will have to know it all.”

I took his advice and succeeded as a shift supervisor spending three years in the position before I moved to unbleached area manager, a straight day shift job.  I worked that job for 2 years when I decided to take a u-turn and go back to the position of shift supervisor.  Working a swing shift job would allow me more time to raise a family.  I had four children, yes you heard that right, I said four, during my time as a shift supervisor.  So ladies, you can have a career and a family.  It’s not always easy, but it can be done.

About a year and a half after my youngest child was born, another opportunity came up, I’ll call it a round-a-bout, because I wound up right back where I started, in process engineering.  This time I was the team leader for the process engineering group.  In this position, I had the chance to work on a formal early career development program for new engineers and to revive our summer internship program.  Other responsibilities included technical support for the mill and working with customers on quality issues and new product development.  I became involved in key customer partnerships that have been in existence for over 80 years!

I continued in this role for 3.5 years and after 17 years at the Fernandina plant, I made my most recent round-a-bout.  I’ll call this a round-a-bout because my current position involves the ISO 9001 Quality Management System that I have been involved with since coming to work for Rayonier.  In about my second week on the job, I attended an ISO 9001 internal auditor course and I have been conducting annual internal audits of the quality management system ever since.  This experience in ISO is what opened up the door for me to make my most recent career move to the position of Quality Manager at the Jesup plant.  Leave Fernandina Beach for Jesup?  That had to be a tough decision, right?  No, my last career decision was just as easy as my first, mainly because the Jesup plant accounts for 75% of the performance fibers business.   In addition to that, they were just starting a major cellulose specialties expansion project at the time that I would get to be a part of.  The first major expansion in 40 years!  This was a once in a lifetime career opportunity.

Since the project was completed last year, I have settled into my role as quality manager. My responsibilities include not only managing the ISO 9001 certification, but also ensuring the proper disposition of all production from the Jesup plant.  This is quite a responsibility considering Rayonier Advanced Materials produces the highest purity wood pulp in the world for specialized end uses such as films for flat screen TV’s and cell phones that didn’t even exist 19 years ago when I started my career.  I can’t make it for 10 minutes without mine!

Having a degree in Paper Science and Chemical Engineering offers many different career paths.  Engineering, production and quality roles like I have mentioned just to name a few.  The future is wide open for you!

I can’t tell you who the speaker was at my college graduation, but I can remember that he said this to the class of 1995 – “you will no longer be watching the young and the restless; you will be the young and the restless”.  And you will be, so I offer this advice in closing:

• Find a mentor – not necessarily another engineer, seek out operators and supervisors like Iron Man with different experience levels and get their perspective.
• Don’t turn down training or career development opportunities.  That class you were told you had to attend might be what qualifies you for your next big career move and that shift supervisor job won’t be as bad as you thought and you may even love it!
• Be confident, speak up and don’t be afraid to make a decision.  Right or wrong it’s your decision, own it, stand by it and admit when you’re wrong but hopefully, your career won’t take any wrong turns.

You’ve already made the best career decision possible – to be a part of this program.  Thank you Pulp and Paper foundation for making this all possible.  Happy 60th anniversary!