Black History Month Spotlight: Featuring Kalan Hurdle
?Tell us about your career with Saint-Gobain North America.
?In May 2021, I graduated from Case Western University with a degree in Chemical Engineering and a minor in French. I started working for Saint-Gobain North America in December of that year. I’ve become very familiar with film extrusion, compression molding, injection molding, and other processing conditions and processing methods. It’s been a really great experience so far. Because it’s such a versatile work environment, I’ve also had the opportunity to work with the surface of polymeric materials and materials characterization, in addition to my own job in IMEC. As I’m becoming a subject matter expert in my field, I am contributing a lot of knowledge to help my colleagues.
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What impact has your leadership had on SGNA?
When I have the opportunity, I ty to connect with the community. Over the summer, Girls Inc. of Worcester visited the center and we helped them with a challenge to give hands-on engineering experience. They had to melt chocolate and find different ways to reinforce it by adding different types of pasta, freezing that, and seeing which pasta reinforces the tensile strength of the chocolate the best. I was really glad I volunteered for that. It was mostly Black girls, and seeing someone who looks like them—it shows them that if I can do it, they can, too.
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What is something about yourself that you wish other people knew?
I like to collect quotes that inspire me. When I was in high school, I kept this book of quotes that spoke to me. I’ve transferred a lot of that to my phone. Once I find something that moves me, either from a TV show, book, movie, or anime, I’ll put it in my phone and use it for inspiration every so often.
One of my favorite quotes is “Becoming me was the greatest creative project of my life,” which is from?The Magicians?by Lev Grossman. When I look back at those quotes in my phone, I can remember how I felt when I first heard them. So if I ever need a pick-me-up or need to find some inspiration, I have all of those to look back on.
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