A Woman in the Arena

Finding the first rungs on a college and career ladder don’t always come easily, and the journey is rarely a straight climb up. Today, Karen Gilgenbach — now Zone Vice President for MATHESON — has a list of welding credentials and achievements that takes a paragraph to list. As a young woman growing up in Ann Arbor, her path to success was anything but clear. In high school, she wanted to be an artist. As a freshman standing in an orientation line at Michigan State, she heard too many others state their major as “undeclared.” When her turn came, she declared “engineering” because of her dad.

“My dad was an engineer’s engineer, plus he made sure that I knew how to work with my hands. In that moment, ‘engineer’ sounded a lot better than undeclared,” she said. “I focused on engineering mechanics because my young mind thought it was more prestigious; it required an extra math class and a higher GPA.”?

Fast forward four years, and Gilgenbach the soon-to-be graduate is standing in line at a career fair … a really looooong line at a megabooth for a Fortune 100 firm. She looked to her left and there was little booth with no line for a company called AGA, which had been acquired by Linde.?

“Since there was no line, I was able to walk right up to their two team members. They said ‘We’re hiring sales reps. If you come to work for us, you’ll be in a big steel mill one day and the next you’ll be in a laboratory where they use high purity gases on gas chromatography equipment.’ I thought seeing different environments every day sounded exciting compared to sitting behind a computer,” Gilgenbach recalls. “I started with AGA, member of the Linde Gas Group in 2003, and twenty years later I am so blessed and fortunate to still be in the industry. I am currently a Vice President and the Chair for the AWS D16 Committee on Robotic and Automatic Welding. It’s funny that such a fulfilling career in welding started because I dislike waiting in long lines.”

Welding Mecca

Gilgenbach was soon moved to Linde’s Milwaukee location, a post she dreaded until learning that southern Wisconsin has an abundance of welding thought leaders. She joined AWS District 12 and attended her first meeting in 2004, which also shaped her career through the influence of AWS members who were leaders in welding robotics including John Hinrichs (who started the D16 committee and the National Robotic Arc Welding Conference) and Jeff Noruk (a member of the D16 committee).

“John and Jeff suggested to the AWS Milwaukee section board, of which I was a member, that we help them restart the National Robotic Arc Welding Conference. There were these industry giants, and then me. With their guidance, I became a co-chair of the conference when I was still in my twenties. We held the conference on the odd years from 2005 to 2017, and used to proceeds to start the John F. Hinrichs Memorial Endowment. With the AWS endowment matching programs, this endowment is now funded to over $400,000 and provides over $20,000 in scholarships to welding and weld engineering students every year. Since that time, we rolled the conference into the AWS Welding Automation Conference and Exposition , and Jeff Noruk is a 2023 conference co-chair.”

Adding Value

While the support of AWS industry veterans jump-started Gilgenbach’s involvement with automation, starting her career as a 23-year-old woman in a male-dominated industry was anything but straightforward. Like any new distributor sales technician, Gilgenbach participated in educational opportunities offered by welding product companies, as well as welding programs at technical colleges in Milwaukee and Waukesha.

“Welding distributors want to bring customers new product solutions, cost saving idea and provide advice to boost efficiency,” she says.?

As there were not a lot of women offering welding advice at that time, sometimes well-meaning customers would assume her knowledge was limited and explain things like “this is MIG welding.” The last thing Gilgenbach wanted to do was sound like a young know-it-all, but she knew she would have to do something to gain credibility as a welding resource.?

To eliminate the disconnect, Gilgenbach believed that having the Certified Welding Inspector credential would give her credibility with customers that she could help them improve their productivity. As a result, Gilgenbach achieved her CWI in 2006, the soonest she was able to because of the certification’s minimum experience requirements.?

“Having CWI on my business card changed the trajectory of my entire career,” Gilgenbach says. “I owe the AWS a lot, because if they didn’t have that certification, I think my career may have gone in a different direction.”

Up Up and Away

With the CWI accomplished and then becoming involved with robotics, Gilgenbach set her sights on the AWS Certified Robotic Arc Welding-Technician (CRAW-T, where being a CWI is a prerequisite). In 2011, she became the first woman to attain CRAW-T.

“I find it satisfying when you get a part programmed and create a ‘perfect’ weld,” she says. “With a really good robotic weld, there’s just nothing like it because the robot keeps a constant travel speed and torch angle.”

Along with Gilgenbach’s technical achievements (in 2011, she also became a Certified Welding Supervisor), she has added an MBA (2022) and a Master of Science in Finance from Indiana University (as of Feb 2023) and a Master of Science in Welding Engineering from Ohio State University in 2015.

“I was so excited to go back to school for my welding engineering degree. People would often introduce me as a welding engineer, and I was quick to correct them prior to that,” says Gilgenbach. “I was an engineer, but my undergraduate degree was engineering mechanics. The welding industry has been incredible to me, and it felt like I came full circle when I became a Welding Engineer.”

Staying Humble

From sales rep to product manager to automation product manager to welding process specialist and several more titles, Gilgenbach has worked hard to champion automation and the welding industry. As Zone Vice President at MATHESON at their Waverly, Nebraska, location, Gilgenbach is responsible for 35 Midwest locations and has almost 400 direct and indirect reports. She humbly attributes much of her success to others.

???????????“I feel very blessed and don’t want to take undue credit,” she says. “If you want to know to what I owe my success, it is being fortunate enough to come across a lot of amazing mentors over the years who helped me.” She considers herself fortunate to be in a position where she can pay it forward, helping hire, train and coach people who are “absolutely killing it” in the welding world.

???????????She also continues to pay it forward through her scholarship work. She helped create the John F. Hinrichs Memorial Endowment and David Landon Memorial Endowment, both AWS National Scholarships.

???????????After seeing Gilgenbach’s passion for AWS and scholarships, her mother and father wanted to support her efforts, so the family created a “women in welding” national scholarship in her name. The endowment provides an annual scholarship of $2,500 through the AWS Foundation.

Ever humble, Gilgenbach notes that part of the scholarship’s history comes from years ago.

“Years ago, I made some terrible mistake at work, although now I don’t remember what the mistake was. At the time it was paralyzing- I felt like it was bad enough that I closed my office door and all I could think of was to call my dad, in the middle of the workday. In response, he sent me the famous ‘Man in the Arena’ speech by Theodore Roosevelt, but wherever it said ‘man,’ he inserted ‘WOMAN’ in all capital letters. We put that in the scholarship.”

To learn more about AWS National scholarships, visit aws.org/foundation .

WOMAN in the Arena (as amended by Karen’s dad)

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong WOMAN stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the WOMAN who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends HERSELF in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if SHE fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that HER place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

—????Theodore Roosevelt?