Lorena Skelley leads a team of 19 mold engineers, packaging engineers and lab technicians, and product development engineers as the director of molding and packaging for Abbott's Diagnostics division in Lake Forest, Ill. She is responsible for all consumable components used in Abbott Core Diagnostics test kits and packaging, as well as molding capacity to meet growth, asset management of more than 170 molds, design for sustainability and cost of new consumables and package validation.
Skelley earned her bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Southern Methodist University. She started at Motorola, where she was introduced to plastic injection molding, as an entry-level mechanical engineer and progressed to lead mechanical engineer. At Aptar, she held positions such as manufacturing engineer, product engineer and director of custom product development.
"I think my greatest achievement was being able to come back to work in a technical role after a decade home raising my children," she said. "I thought my skill would have been 'obsolete,' but I found that I was able to leverage my past experience as well as the leadership skills I had developed within the community to emerge as a strong technical leader."
Skelley is Six Sigma Green Belt certified, holds a U.S. patent for a transceiver housing and was named the 2023 Women of Color STEM Technology Rising Star. She is also involved with Abbott's W-STEM Employee Resource Group, FIRST Robotics, Society of Women Engineers, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and the Plastics Industry Association's FLiP Mentoring Program.
Some of the biggest failures in her career have taught her that "critical thinking, slowing down and being curious are the best tools to ensure problems are solved well."
"I have found that as I transitioned from an individual contributor to a management role, I can apply the same ideas resolving nontechnical problems that my team brings me that are often the most challenging to solve," she added.
Skelley said she is surprised there are not more women in the industry, especially in technical roles, and that she finds plastics — "design, manufacture and new technology" — broad and interesting.
"I want to break the 'mold' that you can either be technical or a caring leader. I am working hard to marry the two parts to make me a better leader overall for my team and for Abbott," Skelley said. "I leverage my experience and work to learn more about the technologies we use today and how to utilize them to make us more efficient and robust in our processes. I am also working to better develop my team and grow as a mentor."
