Meet the Leadership Summit Speaker: Melissa Zeier
Learn more about asset management and increasing your lab’s efficiency at the 2022 Leadership Summit
MaryBeth DiDonna is lab design editor and digital events editor for Lab Manager. Her work for the lab design section of the publication examines the challenges that project teams...
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As Lab Manager’s 2022 Leadership Summit draws closer, we invite you to get to know the laboratory and management professionals who will be speaking at this exciting event.
Melissa Zeier, Product Manager, Enterprise Services with Agilent Technologies, will speak on “Leadership Through Lab Asset Management.” Melissa’s presentation will describe how your lab’s asset management program should be designed to build operational clarity, and how this will enable your lab to increase the availability and reliability of assets, resulting in lower operating costs, better use of existing capacity, and increased throughput. This session will explain how managers can increase efficiency through advanced asset control, digital services with insight analytics, expert guidance, and compliance assurance.
Read more about Melissa’s experience in the laboratory, the real-life skill she incorporates into her work, and the best day of her professional career. Register today at https://summit.labmanager.com/leadership for your chance to learn from Melissa’s experience and insight at the 2022 Leadership Summit.
Q: How did you get started in your career?
A: I knew from the time that I was in middle school that I would pursue science. When I got to college, studying chemistry seemed like a natural fit. After college, I had some great opportunities to substitute teach, which I enjoyed very much, and then to work in a high throughput immunoassay lab. The lab life was exciting and fulfilling and I knew that this was the path that I would take professionally.
Q: What are you most excited about in regards to your Leadership Summit talk?
A: I am excited to meet and greet other people working in the asset management field. I hope to seed great conversations with my talk that will lead to successful strategies and ideas that we can develop together.
Q: Can you recall the best day of your professional career? What made it stand out?
A: In 2017, my manager told me to prepare a day-long seminar for our customers to introduce them to new technologies that will change the ways that they do asset management. Over the next few months, I put together an agenda that incorporated workshops, roundtables, and expert discussions for small groups to exchange ideas and to promote asset management best practices. I knew from that day forward that I would be able to combine my strengths of collecting and curating information, my desire to build practical methods from concepts and conversations, and my talents for sharing this with others into a fulfilling career based on something that I feel passionate about.
Q: What is one important skill you think that all leaders should have?
A: Leaders need to celebrate success but also need to be open to giving colleagues a safe place to discuss failures. Risk taking can result in failure, but can also yield rewards. Having a safe place to take risks is important for employee development and companies need people to take risks to drive innovation and capitalize on new ideas. Navigating failures and extracting lessons are excellent opportunities to learn and grow.
Q: What kinds of hobbies or interests do you have outside of your job?
A: I enjoy reading (particularly science fiction), jogging, and spending time with my family outside of work. I like dissecting new ideas from a good book and talking about them. If I can convince some of my family members to read the same book, we’ve got a book club! This is one way that I practice exploring ideas in my personal life that I can apply professionally. I use this mechanism for growth I whenever I can.
