Engineering Ops Mgr, Debra McLaughlan, built her career with innovation and efficiency

[rachelduran]

Since the beginning, HPE has advanced the way people live and work by creating innovative technology at the heart of successful organizations and communities all over the world. We invite you inside our careers and culture through stories of the people who power HPE—our team members.  
 
Meet Debra McLaughlan, Engineering Operations Manager, based in Scotland who manages a team responsible for operational process, product support, and inventory control management within HPEFS’s Technology Renewal Centre. 

Debra McLaughlan HPE career journey 

While attending University, Debra secured an internship at HP as a Business Analyst. Following graduation with a degree in Business Information and Technology, she was hired back to work for the same team she conducted her internship with. 

Over the years, Debra went from providing hands-on operational support by fixing system blockages and building database and web tools to using her process improvement experience to conduct workshops to help other team members bring ideas to reality. She learned Six Sigma principles and how supply chain worked across the business. Finally, HP Financial Services set up the Technology Renewal Centre and Debra was recruited to help start up operations and was ultimately promoted to Operations Engineering Manager. 

Team member straight talk 

Q: What is important to you as a team manager? 
A:  Mentoring my team is probably my favorite part of my role as manager. I’m always excited to see how my team members and our team will develop. It gives me great pleasure to see our group succeed.  We have several key projects coming up in the near future that we can’t wait to get stuck in.   

Q: How do you redefine what’s next in your career?   
A: I would love the opportunity to grow the team. I have also worked in Operations for my whole HPE career, I’m passionate about that and, at some point, would also consider looking laterally to other business units to share my expertise and learn more about other parts of the company.  

Q: How would you describe the culture at HPE? 
A: I would describe the culture as forward-thinking and inclusive. As a process engineer, I appreciate that we are empowered to try out bold ideas to improve the business; sometimes, we don’t always get it right.  So, we fail fast and learn from our experiences (and our beliefs say it’s the right thing to do!).  

Ready to redefine what’s next for you? With industry-leading training, development, and cross-functional learning opportunities, you could potentially explore multiple careers without ever leaving the impactful, mission-driven work and people at HPE. Explore our careers site and apply at careers.hpe.com. 

Rachel Duran
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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