Los Angeles: Glenair and the Alumni Reception

For the students on the Quinlan Ramble, our itinerary on Wednesday carried special importance. Wednesday would begin with our site visit to the Glenair headquarters in Glendale, and we were looking forward to a Loyola networking event in the evening with prominent west-coast business and law alumni. This would be the day where, hopefully, many of us would have a chance to have intimate conversations with professionals in their respective fields.

The morning began calmly, with our bright-eyed team rearing to depart for Glenair just before 11am. As many of our students have probably mentioned, the weather was indescribably energizing – 75 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. We did a team huddle in the lobby of our hotel and spoke about industry knowledge and gave each other words of affirmation, and then we were off! We had a lovely drive through gorgeously manicured homes in Pasadena, and arrived ahead of schedule at the Glenair campus. Stephen Sweeney, a Glenair VP and a member of the Quinlan Board of Advisors, met us at the door and began our visit at the company.

For almost two hours, Stephen Sweeney, Brian Brown, and Barry Post of Glenair explained their origin, their company, and their products. Glenair is a manufacturing company that makes the highest grade of electrical connectors, and they serve clients in defense, space travel, and medicine. We had the chance to take an awesome, in-depth tour of their manufacturing buildings. Our Ramble team saw things like chambers for pressure and heat testing, x-ray machines, and we saw the actual folks who were assembling Glenair connectors. For the whole afternoon, their staff answered really pressing questions about their philosophies on employee relationships, supply chain protocols, and how they have reacted to situations of market volatility. For supply chain management students like myself, this look into a private manufacturing firm was a really hands-on opportunity to see the ways that a company like Glenair delivers quality and reliability to its customers.

The tour of the Glenair facility was deeply informative, and our group had to quickly shift gears once we left the campus, because we had a night of networking to look forward to. On this Ramble trip, our students were invited to meet at the ultra-posh Johnathan Club in downtown Los-Angeles. We arrived to the 2-hour soiree at 7pm, and were escorted to the third floor of the Johnathan Club. The event kicked off with great speeches from Kevin Stevens, the Quinlan Business School dean, and Michael Kaufman, the Loyola Law School dean. There was a deep emphasis on our social impact, and how both schools are continuing their devotion to serve disenfranchised populations and to work to close the growing wealth and life-expectancy gap. From here, our students- from first-year Arrupe attendees to our Quinlan seniors- were able to formulate really great conversations with our west-coast alumni. Personally, I was surprised by the amazing folks I met from the international and non-profit community, and I was able to exchange information with them. The energy leaving the Johnathan club at 9pm was giddy- every single Ramble student took something away from this event.

Wednesday on the Ramble was a mountain of a day, but the experience that we had at Glenair and with our Alumni could not have been better. I can’t wait to reconnect with some of the wonderful people I met in LA, and this experience has made me excited to one day be a Quinlan alumni!

 

Nicole Bond (BBA '22)
Supply Chain Management