Vehicles of The Future: Mindy Guzman Of magniX On The Leading Edge Technologies That Are Making Cars & Trucks Smarter, Safer, and More Sustainable
An Interview With David Leichner
Safety Mindset. You will not go very far in the aviation industry if you attempt to take shortcuts that compromise safety. Building a product, whether it be a customer prototype or a certified product, with a safety mindset is imperative to not only your reputation but to the reputation and longevity of the company. Take the time to learn the safety assessment tools and take lessons from the successes and failures of others regarding safety.
As part of our series about “The Future Of Aviation”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mindy Guzman.
Mindy Guzman is the Head of Quality, Sustainability and Social Responsibility at at magniX based in Everett, Washington. Previously, Mindy was a Manager, Quality at VICIS.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
You can say it is in my blood. Both my parents were in the aviation industry since before I was born. After college, I decided to follow in their footsteps and joined Boeing starting out in Supplier Quality on the 787–9 program.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
I took a career gamble and decided to step away from aviation and join a high-tech sports equipment startup which specialized in designing and manufacturing the world’s top safety rated football helmets. After 2 years with the company, I was notified the company had run out of cash. The board of directors immediately furloughed all employees and threw the company into receivership looking for new owners. In the span of a weekend the company valuation went from roughly $90 million to $2 million.
I found myself unexpectedly unemployed during the holidays, and frankly with a loss of identity. During this time, I took the opportunity to reflect deeply on what I am passionate about, what drives me, what keeps me up at night and what kind of legacy I want to leave.
This situation, although unfortunate, has also helped to remove my fear of failure. Even when you have an industry leading product, an “A list” investor group, rockstar employees, failure is still a very real option. After this experience, I am more willing to take risks on my passions. Fortunately, as I take those risks, I have real life lessons that help me focus my direction and have taught me to not ignore the warnings signs that the boat might be sinking.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Early in my career when I was a Quality Program Manager at Boeing, I was developing the 777X Program Quality Plan.
It was time for me to turn in my draft plan which was roughly 40 pages in length and took me a few months to develop with the cross functional organizations. I held a review of the plan with my boss, and at this time I was very proud of my work. During the review meeting, within the first 30 seconds he took out his pen and heavily marked it up. He only got a few pages in, stopped, and tossed it back to me. I was mortified.
He proceeded to explain his mark ups to me. He was marking grammatical errors, sentence structure, punctuation, those types of things. In my head I was grateful it was only grammatical errors and not content that he was focused on. I took a deep breath and casually dismissed his remarks and said “Oh, don’t worry, I will make it pretty for you.” He paused, looked me sternly in the eyes, and said, “No Mindy, I don’t want it pretty, I want it right.”
From that moment on I understood the gravity of quality work. Content is not enough. How you present your content is critical.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
The list of individuals who I have had the opportunity to know, learn from, and be challenged by is extensive.
I am particularly grateful for Erika McClosky, my hiring manager at Boeing. Erika opened my eyes to the FUN you can have working in Quality. I was fortunate to work for her or closely with her two other times during my career. Erika questioned the status quo of the way Quality was managed; she opened my eyes to the value it brings to a company. I take her teachings with me every day.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Curiosity, Self-awareness, Humility
The practice of self-awareness is extremely important to being an effective leader. It is not only how you feel internally, but how you impact those around you. People are watching how you react to situations; their behaviors sometimes are a mirror of yours. Company values can quickly be overshadowed by the unconscious culture that is set by the leaders. Ironically, just when I think I am fully self-aware through all the practice I’ve had, I get launched into a new stressful situation and catch myself reacting to my emotions. The work with self-awareness is continuous and requires giving yourself grace.
I cannot stay curious unless I am humble. Curiosity and humility are linked for me. There is no way I would be where I am today if I closed off my brain, assumed I knew everything, stopped asking questions and dominated the conversation. Curiosity leads me to unpack the tough problems and humility further leads me to being open to all possibilities and solutions.
Thank you for that. Let’s jump to the core of our discussion. Can you share with our readers about the innovations that you are bringing to the Aviation and Air Travel industries?
magniX is paving the way in electric propulsion in aerospace! Just as we have embraced electric cars and trucks magniX is taking the next step in electric transportation in the sky. magniX is also leading the industry with a 350kW and 650kW Electric Propulsion Unit (EPU) comprised of a motor and the magniDrive. The EPU has the ability to work with multiple energy sources including batteries and hydrogen.
Which “pain point” are you trying to address by introducing these innovations?
The need to reduce CO2 emissions caused by aircraft. The aerospace industry is behind many industries in the actions to reduce CO2 emissions. magniX is focused on addressing this pain point, and is the first to fly an all-electric commercial airplane, the eBeaver, in 2019 and again a Caravan in 2020. magniX continues to fly and partner with industry leaders ready to make an impact on the world and the way people travel.
Not only does the electric solution reduce air pollution but it also reduces noise pollution. The surrounding community and flying customer can enjoy less noise while the airplane is in taxi or flight. Other pain points are the costs to fly, including maintenance and fuel cost. Maintenance costs can be reduced through fewer moving parts that need replacement over time and oil changes.
How do you envision that this might disrupt the status quo?
With electric flight as an option the focus on travel will shift from large international travel to short haul regional flights. This has the potential to disrupt the way people not only travel but connect with each other and experience their community.
The current status quo is for us travelers to use large international airports, wait in long TSA lines, board an over packed flight into a large jet. With the opportunity of electric powered airplanes there is the ability to quietly maneuver to and from small regional airports and quickly hop on and off those smaller aircraft right into the community.
This will change the way people think about travel. Those small communities now have the opportunity that large jet travel does not allow for, either due to shorter runways, noise ordinance, operational costs, or other factors.
My expertise is in product security, so I’m particularly interested in this question. Recently there were famous cases of hackers breaking into the software running automobiles, for ransomware or for other malicious purposes. Based on your experience, what should aviation companies do to uncover vulnerabilities in the development process to safeguard their vehicles and aircraft?
Great question, aviation companies have the opportunity to learn from these hacks in other industries and take these lessons as opportunities to imbed safeguards against such attacks. It is important in the development process to design into the system the ability to identify, monitor and react to hacks.
To uncover vulnerabilities, I’d Invite the team to attempt a hack, build in requirements for protections, and work with the regulators (FAA, TCCA, EASA) from there.
Fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The Aviation Industry?
- Respect boundaries. In order to respect personal boundaries, you have to first set your boundaries and learn what other people’s boundaries are. It can be easy to get swept into climbing the corporate ladder in the aviation industry. Many companies have been around for decades, have built in processes and established the route to climb the ladder. If you are eager to move up or move ahead, you might get swept into compromising yourself or others to get that next title or level increase. I once witnessed a peer who wanted to elevate himself so much, he took advantage of his teams work ethic, used fear tactics to motivate, and ended up burning his team out in the process of him getting the glory. If you respect boundaries, you will achieve not only a successful career, but you will leave a legacy of people who in return have success of their own.
- Safety Mindset. You will not go very far in the aviation industry if you attempt to take shortcuts that compromise safety. Building a product, whether it be a customer prototype or a certified product, with a safety mindset is imperative to not only your reputation but to the reputation and longevity of the company. Take the time to learn the safety assessment tools and take lessons from the successes and failures of others regarding safety.
- Seek feedback. actively engage and seek feedback on things that work for you and things that can be adjusted. When I was a new manager, I jumped on the opportunity to lead a high visibility project. I got my team and other stakeholders on board and ran into several obstacles. In the end some of the project goals were not achieved. I felt defeated and even for a moment took this failure personally. My boss told me to hold a retrospective with the team. I begrudgingly complied and to my surprise the team gave me direct, honest, and insightful feedback. I found I was the most critical of myself. I learned it is important to recognize where others see your strengths and lean into those! Don’t always focus on fixing your weaknesses.
- Fail fast. Aviation tends to lend itself to long term projects that can last between 2–15 years. This can sound like you have the luxury of time on your hands. This is a huge trap many fall into especially early in their careers. You want to give yourself the opportunity to fail early and fail quickly. You do NOT want to find out near the end of a $70 million project your product had a major failure and you are set back 1 year and $10 million. Build that prototype, test out those crazy theories, push it to the limits, break it; it is important to know your products failure points before the customers or regulators.
- Understand the laws and regulations that guide you (and if you don’t have regulations BUILD them).
In the case for magniX, where we are a new and novel product in the eyes of the FAA, magniX did not have a full gambit of regulations to guide the development. In order to move forward in changing the industry we first supported the creation of those regulations through the special conditions. If you understand the bounds in which you are required to adhere to, the next step is to build your means of compliance and execute. Also, an extra tip for you- be prepared to document! Get your pen and paper ready!
Reference: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/11/19/2020-23434/special-conditions-magnix-usa-inc-magni250-and-magni500-model-engines
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Environmental sustainability in aerospace. Regardless of an all-electric, hybrid, SAF, or other solution I am passionate about innovation in this space. This is an area where the industry can come together for a common objective and drive partnerships and bring in regulations to support the initiatives.
I also want to challenge the aviation industry to thing beyond the end product as “sustainable” but rather think through sustainability through the design, manufacture, and service of the products. Think about the reduction of CO2 emissions caused by all aspects of the aerospace industry, not just by flight.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
https://www.linkedin.com/company/magnix/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mindy-guzman-390b17132/
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.
