396: What It’s Like to Be an Associate Engineer at Harley-Davidson w/ Kailee Frocchi, Harley-Davidson Motor Company [Main T4C episode]

Kailee Frocchi has been an Associate Engineer at Harley-Davidson Motor Company since June 2019. Before that, she held a position in the Engineering IGNITE Co-op at Harley-Davidson for two years. She has also worked as an intern at Kokoro Exhibits and NASA. Kailee graduated from Purdue University in 2018 with a Bachelor’s degree in Multidisciplinary Engineering. WHAT YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE:  What Kailee’s experience with motorcycles was before she got a job at Harley-Davidson (1:51) How Kailee landed a co-op position (and what that means) at Harley-Davidson and how she balanced the co-op with her studies (3:39) What Kailee does as a structural analyst at Harley-Davidson (5:54) Why it’s important for engineers to keep testing components and new motorcycles for the Harley Davidson (8:18) What are some of the tasks under the “analysis umbrella” that ensures that parts are effective for their motorcycles (11:06) Why it’s important to be okay with making mistakes if you’re in this field of work (14:09) Why it’s important to understand statics and dynamics if you’re working in this field of (16:28) How Kailee was able to overcome her struggles in Math during high school and college (18:17) How joining a Robotics club in college helped spur Kailee’s interest in engineering (22:56) What it’s been like for Kailee as a young, female engineer (29:56) Why Kailee believes it’s important to get involved in team project-based clubs in college (32:27) Why Kailee believes it’s important to ask for help if you need it (35:00) Why Kailee wishes she hadn’t been so hard on herself at Purdue (36:24)