Pooja Parupalli might be a good example of the old saying, “Not all who wander are lost.”
It took her a few different roles within Barry-Wehmiller to find the best fit for her gifts and talents, but opportunities to grow and thrive kept presenting themselves.
Pooja is currently a Senior Strategic Marketing Research Analyst for BW Packaging, Barry-Wehmiller’s group of companies who provide comprehensive packaging machinery and solutions, including flexible packaging systems, filling and closing systems for rigid containers, labeling, end-of-line solutions and complete packaging line integration.
Over the course of her career at Barry-Wehmiller, Pooja has worked for our Design Group engineering consulting company and on the Corporate People Team. And with each successive role, she found ways to deepen her knowledge and enhance her skills.
“I’ve never not found an opportunity, or a place to move, or another leader to learn from here,” Pooja said. “And I think that's the journey that was available and that you could carve out -- as part of Truly Human Leadership -- that you can raise your voice, say you're interested in something that might not even sound like it's relevant to your role, but you can still learn from it. I've heard a lot of people say that here.”
Pooja’s journey brought her to BW Packaging where she supports product line leaders and strategic marketing leaders in their respective packaging businesses by combining their insights with market intelligence to help determine their focus. The businesses use that information to ensure their innovation, commercial, and operational strategies are all aligned.
“We are targeting new markets, but we want to make sure they're growing markets,” Pooja said. “We want to make sure that we have the right requirements that we think that we need both with our current customers, but maybe even future customers and trends that that are changing so quickly. So, just try to keep up with that, make sure we get the best intelligence out to our leaders so that way when we are innovating and developing new products, or even supporting new things, supporting current customers, that we are doing it with the best information that we can.”
Working as part of BW Packaging has made Pooja more cognizant of the impact Barry-Wehmiller’s companies have on everyday life, including sustainability. And for her, that aligns with Barry-Wehmiller’s mission to build a better world and BW Packaging's motto of "People who care. Solutions that perform."
“You have all these companies out there saying that they want to be sustainable,” Pooja said. “They made all these promises, but it's our equipment that allows them to actually fulfill those promises.
“I think packaging is tied to globalization. To be able to facilitate that, something has to get from one spot to another, and you can't do that without a package. We're not just carrying cans in our hands and carrying that from one country to another. And so, as we think about the world, the opportunity and the excitement for making it more sustainable, for actually creating a better world, is really there in packaging.”
One of Pooja’s first visits to a BW Packaging facility was to BW Flexible Systems in Duncan, South Carolina. BW Flexible Systems produces packaging systems that bag or wrap food or non-food products. In terms of food products, their markets include bakery, confectionery snack foods, frozen foods, fresh produce, cheese and many more items.
“We spent an entire day talking about cheese,” Pooja said. “And just the different ways you can wrap cheese and shred cheese. It was wild. And it was really, really fascinating to learn about it from just, it's not even just wrapping it or packaging it, but then it has to be sanitary, then it has to be sustainable. All these different things that you didn't really think about, I guess, but they felt really, really tangible. And it's hard really not to go around places and just notice packaging anymore.”
The foundational skills Pooja learned early in her Barry-Wehmiller career still serve her in her current role. In particular, listening skills, which are taught within the internal Barry-Wehmiller University, and how they not only impact relationships within the company, but with our customers as well, and is ultimately another part of how we try to build a better world.
“We talk so much about listening,” Pooja said. “Whether it's helping those in the manufacturing plant get a better process, or a safer process so that they can better use the equipment that we make, then getting (their product) out to the people. I think that's one side of it. And the other side of it is just the type of service of just trying to make the world better. We do want to do what's the right thing. We do want to do the best thing.”
Better Work. Better World. is a video series designed to shine a
light on team members throughout the global Barry-Wehmiller
organization. Watch the video through the link above to hear more.