Congratulations to Sofia Hart, Dallas SWE’s February Member of the Month! Read more about Sofia below.
Growing up, Sofia always had an interest in science and an infinite curiosity for how things work inside. One time, when she was probably around 9 years old, she had this brilliant idea to open a Voltage Stabilizer box her dad used for the TV. There was a strong sense of curiosity to see how that box worked and why it was needed to be able to watch TV. But once she got the box open to study the inside, there were so many screws of different sizes that it became impossible to put it all back together and she was in big trouble with her dad. From this she learned to be more careful and take a systematic approach when taking things apart so they can be put back together.
Sofia’s engineering journey started in Colombia in a small town called Neiva. Her passion for math, physics, and science drew her to pursue Electrical engineering at the University Surcolombiana. While pursuing an Electrical Engineering degree, her university started a student exchange program with the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK. Her desire to learn and explore other places motivated her to apply and she was selected to the exchange student program. She considers this was one of the toughest challenges of her life so far due to her lack of fluency in the English language at the time and the scarcity of financial support. However, despite these challenges she persevered and through her classes impressed a professor that would later give her a job as a research assistant and support her in returning to the University to continue with her Master’s in Electrical Engineering.
After completing her Master’s degree she joined Halliburton in Duncan, OK. It was an exciting journey as she was given the opportunity to work on electrical design installations for land and offshore oil equipment. Given her love of travel it was perfect that this position provided the opportunity to travel to interesting places such as Denmark, Norway, Argentina, and Louisiana. Two and a half years later, her family had a need to relocate to the Dallas area and she was able to find an opportunity within Halliburton’s Sperry Geobalance Group that was a promotion and based out of the Carrollton office. Sofia’s new role in the team was to dive into the requirements to satisfy CE marking requirements for ATEX and Pressure Equipment directives as well as standards required by the Norwegian Petroleum Industry. Through her work in this role, Sofia was selected to travel to Norway to represent Halliburton in meetings with their skid fabricator to review designs and to explain the specifics of the assembly and certification requirements in order to ensure alignment between Halliburton and the fabricator. She would continue to travel often to work with fabricators on the manufacturing of the other components for their skids.
After working at Halliburton, Sofia took a position with Inogen, a medical device manufacturer building Portable Oxygen Concentrators (POCs). She was a part of the team that designed and manufactured POCs for people with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). She was involved in a variety of projects, ranging from new product development, and redesign activities to improve reliability, to sustaining activities providing support to products in the field. She particularly enjoyed being a part of the medical industry while being able to design and manufacture products that improve people’s quality of life.
Last year, she joined Collins Aerospace as a Senior Electrical Engineer providing production support for electrical circuits, assemblies, and components for the space value streams. Through Collins Sofia was encouraged to join the SWE Dallas Chapter last year. Since joining, she has enjoyed being able to get involved in activities within this wonderful organization such as the book club and joining the Christmas party. Sofia considers herself a very introverted person but has found the comfort and confidence to open up more through the support of the Dallas SWE community. She looks forward to the opportunities ahead to give back through SWE and hopes to positively impact and inspire the younger generation growing up interested in the engineering world.
Outside of work, Sofia enjoys spending time with her kids, traveling whenever possible, loves dancing (especially Zumba and Latin music), and mountain biking with family and friends.
