Sandra Mandawe Paglieroni is a retired manufacturing engineer and a dedicated Society of Women Engineers senior life member. She exudes vibrant enthusiasm for coaching and mentoring high school students, collegians, and early- to mid-career professionals.

Her career in Silicon Valley spans 30 years in advanced manufacturing, program management, and quality assurance of telecommunication products for startups, medium-sized companies, and large corporations. The products have involved small optical components, microwave digital radio products, video distribution systems, and indoor and outdoor distributed antenna systems. Her roles included quality engineer, senior manufacturing engineer, program manager, quality manager, director of operations, and director of new product introduction. In 1990, she earned certification in production control and inventory management from the American Production and Inventory Control Society.

Mandawe Paglieroni was employed by Avantek Inc., Raynet Inc., Wavesplitter Technologies Inc., LGC Wireless, and CommScope, where she worked as a quality engineer until her retirement. At each company, she established herself as a subject matter expert in the areas of ISO9001, ISO14000, and TL9000 standards; manufacturing execution systems; and domestic and international factory transitions. She accomplished this while managing quality issues, driving continuous improvements, and enduring multiple mergers and acquisitions. She has expertise in manufacturing operations, product release cycles, supply chain management, and quality assurance.

Mandawe Paglieroni’s SWE involvement spans more than four decades, beginning as a student member in 1980 and upgrading to professional member in the Santa Clara Valley Section upon graduation. She is currently a member of the Mt. Diablo Section in northern California. She influences her sections and committees with permanent improvements in support of SWE’s mission, making many key contributions at the Society, region, and local levels. Those contributions include leading the revitalization of the Mt. Diablo Section, steering the fiscal year 2002-2003 student activities committee in defining and rolling out the initial approved program that has evolved today as the SWE Collegiate Affiliate groups program, and serving on a board task force from FY03-FY05 that recommended the creation of the collegiate director position on the SWE Board of Directors.

Throughout her professional career, Mandawe Paglieroni was pivotal in raising awareness of SWE’s mission with her management teams and successfully mentoring countless women engineers. She currently serves on the WE Local advisory board and is active in the Late Career and Retiree affinity group.

Mandawe Paglieroni holds a B.S. in manufacturing engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. She volunteers her time and talents to knitting for a local prayer shawl ministry group and singing in a competitive women’s a capella barbershop chorus and her church choir.

She looks forward to traveling the world with her husband, getting back to ballroom dancing, and continuing to encourage girls and young women to consider careers in engineering.