Melissa Tata served as the SWE FY12 President.
Melissa Tata is a 12-year Dell veteran and currently serves as the engineering and supply chain program management director. In this role, she is responsible for streamlining demand and supply planning functions end-to-end, integrating key acquisitions, and facilitating change management and sustainable processes to instill better customer awareness in programs and designs. Melissa is also driving business case development, establishing program governance, and creating a staff development plan to enhance expertise and retention in Dell’s engineering operations team.
Before this role, Melissa was the executive assistant to the president of the Consumer, Small & Medium business unit at Dell. She was responsible for defining strategy implementation plans, establishing sustainable business management systems and governance processes, leading communication of priorities across the organization, and driving executive alignment and best of breed sharing.
During her six years of management experience, Melissa led teams from eight to 82 and was recognized for generating creative solutions, motivating others, establishing new processes, and leading Six Sigma Green and Black Belt projects totaling over $30M in annual savings. Melissa has had the honor of participating in three intense leadership and diversity training programs through Dell, SWE, and the Texas Women’s Leadership Power Pipeline. Melissa held in marketing operations in the various senior manager roles she was responsible for almost $1B in revenue. Melissa developed partner alliance agreements, grew business volume, enhanced forecasting, and augmented profitability. In her manufacturing operations senior manager roles, Melissa launched controls for inventory management across 10 facilities, initiated an engineering development program, supported global best practice sharing, and led the installation of all equipment and labor standards for all the headcount to support a factory with product volumes of over 25k/day.
As a SWE life member and 16-year veteran, Melissa appreciates that SWE has enabled her to demonstrate passion, leadership, integrity, and teamwork to drive member engagement. Melissa served four years on the SWE Board of Directors as Director of External Initiatives and as speaker of the Council of Representatives. Before that, she served as Gulf Coast Region (C) Governor and Deputy Director. She served as the president for the Southwest Texas section for two terms and served as vice president. As a collegiate, Melissa served as president of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) Section and Region F Newsletter Editor. She is the recipient of the SWE 2005 Distinguished New Engineer Award.
Melissa studied mechanical engineering with an M.S. from MIT and B.S. from RPI. Melissa enjoys dancing, swimming, and reading. She also treasures time with her daughter and recently relocated from Dell’s headquarters in Texas to Massachusetts.
