Moving Up in 3D

When you go looking for stories of women in manufacturing, you quickly realize two things: 1. there are women in every role and every sector shattering boundaries and paving the way for the next generation, and 2. many of these women found manufacturing by chance — and thank goodness they did. Here’s to serendipity and shattering glass ceilings. Let’s meet one of the women who are helping to push additive manufacturing (AM) forward.

Boots on the Shop Floor

Haleyanne Freedman, Additive Manufacturing Consultant, Chicago, Illinois
There was a spark the minute her boots hit the shop floor. “I finally felt like I knew where I belonged,” recalls Haleyanne Freedman, an additive manufacturing consultant, of the first time she put on work boots and ventured into a manufacturing facility. A native of California, Freedman took a very unconventional route into manufacturing. She was majoring in nutrition when she had to get a full-time job to support herself. She fell into a position making medical optical lenses. She didn’t love having doctors as customers, but she enjoyed the manufacturing aspect. 

“I had more power tools than any one person should own,” Freedman says. “I was always very creative, always making things.” When friends encouraged her to focus on industrial manufacturing, she went to an interview with a machine tool importer. The interview wasn’t the best, but the outcome was excellent.

During the interview, the manager spoke frankly about the company’s adoption of AM equipment. “They had purchased these 3D printers, and he wanted nothing to do with them,” Freedman recalls. “He told me that if I could figure out how to run this new 3D printing department, then I could calculate the ROI and tell him what to pay me.”

With that inauspicious start, Freedman got to work. She spent the first month taking the printers apart and putting them back together. It was then that she finally stepped onto that first shop floor and felt at home. She ended up getting recruited to found and run the 3D printing division of the largest plastics distribution company in North America for just under five years before seeking out a new challenge at a startup and then venturing out as an independent AM consultant.

“My life really began when I started working in manufacturing,” she concludes. “I immediately saw all these different paths — all these incredible opportunities I never knew existed.”

Learn more about women working in AM by reading the full article at gbm.media/AMT-MovingUp.