Correction: This version of the story corrects some details of Michele Holbrook's professional background.
Michele Holbrook is one of an increasingly rare breed: a professional who has been with the same company for most of her career.
Holbrook’s appointment earlier this year as plant manager of Corning’s optical fiber plant in Wilmington marked the latest in her 20-year run with the company. Before taking on the top spot at the Wilmington facility in March, Holbrook served as the plant’s operations manager for nearly two years.
Wilmington is Holbrook’s third stop with New York-based Corning Inc., which makes specialty glass, ceramics, optical fiber and other specialized materials and employs about 1,000 people locally.
On that journey, Holbrook has applied her engineering and managerial know-how at the company’s video products plant in State College, Pennsylvania and at Corning Environmental Technologies in Blacksburg, Virginia.
And over those two decades, Corning has helped shape Holbrook’s professional development.
“Being in different places and exposed to difficult situations has given me a breadth and depth that has helped prepare me for my plant manager role,” she said.
As a manager of disparate elements within the Wilmington plant, Holbrook said her focus is to keep the organization moving forward, helping create what she calls “waves of innovation” as the optical communications division strives to remain competitive, both in terms of quality and the attributes of its sophisticated products.
“We have hundreds of engineers, very high level. They are creating and patenting in a process of continuous improvement and capacity building,” she said.
Since it went online in the late ’70s, the Wilmington plant has gone through six major expansions.
“We solve problems that don’t exist yet,” she said. “Corning makes continuous investments in R&D and keeps building new understanding. We reinvent products and/or new capabilities.”
Corning’s optical fiber targets four basic markets: business, residential, long-haul and submarine networks, Holbrook said.
Business networks handle ever-growing amounts of data. Residential service delivers high-speed Internet, making possible such conveniences as telecommuting, distance learning and video on demand. Long-haul optical fiber networks connect countries and cities around the world. Submarine, or undersea, networks must function in very harsh environments to connect continents.
Each market requires a different kind of optical fiber, Holbrook said, and the Wilmington plant is the only one within the division that produces all four.
“We understand what it is that our customer needs,” she said.
While Corning has three other optical fiber plants in North Carolina – in Hickory, Winston-Salem and Concord – Wilmington is home to the company’s oldest optical fiber plant, which has been spinning out increasingly fine threadlike glass since 1979. Holbrook said the plant has the largest optical fiber capacity in the world and is a self-contained operation.
“We have on-site analytical and microscopy labs. We custom design our own equipment, mostly. We debug it and install it. Our development and engineering teams here do new product and process development,” she said. “Corning controls every aspect of its fiber production, from raw materials to shipment. This focus results in quality systems and complete traceability.”
Learning about the properties and promise of optical fiber is just the latest stage in Holbrook’s professional growth, which began when she graduated in 1993 from Clarkson University with a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering.
Her first job with Corning was as an environmental engineer at the State College plant. Ten years later, she moved to Corning Environmental Technologies in Blacksburg, where she was first a quality manager, then a plant engineering manager and finally a plant operations manager.
She came to Wilmington in July 2012 to take that same position in the local plant and was promoted to the top job.
Holbrook said a big factor in her ability to pursue her career was her husband’s decision to leave his IT job and become a stay-at-home father when the couple’s two girls came along.
“My job is definitely consuming, but I absolutely love what I do; it’s not draining,” she said. “But I make sure I’m home for our family dinner four out of five nights a week, and I take the time every evening to talk to our daughters about their day.”
Holbrook described Corning as a “fun company to work for,” and a company whose values align with her own.
“It invests in employees, develops women in leadership positions and lets me do the things I love to do,” she said. “It also focuses on safety and environmental stewardship.”
Another important Corning value is a commitment to community involvement, Holbrook said.
“We work closely with UNCW and CFCC,” she said, adding that the plant has an active apprenticeship program for Cape Fear Community College students and has endowed two scholarships at the school.
The company is active in supporting STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education in the public schools. It gave an inaugural STEM teaching award to a local teacher last year and is involved with the Holly Shelter Middle School STEM program.
Despite some layoffs in late 2013 – company officials have not said the exact number – at the Wilmington plant in response to a softening in the market, Holbrook sees definite growth ahead.
“The biggest challenge here is making sure the plant remains competitive. We want to deploy next wave of innovation, focus on cost competitiveness and, overall, keep growing the business.”
The wave of the future is in fibers that are “ultra-bendable and ultra-low-loss,” Holbrook said, explaining that today’s optical fibers have much less loss of signal intensity, allowing them to conduct those signals over much longer distances than earlier products.
“My goal for the plant is to make sure that we are not in maintenance mode but in growth, building and advancing,” she said. “I want to leave a legacy: a plant that’s in better mode than when I arrived.”
