Tracy Cai

Make the impossible possible!

Tracy Cai describes her journey to becoming a successful senior engineer – through sheer determination and being “crazy about learning”.

Now leading a team of six industrial engineers at the Smiths Suzhou team in China, Senior Industrial Engineer Tracy Cai has worked for Smiths Interconnect since 2006. She is proud of her achievements and the years of hard work and study that led her to this point.

“I was born in the country, in a remote part of China and I have to be honest, before college, I knew nothing about engineering.”

After passing her college entrance exam, Tracy was drawn to the field of Automation and spent four years on a theoretical course. After completion, instead of moving into automation, she began her first job on the production floor as an Assistant Industrial Engineer.

“I was very excited about this offer, but I had to learn a lot from scratch – there was so much I didn’t know.”

Tracy however, was determined to follow this career path.

She says with a lot of hard work and from “being crazy about learning” she qualified as an Industrial Engineer a year later.

“I always believe I can do a good job only given a chance. If I am faced with a challenge, I like to turn the situation around so it drives me to grow.”  

She also believes in the power of support from others – from family and from work colleagues.

“My lovely son and my husband always give me strong support and encouragements. I also have to thank my colleagues for their support over the years. They taught me so much, helped me to grow and become the person I am today.”

“I will not stop learning – this is how I got to where I am today. With learning we can achieve anything – making the impossible possible!”