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UTC Power’s Arianna Kalian heads up the fuel cell area
It’s timely and appropriate to combine areas, she says. “We need to make certain we’re integrating engineering, product design, cost and manufacturing”
 Arianna Kalian grew up a car enthusiast and went on to spend nineteen years of her ME career at General Motors (GM), working with the company’s latest vehicles.
Then two years ago she changed lanes and moved into the energy industry at UTC Power (South Windsor, CT), a United Technologies company that develops and produces fuel cells to generate clean power for buildings, transit buses and cars.
UTC Power is the smallest of United Technologies’ many businesses. Of its total 600 employees, 400 are in the engineering/manufacturing organization. Kalian is its VP. Her group handles the fundamentals of developing and applying the technology to build both prototypes and commercial products.
Perfect fit
Kalian considers her new job a perfect fit, since she had both engineering and manufacturing experience at GM. When she joined UTC Power she headed up just the engineering organization, but a company reorganization added manufacturing to her responsibilities.
“It was a challenge, but it’s very timely and appropriate,” she says. “As UTC Power is building a foundation for a commercial enterprise, we need to make certain we’re integrating engineering, product design, cost and manufacturing.”
Kalian calls her weekly routine “dynamic.” In addition to keeping her finger on the pulse of the production floor, she spends a lot of time in meetings, balancing tactical and strategic topics. She also spends time in one-on-one mentoring with people in her organization.
“I most enjoy the personal interaction with peers and members of my team to solve issues that directly impact our business success. We have a great focus on improving quality and reducing product cost.”
High expectations
As a leader she sets high expectations: “If we don’t aim high, some other company will be more successful.”
UTC Power is small enough to have an “entrepreneurial feel” about it, she says, so “Self-starters are very important here. We have many challenges ahead, like improving the performance of the product, decreasing the cost, enhancing new features and creating new technology advances.”
Kalian is a member of the Society of Women Engineers. She interfaces with the group and attends local events with recruiting in mind. “I also like to keep the diversity message in front of the UTC Power leadership team,” she adds.
Kalian grew up in New York City’s borough of Manhattan. She went to a math and science-focused high school which led her to engineering; she received her 1988 BSME from New York City’s Cooper Union. “With my interest in cars, ME seemed the most natural fit of all the engineering disciplines,” she says.
Then she aced a one-year MSME program at Columbia University (New York, NY), followed
by an MS in management of technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY).
Soaring at GM
In school Kalian did internships with GM in Michigan, and when she graduated she went there
to work. Her first job was in an advanced body design and structures group. Then she volunteered for a team designing and developing the first electric vehicle body structure.
“We had a clean sheet of paper and literally had to start with structural concepts for an all-aluminum design,” she says. She worked on that team from 1990 to 1997 as product engineer, manufacturing engineer, production supervisor and area manager for building EV1, the electric vehicle.
As area manager, “I had the chance to leverage the skills of all the team members,” she says. “I combined their capabilities and leveraged their strengths and helped them excel. It was very enjoyable.”
Working overseas
At the end of 1997 Kalian was offered an opportunity to go to Germany in a role combining product and manufacturing engineering. An advanced team in Germany was working on an all-aluminum body, and she would help transfer the technology developed in North America.
She worked in Germany for a year and enjoyed the experience. “I had supportive colleagues,” she says. “Everyone spoke English, but when I went to meetings I worked hard at participating in German if I could.”
Into steel
Kalian returned to the States at the beginning of 1999 and GM put her to work managing a body structures group for a new steel product. She worked on that for a couple of years and then was promoted to director of vehicle architecture and design check. This post, she explains, combined styling with design engineering requirements.
From 2002 to 2006 Kalian was vehicle line director for the Buick Lucerne and Cadillac DTS, both designed for ‘06 launch. “I led a multi-functional product development team that included engineering, manufacturing, finance and marketing,” she explains. “We started off working with the design studio on vehicle concepts, then progressed through the normal vehicle development process to production.”
Directing continuous improvement
In her last GM assignment she was director of continuous improvement engineering, responsible for decreasing product cost and improving quality. Her last two jobs, she notes, represented matrixed leadership roles.
“My product development group was a team of about 350 people but they didn’t work for me; they worked for the functional organizations. In the last role I had a group of seven managers reporting to me directly, and roughly 400 engineers were impacted by what we were trying to accomplish in cost reduction and quality improvement.”
UTC: a cultural change
In 2008 she was recruited by UTC Power. She liked the idea of “leading a cultural change from the R&D business to a commercial enterprise,” and is deeply immersed in her new work.
At this point in her interesting career Kalian has good advice to give. “Don’t try to plan the details of your career. Be open to new opportunities; learn as much as you can; contribute as much as you can; and welcome challenging things you’ve never done before. I’ve been fortunate to have opportunities and people who didn’t stop me.”
In her spare time Kalian plays the oboe, the English horn and oboe d’amore, an uncommon lower-pitched instrument. She also studies architectural history, and once a year she takes a hiking trip. She’s been to England and Italy and once enjoyed a week of hiking in New Zealand.
D/C
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