What does an Entegris employee look like? What do they do all day, and what do they like about their jobs? This is part of a series that will take a deep dive into a variety of careers at Entegris. We’ll highlight several employees and their valuable contribution to the organization. What do they do, how are they succeeding, and why do they think Entegris is a great place to work?
What was your background prior to joining Entegris?
Before joining Entegris, I received a Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Washington in Seattle, WA, and was hired at Intel as a process engineer. Following my stint at Intel, I worked at a company called Qorvo. I started as an engineer, and then moved into materials quality where I helped manage their suppliers from a technical requirements perspective.
After a few years at Qorvo, I was contacted by a friend who’d started working at a company called CMC Materials. They made slurries and pads for polishing wafers as part of the chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) process, and they needed someone to manage their suppliers. CMC was acquired by Entegris about three years after I joined.
Can you give us an overview of your current role in sustainability?
As of January this year, I started the role of Director, Sustainability in our Environmental, Health, Safety, and Sustainability (EHSS) group. I have a small team with two people in the U.S. and one in Asia, who is starting in June. This role partners with all the Entegris sites, as well as other functions, to achieve our sustainability goals in greenhouse gas emissions, water, and waste. In addition, we are responsible for answering customer requests related to sustainability and supporting surveys from sustainability organizations. Our team also develops and promotes best practices for sustainability, tracks sustainability data, and partners with the engineering, R&D, and CTO teams on sustainability innovation, with a focus on circularity.
How does the circular economy work with Entegris products?
One of our innovation goals in our Corporate Social Responsibility framework is to establish an end-of-use, circular economy strategy for major product platforms by 2030. We call this “Project Lavoisier”. We want to help our customers pursue recycling and refurbishment, where possible, instead of throwing products into landfills. To me, the circular economy is really interesting because it pushed the boundaries of historical practices and what people have considered even possible.
I envision a future where we have created the infrastructure and technology to reuse or recycle most products, massively reducing our waste. Every day there are more products that are becoming circular like clothes, paper, plastic, and refurbished equipment. Even in our industry, the most advanced chip manufacturers are working to recycle solvents and other chemicals and pushing their suppliers for circular materials and consumables. Entegris is already well on this journey as many of our products are reused, such as our deposition material canisters and our drums. In addition, our products also have very long life, with our filters enabling some of the chemical recycling mentioned previously. As part of this project, we are working on our most difficult products to recycle such as Chemical Mechanical Planarization (CMP) pads and liquid filters.
You previously worked in procurement, how will the need for sustainable sourcing fit with the need for new materials in the semiconductor industry?
Sustainable sourcing is vital to the continued growth of the semiconductor industry. That’s because there are a finite number of materials in the world, and semiconductors often rely on rare elements. In other words, without sustainable procurement and reuse, the semiconductor industry might use up the easily available supply of certain materials. This would force the industry to rely on expensive and ecologically unsound extraction processes. By building a circular economy, we can decouple semiconductor growth from resource usage.
You presented a poster at the Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference (ASMC) last year, can you tell us about it?
About three years ago, the vice president of CMC materials was part of the Women in Semiconductors committee. She passed her seat to me, and I joined the organization. It’s been a really interesting journey, and I’ve enjoyed talking to other women in the industry about their experiences and challenges.
At the same time, I have been tasked with helping to recruit interns for Entegris. A lot of the students have been asking about sustainability roles and I became intrigued by this. I started doing more research and partnered with two other women engineers to find out more about the topic.
Our collaboration resulted in a workforce development paper on attracting the next generation of semiconductor talent. What we discovered is that sustainability is important for younger employees, and especially for women. We also discovered that the women we surveyed are attracted to jobs and roles that have community goals – but that STEM jobs aren’t viewed in that manner. That means organizations without corporate social responsibility goals may be excluding some valuable talent.
How did people react to your presentation?
People liked it! I think that the most interesting responses I got were from my international colleagues, because there’s such a strong cultural element involved in reaching out to younger employees. I learned how the company culture and the broader economy tend to impact the workforce in Taiwan, Japan, and Europe. A lot of people were interested in learning more about the interactions between sustainability and workforce development.
How is Entegris addressing the challenges laid out in your poster?
We are definitely striving to attract the best talent, and we’re also on a great sustainability journey. We have aggressive yet achievable goals and enthusiastic commitment from leadership, which helps mitigate the challenge. Entegris is taking many of the right steps.
Finally, what do you like most about working at Entegris?
The commitment to sustainability as well as the community. I’m very interested in problem solving as an engineer, but I’m also very interested in community as a person. I found out Entegris has great communities and interesting problems to solve, both of which help fuel me in my role.
Thanks to Marie for sharing this great information about her role at Entegris. Learn more about Entegris careers!