Global Technology & Quality
Employee Perspectives

Senior Scientist, 
Microbiology and Food Safety

For me, the most important thing about a job is that it provides personal satisfaction. At the end of each day, I want to feel that I've accomplished something significant. That's how I feel working at Kraft Foods.

After I got my M.S. in Microbiology, I went into medical research for four years. It was interesting work, but I wanted to get into an area where I could get more immediate satisfaction - where I could quickly see the results of my work. That's when I decided to get a Ph.D. in Food Science at Cornell. The food industry is very exciting and dynamic. I'm glad I made the switch.

My responsibility in Microbiology and Food Safety is to assess the safety of new products and reformulated products. I work with the Cheese and Meals divisions, so I work on a wide variety of products. We work in cross-functional teams composed of people from other areas such as Product Development, Physical Chemistry, Quality Assurance, Nutrition, and Manufacturing. These cross-functional teams are at the heart of everything we do.

Variety keeps my job interesting. Because we're a research function, we serve as a resource for the rest of the company. For example, we might get a call from one of our plants asking why a product is behaving differently on the production line. Or our sales force might ask us to work with their customers to explain why a certain product is able to be displayed without refrigeration. We're often called on to do presentations to the other Kraft Foods departments to explain the properties of different products. I never know what my day is going to be like!