Alumna Tiffany Sargent Selected as an IISE Fellow
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UMass Amherst alumna Tiffany Sargent, who graduated from the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) Department in 1992, is among the 2022 Class of Fellows who were honored by the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) during its Annual Conference and Expo on May 21 through 24. Sargent, who has spent more than 28 years working for the Intel Corporation in various positions of increasing responsibility, was chosen with the other IISE Fellows because of their “significant, recognized contributions to industrial engineering.” See IISE Honors & Award Honorees webpage.
Sargent is currently the Senior Principal Engineer and the Chief Technologist for Cloud and Enterprise Sales at Intel. Among many other accomplishments, she is the recipient of Intel's highest award, the Intel Achievement Award, for innovative cyber-security solutions. In June of 2020, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine also did a wonderful profile of Sargent.
After Sargent earned her B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from UMass Amherst in 1992, she attended North Carolina State University to earn her M.S. degree before going on to begin her long and distinguished career at Intel.
In her current position at Intel, Sargent collaborates with her ecosystem partners to develop blended and multi-disciplinary solutions that drive value and advance their business objectives. These solutions include the full spectrum of complex systems across the Internet of Things, Machine to Machine (M2M), Cloud, Enterprise, and Distributed Analytics.
Sargent says her wide-ranging engineering education has enabled her to span technical and business roles at Intel for almost three decades, working both nationally and internationally.
As Sargent told IIEE Women in Engineering Magazine, “I have this whole string of unique and really diverse experiences. I’ve basically been on a rotation and worked in most of the areas across Intel, and I have added a lot of skills to my toolbox.”
Sargent has also spent the past decades volunteering her technical and business expertise with non-profits, academia, and government. Among many other such experiences, she volunteered at the National Science Foundation for two years through an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellowship supported by Intel. She has also served on the AAAS Fellowship Advisory Board and as the WashingtonExec Internet of Things Council Chair.
As another example of Sargent’s volunteer contributions while working for Intel in Arizona, she served on the Board of Directors for Valley Leadership and was recognized by the Junior League both as a 75th Phoenix Anniversary Outstanding Women Honoree and with the Mary Harriman Community Leadership Award.
Meanwhile, she was inducted by the Phoenix Business Journal into its “Forty under 40 Class.”
What inspired Sargent to do so many outstanding volunteer activities? She shared that during her Society of Women Engineers activities at UMass Amherst, an industry guest speaker shared that, beyond your engineering career, “You should always have a personal project that tugs at your heartstrings,” and she literally took it to heart.
As Sargent explained to IIEE Women in Engineering Magazine, “It’s really important to work outside of your area, outside of engineering, to get a more diverse experience of people and to be able to give back…I think what that does is it allows you to grow a broader perspective.”
As part of Sargent’s broader worldview, she has been recognized by Connected World Magazine as one of the “Women of M2M.” In addition, she has been honored by the computer magazine CRN for its “Power 100: Most Powerful Women of the Channel” and in its “100 People You Don’t Know but Should.” North Carolina State also awarded her the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award.
After globetrotting during her career, Sargent now lives with her husband Brian and their Saint Bernards in Great Falls, Virginia. In addition, as she says about what is perhaps her most noteworthy achievement of all, “We are thrilled to have added a baby girl named Morgan to our family in April of 2022.” (August 2022)