Where are they now? - Masimo Masini
Masimo Masini, Saturday MBA – VP Operations Whitcraft Aerospace
In 2011, I was admitted into the Saturday MBA program at CSULB’s College of Business. The Saturday MBA was the best option on the market. It was close to home, affordable, and the Saturday schedule was convenient and did not interfere with my busy work or events schedule. I had a family with two young children and this meant a bit of sacrifice for them, but I preferred this option to attending classes late at night after many hours of work. A full immersive learning experience was very important to me and I wanted to be fully awake and able to focus on my education. I have an Engineering degree from Italy, so learning about the educational systems in U.S. was also of paramount importance to me.
The second reason why I decided to complete an MBA in my 40s, with an already successful career, was twofold. First, most of my peers had a Master degree and I felt, in meeting and talking with them, I was missing something and my skills were lacking. Second, I wanted to venture into teaching. I started my professional career teaching at a high school for a few months and I enjoyed sharing my knowledge with my students and coaching them. But I was missing the field experience and it was too big of a gap to continuing teaching. So, I left teaching but promised myself I would be back once I had more stories to share with my students on what they should and shouldn’t do. Nothing written in any book, other than in the book of life.
Today, I have two jobs. My hobby job as an adjunct MBA Professor at CSULB COB for the OMBA and SMBA, and my day job as Vice President of Operations for a large Aerospace Company manufacturing engineering components for commercial and military aircraft for Boeing and Airbus. The division I run has a team of over 150 employees, 3 business units and over 60-million-dollar annual revenue.
COVID-19 has had a major impact on my business and on my team. We faced 3 very difficult challenges, all at the same time: keeping our families safe, keeping our employees safe and realigning the business to new customer needs. The aerospace industry has been hit very hard by a lack of passengers and the need for new airplanes has dropped dramatically week after week.
We are an essential business as we provide military components to engine’s OEM so we had uninterrupted business hours during the heaviest spikes while facing a lack of resources like cleaning supplies and masks. We implemented very stringent safety protocols, including daily temperature checks and monitoring the cleanliness of our employee’s workstation at the end of each shift.
At the same time, due to business loss and social distancing we had to furlough and lay off about 40% of our employees in the last 3 months. We have been able to continue to produce 100% on-time deliveries, of all our military components, despite all of the challenges, with no breaches in our protocol. We had employees who tested positive or were sick for other reasons and were kept at home until negative results authorized them to come back to work. One of the biggest threats was running out of cash as all our customers stopped receiving our parts, our suppliers demanded to be paid and we had to work through several negotiations to be able to stay financially heathy and solid for the rest of the year.
Undoubtedly, the MBA from Long Beach taught me many lessons, one of the most important is how to work in a team. I could have never been successful in transitioning my business during these hard times without having a great team supporting me and working together.
Negotiating with customers and suppliers to get into a win-win solution to maintain both of our interest and prepare for the future was also a critical lesson that set CSULB apart from any other school. Last but not least, the knowledge I gained from the Finance courses helped me to face the challenge of restructuring our cost baseline to continue building a profitable business.
Back to August 2020 Newsletter
