Upon Graduating Binghamton University with a BS in Bioengineering in 2012, Ariel Poser was planning to accept an offer from a biomedical company, so she almost didn’t interview with PepsiCo. But she squeezed in one more appointment—and the 23-year-old is glad she did. Poser now works as an R&D associate engineer with PepsiCo’s Equipment Development group in Valhalla, which drives new technology development, systems engineering, and commercialization for vending, cooling, and dispensing PepsiCo products globally.
Poser is making a name for herself at the global soft-drink conglomerate, thanks to something else she almost didn’t do. Her corporate e-learning course idea (“Working Across Groups,” based on understanding how various PepsiCo groups collaborate to bring projects to market)—submitted at the last minute because, she thought, “Who is going to listen to me?”—was selected as the winner of PepsiCo Global R&D University’s Chart Your Course competition, beating out 150 employee entries from more than 20 R&D locations in 13 different countries. As a result, Poser is working closely with the PepsiCo Global Learning team to develop this course as well as other content, and she has built a Global Equipment Development portal that will help raise awareness about her team within PepsiCo.
When not working on these projects or her 9-to-5 assignments, like overseeing a new system implemented to track her group’s many equipment-development documents and creating specification templates, Poser is also a member of the Leadership Council for the PepsiCo Employee Resource Group for Young Professionals.
Poser is passionate about working cross-functionally. “I get out from behind my desk and try to collaborate with as many people as I can,” she says. “Everyone you meet could be someone you’ll want to work with in the future.”
