Mentorship and Digital Engineering Go Hand in Hand

By Tracy Staedter

It was a daunting endeavor. A variety of subsystems that were traditionally worked on independently had to be moved into one ecosystem, where changes to one subsystem would interact and influence others in real time. Casey Elliott had been hired to manage that process, and put digital engineering into practice. Digital engineering is exploring technology and processes that would pull standalone tools and software used by the company's technical experts, designers and program managers into a cohesive digital environment.

She couldn't wait to roll up her sleeves.

"Doing it this new way was very appealing to me," says Elliott. With 12 years of experience as an engineer, she was up for the challenge. But she'd never worked in a model-based, fully digital system. After some initial training and with mentorship support from her boss, Kerron Duncan (who at the time was the Modeling, Simulations and Analysis manager), Elliott helped her team accomplish their goals and eventually stepped into a leadership role.