Angel McMullen-Gunn's last work trip to Singapore was, in a way, born out of an act of rebellion.
She grew up in Seward County as the daughter of a welder who cursed engineers. That made her curious and planted the seed. Decades later, she's been named the recipient of the Global Leadership Award given by the Society of Women Engineers.
McMullen-Gunn works as the associate director of quality assurance at Collins Aerospace in York. She started at the company's Rockford, Illinois, site as an intern after graduating from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. She didn't know about the York location until after she got married back in Nebraska while still working in Illinois. That was in 2005 and she's worked her way up the company ladder from manufacturing, engineering and operations before quality assurance.
“I didn't want to move away from Nebraska,” she said. “That's been one of the things I've focused on throughout my career was that a larger company wants you to move and I said 'no, I like it here.'”
That doesn't mean that she's stationary, though.
In 2018 she traveled 37 weeks out of the year. Her job requires global responsibilities, so she's traveled to places like Singapore, Indonesia, Brazil and Puerto Rico. She remembered that first trip to Singapore that left her in awe through technology and culture.
“It's a small island half the size of Seward County with five million people living there,” she said. “Everything is straight up. The technology of managing the population flow really intrigued me.”
In her travels she's also seen extreme examples of wealth inequality. In Brazil she traveled with an armed guard. Employees were given free lunch as an incentive. She said she wasn't prepared for the first trip to Bandung, Indonesia, home to both the multi-million-dollar aerospace facility and residents living in huts with dirt floors.
And even with all that travel and working in aviation she's still taken aback at an airplane flying for 18 hours straight.
McMullen-Gunn hasn't traveled since February this year. Her goal is for her children and family to travel with her more, but her husband's only joined her for a trip to Puerto Rico and the kids have only been as far as Minneapolis.
She hopes she can help be a role model to young women through her job. She was the only female engineer for 10 years but that's not the case anymore. She's asked her children what did they learn on a test instead of what they were graded. Because, to her, learning and dealing with failures is engineering.
“That's what engineering's about because if you did it right the first time then there would be no engineers,” she said. “I'm trying to share that so I'm active with Girl Scouts here, being a troop leader.”
She's worked on badges for engineering and robotics. She also applied for a $5,000 grant that the troop is excited about.
That's when she's not traveling the world for Collins, overseeing the quality of interior air systems, jet fuel systems, lavatories, wastewater and other interior components on planes. As exciting as those trips have been, she's always happy to return home. She estimated she's missed about 15 Husker football games since 1997. One time she flew into Lincoln from Singapore at 11 a.m. and took a cab to Memorial Stadium. And yes, staff at the Lincoln airport have held gates for her. That's all part of her small-town origins that no international trip can duplicate.
