Lauren Baker
Director, New Product Development & Product Planning
Emerson
New product development ensures that our designs leverage our best technology offerings, can be manufactured efficiently in our facilities, and are marketable to our customers. I work with cross-functional teams to solve problems to enhance speed and quality to market our products and solutions – it’s energizing!
Since joining Emerson, Lauren’s leadership has proven invaluable to a number of key initiatives within the company. Lauren currently leads a product development team in reducing time-to-market for high-efficiency motors. Leading to launch, she works cross-functionally to plan for production volumes, identify tooling and capital needed, anticipate supply chain issues, and a host of other production-ready issues.
In 2013, Lauren launched Engineers in Leadership, a rotational program at Emerson for undergraduate engineers with the goal of building a diverse pipeline of female and minority talent. In the first two years of the program, she hired 29 students, of which 50 percent are women and 25 percent are minorities. Engineers in Leadership is now ranked as a top rotational program, offering a unique opportunity to approximately 12 engineers from various backgrounds into the organization each year.
Lauren is also a founding member and the current chair of Emerson’s Women in STEM Employee Resource Group (ERG), which includes over 4,000 members across 85 different Emerson locations. In addition, Lauren serves on the board of Girls Incorporated of St. Louis (Girls Inc.), a non-profit serving over 7,000 girls in the community with a special focus on STEM education in summer and after-school programs. As co-chair for the 2018 “Strong, Smart and Bold Luncheon,” Lauren helped Girls Inc. achieve its largest attendance to date, in addition to raising over $200,000.
Through her involvement with Big Brothers Big Sisters, Lauren has made a difference in the life of a very special girl named La’Kyhal. Since 2012, she has watched La’Kyhal grow from a bubbly and curious five-year-old to a mature and confident 13-year-old with big dreams and questions about the future. To this day, La’Kyhal and Lauren still meet regularly to share stories and engage in new experiences. It is Lauren’s hope that, through their relationship, La’Kyhal has gained deeper confidence in what she can accomplish.
