I started my post-UM career as an assistant professor at Howard University where I received the NSF CAREER award and started a laboratory for fiber-optic lasers and amplifiers. I also performed time-resolved hard x-ray experiments at the MHATT-CAT beamlines at the Advanced Photon Source. To balance a two-body career, I left Howard to join the Science and Technology Division at Corning Incorporated. There I continued my fiber-optic research though the inflation of the telecom industrial bubble and extended Corning’s fiber-optic output power capabilities from mW to kW after the bubble burst. I also spent time in a global customer-facing technology role to help launch Gorilla glass— where I participated in the product’s revenue growth from $20 million to >$1B. Most recently, I was appointed the director for Corning’s West Coast Technology Center in Silicon Valley.