By Sam Sayre
With trial and error, I’ve gone from graphic design, to veterinary school, to now being a Quality Assurance Lead at Aspiritech. But you don’t always have to compromise passion for work.
I was diagnosed with autism later in life at twenty-two, and my mom came across a flyer for a presentation at a local library that was meant to help people on the spectrum improve their interviewing skills and their work etiquette. The program was being run by a former employee of Aspiritech and mentioned that the company was looking to employ more female QA Testers. He asked me if I wanted to apply for a QA Analyst role and the rest is history.
For the first two years, I worked as a Quality Analyst on projects for Bose and Astellas. Then I was asked if I wanted to move up to the role of QA Lead. I was nervous at first; I had never been a manager before. But I felt comfortable moving up as I knew that if I was struggling with something, there would be someone willing to help me figure it out. This is different from past work experiences, where it was hard to communicate issues.
One of Aspiritech’s clients is IDEXX, a company that is dedicated to enhancing the health and well-being of pets, people, and livestock. IDEXX is a long-time client of Aspiritech, and they have been a strong champion for our work. I love it when they refer to Aspiritech as part of their Quality Assurance team. We have a dedicated Slack channel with them (a business communication platform). It serves as a seamless way we can ask questions and have new projects explained to us. These days many of us are working remotely. We are very much a part of their Development and Quality Assurance team even though their headquarters are in Maine, about a thousand miles away from Chicago.
Our main work with IDEXX includes running software testing and hardware testing on machinery such as blood analyzers and urine analyzers and verifying their various communication platforms. While I’ve left the veterinary space, it’s rewarding to now be a QA lead with IDEXX as they support the health of animals. As a dog, cat, and fish mom, it’s rewarding to ensure that IDEXX’s equipment runs smoothly which in turn helps my pets if I have to take them to a veterinarian.
To a company that is considering using Aspiritech, I say: give us a try. You’ll be surprised.
