Alumni Testimonial: A career in the USA

Frédéric LUCAS, Class of 1986 and World Ambassador for ESTACA, talks about his career and offers some advice for alumni or students who would like to make a career in the USA:

"If your goal is to work abroad and more specifically in the US, I hope my experience will give you an insight among many other options to start your own adventure.

I was born in Paris, grew up in Paris and thought I'd spend my whole life and career in Paris... how wrong I was!

In 1986, I landed my first job after ESTACA in the United Kingdom, as an apprentice at Otis Elevator; a job I got through my network.

After my 6-month apprenticeship, OTIS hired me to work in software engineering, which I didn't really like... So I started looking at job offers in Paris. I found a new job with Torrington, an American bearing manufacturer, as Application Engineer for Europe, based in Paris.

Initially, the plan was for me to return to the UK for product training, but once I'd been hired, Torrington decided instead to send me to the Group's headquarters in Connecticut for 6 months. This was the beginning of my strong interest in working in the USA.

Back in France after my training period and after a few years working for Torrington, I realized that I didn't see any future opportunities to return to the USA with this company. They needed me in Europe and had no intention of sending a Frenchman to the head office in the USA. In the meantime, I had married the American wife I had met during my training in the USA.

Looking for new opportunities, I was hired by Vallourec/ VALTI, a bearing tube plant in Montbard, France. I was able to develop an intensive network within the bearing industry and especially with SKF, my customer during this period.

A few years later, in 1991, five years after graduating from ESTACA, SKF hired me as Head of the Methods and Maintenance office at one of their plants near Dijon.

One day in 1996, the manager of one of SKF's American plants paid us a visit. He was looking for a maintenance and quality manager for a small plant in Connecticut. As it wasn't very popular to hire a Frenchman instead of an American citizen, my employer hired me as a local with a green card.

The fact that my wife is American and we have three young children certainly helped with integration.

That was in 1996 and marked the start of my career in the United States.

In 1998, SKF decided to consolidate its factories, and our small plant in Winsted, Connecticut, was transferred to Altoona. Not wanting to move my family to Pennsylvania, it was time to think about my next step. I decided to see how I could be more "marketable" as an ESTACA engineer in the American market.

So I decided to enroll at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where I began taking courses towards an Executive Master of Sciences in Engineering Management.

After obtaining my Master's degree in 1998, I was promoted within SKF. I landed a job at the SKF group headquarters in Sweden as Business Development Manager for the automotive division. I was an American expat, but in Sweden with my family.

After my expatriate contract, an internal development move led me to become Business Development Manager for one of the Automotive Division's main business units, headquartered in Italy. But I could be based anywhere, as it was a worldwide assignment. So I split my time between traveling the world and working from my home office in the USA. This became my way of working for the rest of my career, and certainly helped me to stay in the USA. I later took out American citizenship in addition to the French nationality that I could keep.

Some ten years later, I went back to school: this time attending The Academy of Competitive Intelligence in Boston. Following this training, I became Director of Competitive Intelligence for the SKF Group, and was still able to manage my business, which was global, by being based in the USA. Later, I became more involved in mergers and acquisitions, particularly in pre-money due diligence work and antitrust issues, assessing market share and forecasting future trends likely to influence SKF's activities.

We bought Kaydon Corporation in 2013, an American company. I managed their product lines and their integration into our slewing ring range from Sumter, South Carolina. I ended up managing the product range worldwide with markets and factories in Europe, the USA and Asia and always from my "home office" in Charleston, South Carolina.

A few tips for building a career in the United States :

• Work for a global company with subsidiaries or headquarters in the US and opportunities to grow within the company
• An American degree helps, especially if you're at the start of your career
• Have a good network of people in charge of units in the USA, both internally and externally
• Be mobile with your family
• Don't hesitate to change jobs every 4 to 5 years if there's continuity and promotion on the way.

I've met and continue to meet young and not-so-young French people in the U.S., in very different fields, in research, at Michelin, St Gobain, l'Air Liquide, Total, etc. engineers or doctors, restaurateurs or bakers, artists, all with their own stories, I think what I see in common is a certain flexibility to the opportunities that present themselves and remaining open to change, while keeping one's sights on the horizon.

To conclude, a quote I like, as we approach the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings on June 6 1944, and which I think applies to career management: it comes from US General, Omar Bradley: "We must navigate by the stars, not the light of every passing ship.

Frederic Lucas

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