Engineering a path with impact

Despite her aptitude for math and science, Ashley Richmond hadn’t considered engineering as a career path until her senior year of high school, when a teacher encouraged her to pursue it. “Having someone say, ‘I see this in your future’ was a formative experience for me,” she said.

In college, Ashley discovered that engineering required a vast range of skills and knowledge. “Engineering is where you apply every skill you’ve learned,” she said. “You might excel in calculus or statistics, but solving real problems requires bringing it all together.”

At TI, engineers like Ashley tackle some of today’s most pressing technology challenges from robotics to automotive while shaping their own paths and making real-world impacts.

Persevering as a problem-solver

At the beginning of her career at TI, Ashley’s role in one of the Dallas wafer fabs presented opportunities to tackle complex problems. “I learned that you need to persevere to be a problem-solver,” she said. “You can’t get to the answer if you haven’t tried and, at times, failed.”

Discovering how TI technology helps people gave Ashley a deeper appreciation for the impact of her work. “Some of our chips, for example, go into hospital ventilators,” she said. “We’re working on essential technology that people’s lives depend on.”

Now a manufacturing program manager and a member of Tech Ladder, TI's prestigious technical career path, Ashley emphasizes the importance of a mentor in her early days at TI. “Even with a thousand things going on, she would stop and help me,” she said. “I immediately decided that I would be a mentor to the next new employee.”

Ashley has kept that promise, mentoring new hires and interns through groups such as the Black Employee Network. She believes peer support is essential for turning classroom knowledge into practical engineering intuition. “A lot of people come out of college, and they don’t yet know how to use what they’ve learned,” she said. “Having colleagues and mentors who help you assess problems and apply knowledge in real time is crucial.”

Creating life-changing innovations

As a child, Adithya Thonse loved tinkering with DIY tool kits, connecting motors, batteries and sensors and making small robots. Pursuing engineering in college felt like a natural choice, and while there he realized that projects assigned in several classes used TI technology. “That’s when I realized that TI does so many things,” Adithya said. “For the kid in me who loved connecting things together, it seemed like a kind of paradise.”

After an internship at TI, Adithya worked on a digital team in India but realized that he was interested in embedded artificial intelligence (AI). “Although this particular function is in a different business unit, I was able to switch, even though it was totally different from what I did the first three years of my career. The best part is that people were so welcoming.”

Now a software engineering manager, Adithya is thrilled by the reach and significance of his work. His team now deploys AI in microcontrollers to help households save power, alert drivers of early automotive issues, and detect electrical faults before fires start.

Adithya’s work at TI is driven by the same curiosity that initially drew him to engineering. He values both the freedom he’s given to pursue open-ended research and the support his colleagues provide. “No one says no to a request for help,” he said. “Anyone is open to having an intellectual discussion, no matter how busy they are. The freedom at work combined with the helpful nature of other TIers really drives innovation here.” 

The helpful spirit at TI extends into surrounding communities, where TIers around the world devote thousands of hours to improving quality of life locally. Adithya embodies this commitment by volunteering at a rural village in India, providing students with access to STEM education resources. Inspired by his father's early encouragement to solve problems and build devices, Adithya now uses his volunteer efforts at TI to inspire the next generation of engineers.

Growing with every challenge 

Danielle Brown knew studying engineering would challenge her, but she was surprised to find that her career also enabled her to create technology to overcome challenges.

After a rigorous course of study as an engineering student, Danielle interned at TI. Even though she was afraid that it’d be difficult to make friends after graduating from college, she found that participating in TI’s New Employee Network activities eased the transition, allowing her to start making connections and volunteering locally. 

Currently, Danielle works as a digital design engineer, helping create semiconductors for personal devices and video displays in electric vehicles. “There’s a lot more communication between electrical systems these days,” she said. “Our work enables it all to happen more smoothly, more efficiently, and at a lower cost.”

Danielle appreciates the camaraderie and the opportunities for growth she’s encountered during her time at TI. Despite joining a team with 15+ years of collective experience, Danielle found her colleagues eager to mentor and teach her beyond the college classroom. “At TI, there’s an open-door policy, and people really want to help where they can,” she said.

Danielle has a message for early-career engineers: “The work you do is rewarding in itself, but engineering is also rewarding for you as a person,” she said. “You’re growing every single time you overcome a challenge.”

Finding fulfillment on a demanding path

At TI, engineers push technical boundaries, but they also mentor, volunteer and grow. Across every role, TI engineers are shaping the future of electronics while strengthening the communities around them.