Industrial Engineering
Biography
My name is Jinwon Lee and I am a senior in Industrial and Systems Engineering and a member of the 2025 cohort of the Heath Integrated Business and Engineering Program at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. I pride myself on having a wide mix of experiences in my life such as immigrating to America at a young age, becoming a general manager of a restaurant at 19, as well as starting my own custom automotive and motorcycle business all before attending university. These experiences combined with so many others have given me a breadth of perspective in so many different cultural, professional, and people-based aspects that continue to guide me through my life.
These perspectives gave me an early appreciation of the importance of combining the technical with the business – not just the planning but the execution of it as well. Having discovered the HIBEP program early on, I knew it was the perfect mix of cross-functional experience as well as a space to grow my interests and passions. The mentorship I have received through the program has been a blessing and has helped me learn through the lifetimes of experience, successes, and mistakes. One of the most important lessons the program has taught me was the importance of empathy with not only the traditional stakeholders, but everyone affected by the product or process. This understanding has helped tremendously in my internships at Northrop Grumman, Pratt & Whitney, as well as the different research experiences I have had. Another lesson was the importance of creating connections between the different silos of traditional business and how crucial buy-in is at every aspect of every change.
My professional goals are to graduate with my bachelor of science in industrial engineering in May of 2025 and to immediately join the consulting workforce, with an interest in operations, supply chain management, or strategy. Through my experiences before university as well as my internship experiences, I have been able to get a lot of time on the ground floor. Having worked on and helped solve a lot of the problems that manufacturing companies face, I found myself enjoying creating processes and dashboards to quickly validate data, analyze, strategize, and present my findings in executive meetings. I hope to continue in this work and provide value to teams and work I love so much.
