Sonja Riley Age: 26 Harvey Tool Rowley, MA
UNDER THIRTY D
ave Malrick, sales manager for industrial cut- ting tools distributor Walter R. Hammond Co., Minneapolis, met Sonja Riley a year ago dur- ing a meeting about the future of the product she makes and he sells. “Throughout our conversation, I came to gain lots of respect for this young woman,” says Malrick, who’s been in the cutting tools business 44 years. “I have rarely come across a person of this quality so young in life.”
Not only did Sonja hold her own in the meeting at
Harvey Tool, Rowley, MA, where she’s manager of prod- uct development, she often led the discussion, says Malrick. Their business relationship one year later has only led to a deeper respect of Sonja’s knowledge and problem-solving skills.
No surprise then that Sonja’s nickname at work is
E.F. Hutton, after the brokerage firm whose advertis- ing slogan in the ‘70s and ‘80s was “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.”
Sonja, 26, was hired at Harvey Tool as a trainee for the technical sales staff that promotes its specialty carbide end mills and cutting tools for the metalworking industry. Part of her training was to spend time in different departments to learn the business; inspection, quality control, technical customer support, special quoting, and new product development. Her knowledge grew quickly, and she was soon asked to teach a technical training course for company employees. It was when Sonja worked in new product develop- ment that she found her niche. With her good grasp of the product line and her ability to positively interact with customers, she joined the team, and has since been promoted to manager of two other employees. “Sonja’s skills and work ethic resulted in her early promotion to manager at the age of 25,” says Har-
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vey President Peter P. Jenkins. “Her role within the company and her reputation with customers as a go-to person for technical expertise have already po- sitioned her as a leader in the machining and cutting tool industry.”
Since Sonja became a member of the New Product Development Team in 2012, the number of new tools launched each year has increased from 800 to up to 2,000. A bullet on her resume says Sonja identifies potential new product lines, and it’s hard to get her to claim individual credit, but when pressed she admits to designing a new, longer-lasting threading tool for the difficult-to-mill hardened steel.
Her success at Harvey surprises Sonja only because she was on track to work in the bioengineering field after graduating from Syracuse University with a bach- elor’s of science degree in biomedical engineering. She interned at Zoll Medical, Chelmsford, MA, where she worked on software for quality testing of automated external defibrillators. Her senior thesis project at Syracuse focused on bone cement for orthopedic applications.
“We did square roots at the dinner table.”
Her interest in the biomedical field stems from her dad, a software engineer for biomedical applications.
Her mom’s a math teacher. “We did square roots at the dinner table,” Sonja says.
In addition to her math and engineering skills, Sonja has an “uncanny ability to process and retain information,” Jenkins wrote in her 30 Under 30 nomination. “You never have to tell her something twice,” says Jeff Davis, vice president of engineering at Harvey. “It’s almost kind of frustrating that in just a few short years she has learned what it took me 20+ years to learn on my own.” ME
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