Two years ago, Sarah Grieve was promoted to full-time manufacturing engineer at EMC Precision in Elyria. Her rise to the prestigious position was the result of following a well-planned educational route that began when she was a student at Elyria High School.
“I didn’t want to go to college and have college debt. I wanted a trade and to get a job right after high school,” recalls Grieve. “I toured LCJVS with my dad, who graduated from the Precision Machine Technology program there. When I saw the lab, it sparked an interest and I started there as a junior in 2014. My job placement was at EMC when I was 16. And I am still there.”
By the time she was a senior, Grieve realized she could attend Lorain County Community College (LCCC) with the help of scholarships and suddenly her outlook about higher education changed. She began taking classes at the college while still in high school, going fulltime after graduation. Grieve graduated with an Associate of Manufacturing Engineering Technology — Computer Aided Machining degree in 2018.
“LCCC is a great place with great teachers. And EMC is also a great place to work,” says Grieve. “When I was going through college, they let me work parttime when I had to. They worked around my schedule and college classes and were very supportive.”
Grieve admits there were some challenging moments along the way as a young woman in a once male-dominated career, especially as a high schooler. Her first day at work, several male employees expressed concern about working with someone who was not yet 18.
“I told them, ‘But I have permission from my school,’” she remembers. “But then it totally turned around after I proved myself. Now I am great friends with some of those people I worked with at the beginning.”
Grieve advises anyone wanting to pursue a career in manufacturing “to stick with what you really want to do” and to “speak up about what you want to learn more about.”
“My job has sent me to a few different training experiences because I asked about the possibilities. And manufacturing is not a dark, dirty factory job anymore,” says Grieve, adding that her favorite part of her current position is “creating new things from start to finish.”
“I can begin with a bar of raw material and after I run it through a machine or run a program for it, it comes out as a pretty part,” says Grieve, who celebrates her 10th year at EMC in 2025. “That’s pretty satisfying.”
Outside of work, Grieve enjoys camping, working out and playing with her dog and cat. She spends “a lot of time” playing pickle ball with her parents and considers Wolfey’s Bistro and Pub in Elyria to be her favorite restaurant.
