Spotlight on Volunteers By Terri Okazaki Board Director and Secretary
This Months Interview - Stephen "Skip" Kay, C.P.M.

There’s a new kid in town and his name is Stephen “Skip” Kay, C.P.M. Skip will be the focus of this month’s “Spotlight on Volunteers.” While Skip is not necessarily the new kid in town, he is the newest Board of Director having been recently elected last year. In addition to serving as a Board Director, Skip chairs the Communications Committee. If you’re not sure who Skip is, he’s the man behind the scenes sending out email notices reminding membership of dinner meetings, upcoming events, and any other interesting notices. Did you know that if you log on to www.napmoc.com you could make your dinner meeting reservation?

Skip is currently employed by Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America, Inc. (MDEA), as the Purchasing Manager, U.S. Operations, World Wide Procurement. Mitsubishi is a manufacturer of Bigscreen
Projection Televisions (PTVs). He started with MDEA in 1994 at the manufacturing facility in Santa Ana. In 1997, MDEA moved the assembly portion of their business to Mexicali, Mexico and Skip transferred to the current office in Irvine, at what is now referred to as the Consumer Electronics Engineering Center (CEEC).
CEEC is the design center where Purchasing works closely with Design Engineers and supports all trial or pre-production builds.

Upon graduating from college, Skip worked for a company that offered him an opportunity to test the various areas of business administration through a management rotation program. He experienced Accounting, Sales, Design Engineering, Purchasing, Production Control, etc., and decided on Purchasing because he found the different processes and operations quite interesting.

On the personal side, Skip resides in the “boon docks”. If you drew a triangle and placed Lake Mathews, Lake Elsinore, and Lake Perris at the points, his home would be dead center. Although he never did tell me the name of the city where his home is located, he describes it as rural, quiet and dark. Skip and his lovely wife, Colleen have quite a
	“family”. The gang consists of two horses, three dogs, chickens and a rooster. Dusty is an Anglo-Arab horse and Lo-C is a registered quarter horse. Skip rides them on the trails behind his house every chance he gets. Colleen says it’s his mid-life crisis! K.C., Cheyanne and Shelby are the dogs,
and the chickens are too numerous for names so Skip refers to them as critters. According to Skip watching the sunrise and listening to the barn yard sounds while feeding the gang is so...relaxing!

On a final note Skip says he’s had many mentors in his life. His NAPM mentors (besides everyone mentioned in previous columns) are Judith (Judy) Smith and Susan Odstrchel, not because of their experience with Mitsubishi, but because they are truly great folks with wonderful ideas and opinions.

Skip encourages everyone to check out NAPM-OCs website! Our webmaster has done a wonderful , wonderful job, which helps make Skip’s job as Communications Chair a little easier!