Interview with Nathan Medina

August 2023

My name is Nathan Medina, and I attended Cal Poly Pomona from 2008 to 2014. I originally started as a Civil Engineering major and switched to TOM in my second year. I joined the club in the last three years of my time at Cal Poly and then graduated in 2014. I commuted for most of my tenure at Cal Poly as I paid my way through school by teaching music.

Professionally, my first job out of college was with Vans Corporation in their Supply Chain team focused on S&OP. Later, that expanded to being a part of multiple brands for their parent company, VF Corporation. It was during this time that I was sponsored by my company to get my APICS certification and obtained my CSCP certification. After a few years there, I took a small job as a Supply Chain analyst for a start-up that was working with the previous Reef President. I then worked for Tesla in their NV Gigafactory on their Inventory and Production Control teams, where I managed their Continuous Improvement and materials teams. My organization consisted of about 500 full-time employees and approximately 28 leaders.

Currently, I'm working with Plug Power in NY as the Director of S&OP and Materials, where I lead the Planning and Materials organizations. In this role, I oversee the global Inventory strategy in partnership with the GTM Forecasts to meet the company's revenue expectations. I regularly meet with Sales, Finance, Product, Engineering, Planning, and Operations to ensure we meet our margin and revenue targets as a business.

Advice

The biggest piece of advice I can offer is to ensure that both hard and soft skills are equally important. In the environments I have worked in, it's really about the work you do and how you collaborate and influence people.