{"318011":{"#nid":"318011","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Alumni Spotlight: The View from the Top","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ELee Burrell, MS SCE 2012, found ISyE\u2019s top-ranked program a bit intimidating \u2013 at first.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBy Lee Burrell, MS SCE 2012\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThere are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.\u201d \u2013 Andr\u00e9 Gide, French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1947)\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EI\u2019m confident that at the essence of every student\u2019s experience at Georgia Tech is the fact that our prestigious institution pushed the boundaries of our comfort zones beyond what we previously thought possible.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMy experience of how Tech\u2019s College of Engineering stretched, pulled, yanked, and drove me to be better \u2013 personally, professionally, and academically \u2013 began on my very first day.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThat day started in a packed and ice-cold conference room in the ISyE building, across from the CRC.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAs I sheepishly strolled into the room, it finally hit me that I was at the No. 1 industrial engineering program in the entire country (for 23 years in a row, I was keenly aware). I was as tense as someone deathly afraid of heights naively stepping out onto the ledge of the Chicago Skydeck.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMy palms felt like a soaked yellow Georgia Tech basketball jersey. My mind raced around in circles like Jeff Gordon\u2019s car at Atlanta Motor Speedway, with questions exploding like those little popper fireworks being thrown on the ground.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhat happened if I failed out? How did I even get in? Maybe I should have just gone to the University (sic) of Georgia.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESo what does one instinctively reach for when faced with uncertainty and crippling fear? Familiarity, of course! I quickly hashed out a plan to seek someone, anyone, who was feeling as I was \u2013 I surely could find someone feeling these same uncomfortable emotions, right? \u2013 and we would together wallow in our certainly ill-fated decision. A genius plan, I thought, under the circumstances.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAlthough I was admittedly a little rusty in my advanced math skills, I was able to calculate after a quick scan of the 42 fresh-faced strangers in the room that I was, in fact, the only one visibly panic-stricken \u2013 that or my new friends were all professional poker players. My genius plan was crashing faster than the stock market in 2008.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThere I sat, just a country boy from the South with a slight drawl in a room full of sagacious and worldly people, certain I had gotten myself into something that was clearly over my head.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOh well, I thought \u2013 I\u2019m not going down without a fight, fear be damned.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOne by one I mustered the courage to introduce myself to these strangers, getting to know each of them.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELike magnets being drawn together, it was these same strangers who quickly became my closest comrades as we toiled over countless sleepless nights on the treacherous front lines of global logistics problems. Our time spent together both in and out of the classroom allowed me to gain a better understanding of vastly different countries and cultures, loves and languages, histories and hopes, and interestingly enough, myself.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBeyond the classroom, I mustered the wherewithal to join numerous campus groups, make new friends through weight training and intramurals (and win the graduate basketball championship, it must be noted), suspend myself on the on-campus ropes courses, and apply my startup to Georgia Tech\u2019s Advanced Technology Development Center startup incubator (and get accepted). And ironically enough, I wasn\u2019t too shabby in the classroom either. That failure that I feared so much never came to pass; I was able to pass every class, making my mother proud by graduating with a respectable 3.45 GPA.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESince graduating in 2012, I\u2019ve worked on global logistics projects for some of the world\u2019s top companies in a multitude of industries. From Singapore to San Francisco, China to the Czech Republic, India to Indiana, I\u2019ve used the skills I learned at the College of Engineering to positively influence the 3Ps (People, Profits, and Planet).\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EI\u2019ve also been able to call amazing cities like Chicago, Detroit, and now Calgary home. Each time I\u2019ve relocated for a new role, I\u2019ve moved into cities where I knew no one and had no idea how things might turn out, similar to my first experience at Georgia Tech. Yet each time I\u2019ve met amazing people, gained lifelong friends, had amazing experiences, and grew as a human being.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOver the course of all my new and sometimes scary adventures since that fateful first day at Tech, I\u2019ve come to realize that the unknown is not a cause for fear, but a potentially incredible opportunity to be embraced.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWe all experience doubts at times, but what might we miss if we concede control to the monster called fear that lives within each of us? I certainly would have missed out on one of the most enjoyable and enriching experiences of my life \u2013 becoming a helluva engineer.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThis article first appeared in the Summer\/Fall 2014 issue of the\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003EGeorgia Tech Engineers\u0026nbsp;Magazine.\u003C\/em\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ELee Burrell graduated from ISyE\u0027s\u0026nbsp;one year Master of Science in Supply Chain Engineering in 2012. He found ISyE\u2019s top-ranked program a bit intimidating \u2013 at first. Since graduating, he\u0027s gone on to work on global logistics projects for some of the world\u0027s top companies in a multitude of industries.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Lee Burrell, MS SCE 2012, found ISyE\u2019s top-ranked program a bit intimidating \u2013 at first"}],"uid":"27868","created_gmt":"2014-08-21 15:40:22","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:16:56","author":"Lizzie Millman","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2014-08-21T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2014-08-21T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"129221":{"id":"129221","type":"image","title":"Lee Burrell","body":null,"created":"1449178634","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 21:37:14","changed":"1475894754","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:45:54","alt":"Lee Burrell","file":{"fid":"194604","name":"lee_burrell.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/lee_burrell_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/lee_burrell_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":37371,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/lee_burrell_0.jpg?itok=Pz3FDdy6"}}},"media_ids":["129221"],"groups":[{"id":"1242","name":"School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISYE)"}],"categories":[{"id":"130","name":"Alumni"}],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:barbara.christopher@isye.gatech.edu\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EBarbara Christopher\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIndustrial and Systems Engineering\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E404.385.3102\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["bchristopher@isye.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}