Clarissa Wong

As a child I gravitated toward math and science, and was generally curious about how things work. I love asking, ‘How do you actually make a product? How do you build it from scratch?’ In addition, my family runs our own business, and this exposed me to the commercial side of things that led to questions like ‘How do you make it profitable?’ So instead of seeing engineering and business as mutually exclusive, I saw the intersection of both as exactly where I wanted to be. This insight made me pursue industrial engineering. Since this was a relatively new field in Singapore, I decided to come to the U.S. for college. I found myself loving my undergrad coursework, and that motivated me to apply for Stanford’s Management Science & Engineering master’s program. To this day, I’m really thankful for the opportunity to be part of the program.

I’m currently part of the supply chain team at Tesla, where our goal is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. We are coming out with the Model 3, which is a more affordable electric car for the masses. My role in this mission is to reduce complexity and cost of making the car by managing the supply chain. Supply chain is the end-to-end process of making a product, beginning with the sourcing and procurement of materials, the manufacturing process itself, and finally the distribution of the created product. To me, my work is an exciting optimization game of balancing cool engineering designs, cost, quality and on-time delivery so that we can make a best-in-class and affordable electric car a reality.