“We saw a need in the market for new and indulgent frozen dessert. I was friends with a product developer and we just went off and started mad-sciencing a fully-baked frozen cookie that would have a gooey, warm center after you microwaved it,” explained Anna Horton describing her favorite project while at Conagra Brands. “Then we found a bakery to manufacture it and launched it in Walmarts across the U.S.”
That experience of walking through a store and seeing one of her products on a shelf guided Anna, now a Senior Vice President on AlixPartners’ Manufacturing and Operations team, to a career in manufacturing.
She studied chemical engineering and genetics at Purdue University, thinking that she would work in medical research. But as a research intern during her sophomore year, she struggled to connect with the theoretical nature of the work.
“I had a hard time explaining what I was actually doing,” Anna said. “I would tell people, ‘I’m doing research on a catalyst that could help in this reaction that down the road could maybe become a cancer drug.’ It wasn’t tangible for me.”
Her next internship was with a pharmaceutical company, in its manufacturing division, making baby formula. She was able to connect the work she was doing with the product on the shelf and the experience of the consumer who bought it. It sparked her passion for manufacturing.
After graduating, she joined Conagra Brands and did a little bit of everything during her eight years with the global food manufacturing corporation. She started as a continuous improvement engineer at pudding factory in Iowa, before transferring to the R&D team based in Nebraska, where she served as a technical liaison between the food scientists and the manufacturing operation. In her final role with Conagra she helped grow a startup production facility as a plant manager for the Gardein brand of meatless meats, ultimately doubling production during her time at the facility.
The constant across her roles was having a sense of stewardship for the products she was responsible for, knowing that the changes made at the production stage ultimately impacted the experience for the consumer once the product was sitting on their shelf or in their homes months down the line.
This consumer-focused approach also helped Anna put business and technical priorities into practice on the production floor, where she had up to 400 people reporting into her as a plant manager.
“People have different expectations for different products. For example, you might have a different standard for a product aimed at your child than would for yourself,” Anna explained. “Understanding who the customer is and what they want from the product and then communicating that to the operators, like ‘if we do x, y, and z, we can ensure the customer will have a positive experience,’ is key to implementing widespread change in a facility.”
After two years at Gardein, Anna was looking for her next stretch opportunity and considering other roles within Conagra when a former Indiana University business school classmate reached out to her for a role at AlixPartners.
“They sold the firm on how we do a lot more implementation work, how we work with client teams directly in the manufacturing plants. That really stood out to me because I did not want to give up the tangible part of the work which I loved,” Anna explained.
For someone like Anna who often says “sure I’ll try that” when new opportunities are offered to her, consulting has proven to be a good fit.
She said she was able to be staffed on many food manufacturing projects during her first 18 months at the firm, allowing her to ease into consulting with a familiar industry. And has since increasingly been exposed to new industries and projects beyond four walls manufacturing.
“The exciting thing is I can do different things in different industries and with kinds of teams with different approaches, and my hope is that I’ll keep getting those opportunities at AlixPartners and can continue learning.”