‌	MIKE FOLEY

Mike Foley graduated from UMR with a BS/ChE in 1978.  While interviewing as a senior, he expected to work in a typical Chemical Plant and planned to relocate away from where he grew up in Kansas City.  When it came time to choose a job, he decided that it was important to be in Kansas City so he accepted an offer he received from Bendix.  He stayed with Bendix, which later merged with Allied Chemicals, then Signal Corporation, until 1992.  

In early 1992, an opportunity presented itself for 10 engineers from Kansas City to work at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, CA on a temporary basis, and he was selected for that assignment.  After arriving at Sandia, he realized the work environment there was much better and he would have more opportunities for challenging assignments.  So, he started working on Sandia management to convince them to hire him.  About six weeks before he was to return to KC, he was given a job offer. 

He had a variety of assignments the first 10 years at Sandia. For several years he was the lead for a Program that he had worked on early in his career at Bendix, so he had many interactions with former co-workers.  In 2002, he was given another offer of a temporary assignment, this time to serve as a Sandia advisor to the Department of Energy in Washington.  This assignment lasted for three years, and he still considers it the highlight of his career.  He had interactions with engineers from the other two DOE design laboratories (Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore), as well as various military branches and DOE management.  After he returned from DC, he had various assignments that related back to the work he had at DOE.  For 2 years, he was project lead for a program undergoing design refurbishment at Sandia’s Albuquerque headquarters.   

He retired from Sandia early in 2015, and he continues to reside in San Francisco.