Hi my name is Keri. I am 26 years old and work as a test engineer for Daimler Trucks North America. Headquartered in Portland, OR, I work with a team in Indiana conducting durability testing of semi tractors at the Bosch Proving Grounds on a torture track. Many of the vehicles we test are prototype or pre-series. We see the latest and greatest and are a key role in product development as well as improvement.

I was born and raised in Eureka, Ca and graduated from Eureka Senior High School. In high school my father and I began to volunteer for the SCCA at Laguna Seca Raceway and Sears Point Raceway, now Madza Raceway and Infineon Raceway respectively. As course marshals, we responded to most emergencies on the track, stacking tires, removing debris, sweeping oil, and sometimes providing the tower with pit support by radio. It was during one of the weekends I was working at Sears Point that I discovered my high school had a race team. EHS Motorsports was a club operated by the auto shop instructor, students, and a few volunteers from the community. Larry Hansen, auto shop instructor/driver, has many successes in the NASPORT division of SCCA and has contended in several annual national championships in Ohio. The team had sponsorship from Nissan Motorsports to race a Nissan 240SX. The team has since raced a 350Z among others. As a member of the team for three years, I saw the successful completion and sale of a Nissan race car from ground up.

My family loves the outdoors and traveling. It is my parents I have to thank for being able to say I have been to over half the states in the US including Hawaii and Alaska, Canada, Mexico and the Fiji Islands. I learned to hunt, spent a lot of time on my uncles cattle ranch, became a competition target shooter in the American Single Shot Rifle Association, acquired a 14' parachute that I tow behind my truck with a harness as a parasail, and developed many talents of which one is drawing. I was a correspondence student of Art Instruction Schools and it was my love for motorsports and my artistic abilities that lead me to a degree in mechanical engineering.

I graduated from Oregon Institute of Technology in June of 2005 with a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering technology in Klamath Falls, OR one term shy of four years.

In my college career I was a member of the Society of Automotive Engineer's Mini Baja team for two years. My senior project was a human powered vehicle to compete in the kinetic sculpture race of the Humboldt County area of California. Both of these vehicle projects completed every race they attempted.

My career started in fire sprinkler design following two manufacturing internships in conjunction with my college work. My first internship was as a manufacturing engineer in the machine shop of A-dec, INC., a dental office equipment and furniture manufacturer in Newberg, OR. I primarily designed manufacturing support fixtures for raw material to be machined into parts assembled in the final product using the Autodesk Inventor CAD package. I received training in using a coordinate measuring machine and the concept of lean manufacturing, an idea first developed by the Japanese, also known as 5S or just in time manufacturing among others. My second internship was with Climax Portable Machine Tools, INC. in Newberg, OR. My most significant accomplishment while there was developing a new design for the bed of the portable milling machine, one of their standard products. I single-handedly learned to use the finite element analysis software to theoretically prove the design in real world applications using Autodesk Inventor and Ansys. Fire sprinkler design took me to Vancouver, WA where I designed fire sprinkler systems for multi level apartment complexes and other living spaces. One of my largest designs was a five floor system with over 3,000 sprinkler heads in an elderly housing development in California.

I love motorsports, adrenaline, the outdoors, electronics, country music, good food, drinks and friends. I'll try almost anything once, and the best things over and over again. There is so much more I could say, I'm not simple. I have been many places and done many things, but yet I have so far to go!

I also dabble in personal finance by helping people become financially independent and be able to retire. I have licenses in mortgages and insurance.

http://www.primerica.com/kerijohnson

And she looks so normal

I think I'll need you'r finacial help!

BTW, I really am impressed Just don't let these nits know that

I think your over qualified.....

Don't listen to him, he breaks axles in parking lots

Parking lots are test facilities too. They have amazing challenges

Apparently I-5 is a test, too. Just got off the phone with the cousin who drives for Leavitt, and he had a mattress, of all things, kicked under the truck, now he's in the shop in PDX getting all the wiring and air lines under the tractor replaced. He is PISSED

UPDATE:

I earned my class A commercial drivers license in December 2008 and will eventually be driving test trucks between Portland, OR and New Carlisle, IN.

I've also picked up some part time CAD work as a contractor for Moventas. They make industrial gears and wind mill gear boxes. I've just completed my first project of designing a jib crane that disassembles to go up the tower of a wind mill and is then used to assemble the gear box, about 200' above ground.