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Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →In an August 2023 EE Times Current episode, Electro Soft president and CEO Karla Trotman discusses the winding path that led her from logistics and entrepreneurship to leading her family’s electronics manufacturing company. The conversation also explores supply-chain pressures as she saw them at the time, workplace bias, supplier diversity, and how to make manufacturing more visible to young people.
What the episode covers
Episode 17 of EE Times Current is a 27:11 conversation between editor in chief Brett Brune and Trotman, published August 18, 2023. EE Times presented it as the first installment in a series about diversity and belonging in electronics engineering. The episode page includes the full transcript.
It is both a career story and a discussion of contract manufacturing. Trotman describes how she came to lead Electro Soft, what the company did as she understood its role in 2023, and what she had observed about the electronics industry and access to it. Her accounts and views belong to that interview; they are not a current company-status update or an independently measured picture of the industry.
How Trotman describes her route to leadership
Trotman says she studied business logistics, then worked in distribution management and corporate logistics roles. While on leave, she built an online maternity-commerce business and learned search and marketing skills that she later brought to Electro Soft. She describes returning to work with her father’s company, moving back into corporate work, and then returning to Electro Soft in 2010.
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In her account, her father planned to retire and she took over company leadership in 2020. She presents the path as a sequence of unfamiliar assignments that required asking questions, learning quickly, and working through limited resources. Recalling the need to secure ISO 9001 certification for the company, she describes taking on the task; the interview does not establish whether Electro Soft currently holds that certification.
What Electro Soft did, according to the interview
Trotman says Electro Soft began by designing industrial equipment, writing software, and manufacturing products. As market demand shifted, she says, the company concentrated on manufacturing rather than continuing the other activities. She describes it as an electronics contract manufacturer serving OEM and military requirements.
She also explains that component substitutions were subject to customer approval: Electro Soft and supplier technicians could identify possible alternatives, but the client’s engineers decided whether to approve them. Trotman says the company did not undertake design work within the scope she described. These are descriptions from 2023, not confirmation of the company’s present-day services, customers, or contracts.
What she said about manufacturing and the supply chain in 2023
Asked about semiconductor lead times and sourcing, Trotman said timing depended on the design and on how long customers were willing to wait. She described the company as buying and building on a just-in-time basis and using stocking distributors for what she called quick turnaround. The transcript offers no independently verified lead-time figure.
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Her broader observations in that August 2023 conversation included component shortages, customers seeking to reduce reliance on China, wage pressure affecting costs, and manufacturing investment increasing around the world. Those are her dated observations, not current supply-chain statistics or forecasts.
Representation, bias, and supplier diversity
Trotman recounts that her father, an electrical engineer who founded Electro Soft, was sometimes overlooked by people who assumed another employee was in charge. She also describes her own corporate experience as including unfair treatment. These personal accounts illuminate the episode’s inclusion theme, but they do not measure how often bias occurs across the industry.
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- Author: Bungay Stanier, Michael.
- Publisher: Page Two
- Pages: 244
- Publication Date: 2016-02-29
- Edition: 1
On supplier-diversity programs, she says designations could result in a company being listed in databases without meaningful business opportunities. She also acknowledges customers who approached Electro Soft because they wanted to diversify their suppliers. Trotman said in the interview that half of Electro Soft’s staff were women and half were people of color; that is a speaker-reported figure from 2023, not an independently checked or necessarily current workforce statistic.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why she argues that young people should see manufacturing
Trotman advocates opening manufacturing workplaces to students through tours and placements. She describes young people seeing how products are built and later saying that the experience made them think more carefully about design. Her point is practical: a career in manufacturing may not occur to someone who has never seen the work up close.
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The episode does not provide outcome data comparing factory tours, placements, or classroom-only exposure. Its contribution here is Trotman’s firsthand account of why visibility and direct experience matter to her mentoring approach.
Advice for women and girls interested in electronics
Asked what advice she would give women and girls interested in the field, Trotman emphasizes curiosity, asking questions, and resisting pressure to conform:
“I would say just bring your whole self into the room. Don’t try to fit in. Conformity is not the way. Say what you mean. Ask the questions. Be you. It’s your unique voice that enhances the space.”
That advice fits the broader thread of the conversation: her career involved stepping into unfamiliar work, learning what was being asked, and making room for perspectives that might otherwise be overlooked.
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