Alice Phinney (MechEngr’85)
2025 Alumni Engagement Medal recipient
Professional Background:
Phinney graduated with her bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1985. She worked at Boeing for five years before returning to Boulder to continue her career at Ball Aerospace. Phinney started her career at Ball in design and project engineer roles. In the early 2000s, she served as the lead mechanical engineer for Deep Impact. That role led to her first position as a functional manager. From there, she advanced to roles as the manager of the Mechanical Engineering Group and then director of the Structural, Thermal, Optical, Mechanical, and Materials and Processes (STOMPP) Group. Through that role, she supervised over 300 people and oversaw countless hiring processes. As a manager, she worked hard to make sure that every individual’s work was the best fit for their talents and to create an environment where happiness was considered a core value and viewed as fundamental to the team’s success.
Contributions to the College of Engineering and Applied Science:
From nominator Katherine McConnell, scholar in residence with mechanical engineering: “Alicefirst joined the ME Industry Advisory Committee in the early 2000s and was still serving in that capacity in 2013 when I joined the department. I remember her from my very first ME Industry Advisory Committee Meeting as incredibly articulate, passionate and solution oriented. In every conversation with her since, I’ve seen that same combination of deep care for the individual and strategic focus on program improvement at scale.
Following her retirement from Ball Aerospace in 2017, Alice reached out to let us know that she would be happy to continue her efforts to support ME students. Her support has been especially instrumental in enabling us to launch our alumni mock interview program. She was one of our very first volunteers for that program and has met with more than 10 students each year for mock interviews. The students she has met with have consistently shared outstanding feedback about the interview process, frequently commenting on how she went above and beyond in getting to know them as individuals and help with their application materials beyond the interview. Throughout all of her mentoring efforts, the thing that has impressed me the most about Alice is her talent for both coaching students on concrete aspects of the job search process and empowering them to see and communicate their own strengths.
After a few years of mock interviews, Alice noticed that many students had similar questions and compiled an internship application advice guide for ME students drawn from her career at Ball Aerospace. That guide with information directly from an engineering hiring manager has been immensely helpful for us as a teaching team, as a reference to help students start their first internship search. Alice has also been a frequent contributor to student events including the CU Engineering Expo and our annual Women+ in ME Graduation Dinner. In fall 2024, she began a new volunteer role at CU serving as a mentor for the Chancellor’s Leadership Program.”