Atlanta Gear Works has grown its engineering team — again — with its first Georgia Tech graduate, Corinna Draghi. Draghi comes with two other firsts for the company: she’s the first woman engineer and the first with a degree in aerospace engineering. 

Draghi’s first full-time job after graduation was as a mechanical engineer working with the inventor of the directly driven centrifugal shot-blast wheel. Her responsibilities included 2D- and 3D-mechanical design and project management of custom-designed heavy industrial shot-blasting machinery used for finishing structural rebar, propane tanks, heavy earth-moving equipment components and other steel and aluminum components requiring a specific finish. 

In addition to hands-on experience and knowledge of fabrication and fit-up processes for heavy industrial machinery, she wrote reference and maintenance manuals, cost analyses and multi-million-dollar quotes.

“I learned a lot about hardware and grades of steel and spent a lot of time in steel mills,” she said. “All of that is applicable to what we do at Atlanta Gear Works.”

In reality, her mechanical engineering training started in childhood. 

“I grew up with a machine shop in my basement,” she said, referring to the shop her father operated in the basement of the family home, manufacturing labeling and filling machines for chemical companies that use bottles and conveyors. 

“He built everything from memory,” she said. “Ironically, what I didn’t know as a child was that he was also doing gearbox repair.”

Draghi joined AGW during the pandemic and immediately took advantage of every opportunity offered to her. Since joining the company, she has achieved OSHA certification and was a speaker on the Women in Manufacturing panel at the AGMA 2021 Motion & Power Technology Expo in St. Louis in September. 

“I was impressed with her mix of hands-on experience and mechanical design/CAD capabilities,” said Chris Dale, VP-Engineering at AGW. “Rarely do we find an engineer who has both gear and gearbox experience. Since we know we will have to train them, we look for someone who is willing to learn and will fit in with our family of engineers.”