BURTON D. MORGAN ENTREPRENEURSHIP AWARD
STACEY BAITINGER BURR (BSIE ’84, MSIA ’91), Vice President and General Manager, adidas Digital Sport
Stacey Baitinger Burr leads the creation, development and operations of wearable sports electronics, digital sport and app experiences at adidas. Her group’s aim is to build a deeper connection to consumers and drive positive fitness behavior change.
Baitinger Burr is a trailblazer in the field of wearable sensing technology. Following a career at DuPont, she founded and served as CEO of Textronics Inc., a pioneer in electro-textiles, which produced the first wearable sensor garments for fitness and health. In late 2008, she sold the company to adidas. Her team at adidas developed and launched the miCoach® Elite athlete monitoring system in 2013. Major League Soccer (MLS) adopted this system across the entire league, making MLS the first professional “Smart League.”
Baitinger Burr has a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and an MSIA with a marketing and operations emphasis from Purdue. She is the co-inventor of 16 patented materials and process technology innovations in wearable electronics. She chairs the Smart Fabrics and the Wear Tech UX annual conferences. In addition to her position with adidas, Baitinger Burr also stays active in the fashion tech and consumer health venture startup communities.
DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD
RENE LEWIN (BSIM’68), Former Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Wyeth LLC
Rene Lewin earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial management from Purdue and an MBA from Butler University. He started a 24-year career with Eli Lilly & Co., where he held a variety of executive management positions. He became president and general manager of Eli Lilly Canada, executive director of corporate affairs, and executive director of human resources.
Lewin then spent 14 years with Wyeth LLC, a subsidiary of Pfizer, before retiring in 2008. In this role, he was responsible for the planning and implementation of worldwide employee policies and programs, including compensation and benefits, employee relations, labor relations, equal employment policies and programs, recruiting, management training and development, and corporate security.
Lewin chaired the Human Resource Council for the research-based Pharmaceutical Association. He currently serves on the Krannert Dean’s Advisory Council and Purdue’s Human Resource Advisory Council, where he offers advice on compensation and benefits issues. He also has taught a course on strategic human resources at Krannert.
YOUNG ALUMNI AWARD
RHO CAULEY BRUNER (BSEE ’02, MBA ’09), Integrated Product Team Lead, Northrop Grumman
Rho Cauley Bruner is the Vehicle Management Sys- tems Integrated Product Team Lead on Northrup Grumman’s U.S. Navy MQ-4C Triton program.
In this role, she has responsibility for the management of products on the Triton program including the flight control system, flight critical software, and avionics systems.
Cauley Bruner began her career at Northrop Grumman in 2002 after earning an engineering degree from Purdue. She started as a hardware engineer and has since held roles of increasing responsibility within the company. She was the deputy chief engineer for the Euro Hawk program, where she provided technical oversight of the design, integration and test of the German Full Scale Demonstrator System.
Cauley Bruner’s other roles on the Global Hawk Program include product integration, fielding of production systems, and the development and test of new software and hardware capabilities. She also worked on the devel- opment of new system architectures in several other R&D projects with Northrup Grumman. Cauley Bruner earned an MBA from the Krannert School in 2009.
