New Series: Get to know our team
Our team members possess diverse skill sets, experiences, and personalities, which support our team’s abilities to meet clients’ unique project demands. We are shining the light on some of these innovative people who are here to make your job safer. To kick off our new series, we’d like to introduce you to Michelle Yokota!
Michelle Yokota
Senior 1 Engineer, Protective Structures
Los Angeles, California Office
BakerRisk 9 Years
A little about Michelle:
Fun fact… she discovered BakerRisk at a career fair, where she admits that the explosion test video on our exhibit booth caught her attention.
Michelle enjoys the diversity of her work at BakerRisk and appreciates that BakerRisk is comprised of industry leaders eager to develop the next generation of engineers.
How Michelle supports the industry:
Michelle recently supported the development of the Scenario and Target Relevant Explosive Equivalence Tool (STREET), a software product BakerRisk helped develop for the Counter-Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO), an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense. The software product assists engineers and scientists in computing the explosive equivalence of a wide variety of energetic materials and mixtures. BakerRisk was awarded this program in 2014, which saw the release of version 2 in 2019.
Why it matters:
There is continued interest in understanding the TNT equivalence of home-made explosives (HMEs), but at the time there was no unified resource/document that provided this information for a wide list of HMEs. The data was scattered in a number of different experimental reports. STREET compiles this information, as well as addresses several shortcomings of what is currently provided in manuals available to the community. Michelle states, “I’ve been able to use STREET for several explosives safety projects. So not only was I involved in the code’s development, I am now an enthusiastic user!”
Accomplishment and special skills:
Michelle’s superpower is her love of working with teams to meet project objectives. Besides her ability to thrive in team environments, she excels at problem solving, generating design solutions, and analyzing and processing data.
Michelle’s Business Philosophies:
- Communication is crucial!
- Understand the background and history of what you are about to embark on for a client/specific project.
- Self-motivation: personally, my motivation stems from a love of competition and hard work, something acquired from my love of sports.