Jessica Gomez has come a great distance within the microchip trade. She is the founder and CEO of Rogue Valley Microdevices based mostly in Medford, Oregon, the primary woman-owned and first minority-owned enterprise to obtain Biden-Harris CHIPS Act funding. The foundry makes a speciality of microelectromechanical techniques—or MEMS—tiny, clever sensors important to automotive, biomedical and industrial markets.
From its founding as a small startup in 2003, Rogue Valley navigated quite a few challenges—together with surviving the 2008 monetary disaster—to emerge as a key participant within the MEMS manufacturing house. With the CHIPS funding, Gomez plans to triple the corporate’s manufacturing functionality with a second fabrication facility in Florida, the one one in every of its form within the U.S.
In an interview, Gomez shares the corporate’s journey to success, gives perception into their website choice course of and the facility of tradition as a driving power behind progress.
Inform us about your manufacturing enterprise and the way it’s grown over time.
Based in 2003, the primary few years of our startup journey had been extremely tough. We struggled by means of each problem you’ll be able to think about—each technical and monetary. In actual fact, we didn’t even have air-con within the fab for the primary two years as a result of we ran out of cash earlier than we may purchase a chiller. 5 years later, we managed to outlive the 2008 recession and emerged stronger than ever.
Dealing with that sort of adversity early on compelled us to undertake a degree of self-discipline and creativity that’s now embedded within the firm’s DNA. Over time, I’ve had the privilege of rising Rogue Valley Microdevices from a small startup right into a key participant within the MEMS manufacturing house. We’ve constructed our enterprise by staying true to our values—precision, flexibility and partnership—and by investing within the sort of high-tech, high-mix fabrication capabilities our prospects want.
As demand for MEMS and sensors has accelerated, so has our progress. That’s what led us to broaden past Oregon. With help from the CHIPS and Science Act, we’re constructing a 300 millimeter-capable MEMS foundry that can triple our manufacturing capability and place us turn out to be the primary pure-play foundry within the U.S. to supply MEMS system manufacturing on 300mm wafers. It’s been an unimaginable journey—and we’re simply getting began.
You’re constructing a second manufacturing facility in Palm Bay, Florida. What had been the elements that led you to find there?
Once we selected Palm Bay for our second facility, it wasn’t nearly location, it was about alternative, neighborhood and progress. We made the choice for quite a lot of causes.
The Area Coast presents entry to a powerful expertise pool, supported by close by universities and technical establishments. For a high-tech MEMS manufacturing facility like ours, that pipeline is important. We’re already engaged with some educational and technological communities by means of numerous occasions, and we’ve obtained a variety of help from the neighborhood.
Palm Bay is correct within the coronary heart of Florida’s rising Area Coast tech hub. With its thriving ecosystem of aerospace, protection and semiconductor firms, it’s a pure match for innovation and collaboration. This location additionally gives us with a logistical benefit, making it simpler and cheaper to help our East Coast and European-based prospects.
We’ve obtained robust help from the State of Florida and native leaders. The Metropolis of Palm Bay and teams just like the Financial Growth Fee of Florida’s Area Coast actually perceive what it takes to help financial progress. Along with Florida’s pro-manufacturing insurance policies and financial improvement incentives, the world has created a very welcoming atmosphere for funding.
Florida’s Area Coast presents a top quality of life, which helps entice and retain workers—an necessary consideration for long-term progress. As well as, I consider that supporting our workforce outdoors of labor is simply as necessary as what occurs contained in the fab. We have now developed a sturdy neighborhood and worker improvement technique that features a plan for on-site childcare and after-school applications at our new facility.
Collectively, these elements made Palm Bay the clear alternative for increasing our operations—and for deepening our influence on U.S. semiconductor manufacturing.
Your organization is a recipient of $6.7 million in CHIPS Act funding. Inform us how that can influence your progress?
Securing CHIPS and Science Act funding is a transformative milestone—not only for Rogue Valley Microdevices, however for U.S. semiconductor manufacturing as a complete. This $6.7 million funding will instantly help the development of our new facility in Palm Bay.
This growth will practically triple our manufacturing capability and create 75 high-tech jobs on Florida’s Area Coast. It additionally permits us to supply wafer-level superior packaging providers and to scale manufacturing of the miniature, clever sensors which are important to markets equivalent to automotive, biomedical and industrial—the place provide chain resilience is completely important.
The funding we secured by means of the CHIPS Act has catalyzed our strategic funding in further capability and functionality, positioning us on the forefront of next-generation manufacturing and getting ready us to scale alongside our prospects and companions.
You intend to help working households with onsite daycare within the new facility; inform us about that.
Supporting working households has at all times been necessary to me—not simply as a CEO, however as a dad or mum.I used to be fortunate sufficient to have the ability to deliver my infants to work with me and have them close by as I grew the enterprise. Once we began planning our new facility in Palm Bay, I knew I wished it to replicate the sort of office tradition that really helps individuals, not simply productiveness.
Providing onsite childcare is a method we will try this. It helps ease a serious burden for fogeys and creates a extra inclusive, supportive atmosphere the place gifted people don’t have to decide on between their careers and their households. We’re additionally taking a look at after-school applications to help school-age kids, as a result of we all know flexibility doesn’t cease at preschool.
It’s not simply good for households—it’s good for enterprise. Once you create a spot the place individuals really feel supported, they bring about their finest to the job day by day.
