YOUR STORY MATTERS HERE: Laura Goossen

By Tim Wesley

When Laura Goossen met her future husband, he had a burning question for the former U.S. Army intelligence officer with top-secret clearance.

“I’ve always wanted to know,” he began, “Do you know who killed JFK?”

Laura responded with a big laugh and a resounding “No!” 

Today, after 10 years of marriage, Chris still doesn’t have the answer to his underlying question, but there’s no mystery behind what drives his wife:  A lifelong urge to serve, whether it’s in their home, at her workplace or for the church.

“Even at a young age, serving others was always something that I felt very passionate about,” Laura said.  “I had awesome role models, amazing parents and grandparents who brought up our family in a community of faith, and they showed us how to lead by example.”

Growing up, she volunteered frequently in her hometown of Slippery Rock, often mowing lawns and pulling weeds with her church youth group.  At school, she was involved in athletics and student council.  Along the way, she developed a yearning to take a different route to higher education, rather than the traditional college experience; to challenge herself in “a crazy way.” 

She found her way on the road from Slippery Rock to Maine.

“My parents have a place in Maine, and we’ve gone there every summer since I was a little girl,” she said.  “Along the way, we would drive right past the exit for West Point [the U.S. Military Academy].  My dad had a fraternity brother who was a teacher there, so one summer we stopped and I took an informal tour.  I was playing soccer in high school and had a chance to talk with the soccer coach there and they started to recruit me.  Eventually, I interviewed with our congressman and received a nomination.”

It was 2001, just a few months before the 9-11 terrorist attack.

“It was such an honor and an amazing opportunity to serve our country at age 18,” she said.  “I felt pretty strongly about that.”

At the time, female cadets comprised only about 15 percent of the students at West Point – that’s up to about 20 percent today – providing Laura that non-traditional college experience she desired.  In addition, she majored in engineering, a male-dominated field of study.  Then, after graduating in 2005 with honors, she served in the army for two years as a military intelligence officer based in Arizona and Kansas, as wars in Afghanistan and Iraq raged and the country remained on edge about terrorism in the homeland.  In keeping with her duty, she divulged little about her post.

“I collected intelligence on very bad people, places and things, and provided information to those who needed to make good decisions about what we needed to do to protect the country,” she said.

Armed with a West Point education, service in the army and an engineering degree, she took a job with Westinghouse Electric Co. in 2007.  With a renaissance in the nuclear power industry underway, the company was preparing to launch its AP1000, a plant design expected to solidify Westinghouse as a global leader.  Chris, a mechanical engineering graduate from Penn State University, had joined the company the year before and soon posed that burning JFK question to his future wife.

Along with dozens of other Westinghouse engineers and support staff, Laura and Chris were assigned to work in China, which had purchased the world’s first four AP1000s and planned to build hundreds in the coming years.  Based in Sanmen, China, about 4½ hours south of Shanghai on the country’s east coast, they relished the experience.

“Working in China was one of the highlights of my life,” Laura said.  “We were in the middle of nowhere, to the point where people there had never seen a white person.  The first week I was there, I was outside running and saw a gentleman riding his bike.  He wouldn’t stop looking at me and ran off the side of the road.  If we wanted to do anything outside of the hotel we were living in, we had to be good at sign language or learn to speak Chinese, so I learned to speak Chinese.”

Not content with simply the challenges of working and living in such a remote location, Laura found other ways to test her mettle, such as running a marathon in Shanghai, a city renowned for poor air quality.

“It was horrible; I had a hacking cough for the next two months,” she said.

Laura also put her leadership skills to the test, and for that she drew on her West Point training.

“My parents always asked me how I led a team of nuclear engineers when I wasn’t a nuclear engineer,” she said.  “But my thought is, if you are a strong leader and can make the team click, that team can do amazing things.  So you lead by example and bring out the best from the people on your team.  Give them the power and authority they need and want.  I can’t say enough about the leadership training aspects of being at West Point.  I’ve used all of those skills in my career.”

She would soon need to draw on other career skills, such as flexibility. 

With the industry humming along, disaster struck in early 2011 when an earthquake and tsunami caused catastrophic damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan.  The industry retrenched immediately, sending Westinghouse – even though the plant was a competitor’s design – and others into a tailspin.  

Despite their company’s struggles, Chris and Laura managed to forge ahead with their own plans:  They married in Foxburg, Pa., in July 2011, with Laura doing most of the wedding planning online from China, while her parents did some of the local legwork.  They moved home in January 2012, buying a house sight-unseen in Harmony.

Once home, Laura served in several other roles at Westinghouse, supporting the construction of four U.S. plants, setting up internal programs to improve culture and safety, and leading the company’s research and development organization as director of innovation and strategy.  Still, the industry suffered and Westinghouse ended up filing for bankruptcy in 2017.

By that time, Laura and Chris had two little boys – Maxwell, now 7, and Weston, 5 – so they opted to diversify their income streams, with mom taking a job at Direct Energy for a year, followed by two years at NOVA Chemicals, where she worked in the corporate strategy organization.  A third boy, Elijah, arrived in early 2020.

Just a few months later, Westinghouse tapped Laura to come back as director of product management, with responsibility for leading the company’s drive to develop new products and services, especially beyond nuclear power.  Her duties include providing competitive market intelligence – there’s that West Point training again – so that product managers have the information they need to build growth strategies and increase market share.

“The industry is shutting down more nuclear plants than are being built,” she said.  “If we want to grow, we have to do some things differently, find different markets or come up with different kinds of plants that can serve different needs.  The corporation is leaning on our team for ideas; it’s challenging and we’re solving hard problems.  I love that my job is so diverse and so dynamic, and I love interacting with our people and trying to solve those problems.”

Laura also enjoys her role as a female leader, role model and mentor in the company.

“We had a corporate leadership strategy session recently, and someone asked me how it feels to be in a male-dominated field,” she said.  “Well, since day one in college I’ve been in that environment and I’ve used it as a source of motivation, pushing myself to the greatest extent possible, to rise to the challenge.  It’s also extremely important for me to mentor and coach, and I especially gravitate toward our engineers and younger employees around the world.  I try to consciously give back in ways that I can.”

Laura expressed higher career aspirations – “I want to continue to be challenged and lead at the next levels, to continue to grow and learn” – but she also made it clear that her favorite and most important job is being a mom.

“Being a mom is my end-all and be-all,” she said.  “I’m very lucky I have a fantastic husband and we lean on each other, and we also have great family support.  We’ve tried to set boundaries in our life.  We work hard when it’s work time, but when we’re not working we are present with our family doing what we love.”

That includes an active presence at Dutilh – at least until Covid hit – where they’ve attended for the past four years after moving to Cranberry Township.

“We loved family faith nights and I was planning to be a Saturday night teacher, so we were kind of hitting our stride before things shut down,” Laura said.  “We love Tom and Amy [Parkinson, the church’s senior pastor and his wife.]  They are special people for sure.  As a pastor, he is so powerful.  I feel changed after hearing him speak.  We also love the family and kid nature of the church, the wonderful children’s programs and how programs are adapted to all levels of life.”

Even Dutilh’s Mission Statement – Love God, Love Others, Love to Serve – reflects the powerful essence of what the Christian faith means to Laura.

“To love God, we start and end each day with prayer,” she said.  “We ingrain that in our kids, so it’s just part of their DNA.  To love others, my motto is to kill people with kindness.  Take the higher road and approach every situation with positivity and patience.  And you can serve in all aspects of life, at all levels.  On Veteran’s Day every year, I go back to my middle school and high school to talk about what it’s like to be a veteran, what serving means, how to serve your church.

“My faith is the foundation for everything I am.  At a young age, I decided I wanted to become a Christian, and that has influenced my decision making throughout my life, including how I work.  Faith resonates in my values and my word means everything; it’s the core essence of who I am.  When I say something at work, people know I mean it.  If you have a strong faith, it shows through your actions and words.”

No mystery there.

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If you or someone you know in the Dutilh family has an interesting story or profession, send us your ideas! We would love to help tell the story. Email: communications@dutilhumc.org.