Alum spotlight: Ester Bergen

Ester (Barbuto) Bergen ('08) started on her journey to Carnegie Mellon's Department of Chemical Engineering by creating "potions" and baking as a child.

"I loved mixing things together and building things with my hands," Bergen recalls. With the encouragement of her mother and her teachers, Bergen excelled in her high school chemistry classes. Bergen's mother always encouraged her to take the more challenging path, which led Bergen to pursue chemical engineering, hoping to apply the skills she learned in chemistry to an entirely new subject matter.

As a Pittsburgh native, Bergen was always aware of Carnegie Mellon University. From attending piano competitions at the College of Fine Arts as a young child, to eventually participating in CMU's pre-college programs, she was introduced to CMU's culture early. Bergen's older sister was a student at the School of Architecture, and she fondly remembers visiting her sister on campus. Bergen explains that mixing her connections to CMU and her interest in chemical engineering together created an easy decision in terms of her college search.

"CMU just seemed right," she says. "I knew it was a place where I could be challenged and where I could have fun."

Bergen recalls a number of professors who served as mentors to her throughout her degree program. Remembering Neil Donahue jumping around the classroom while giving enthusiastic lectures, she says, "It was amazing to have someone passionately talk about science. That energy really inspired me."

Bergen's sophomore seminar lecturer, Gary Powers, would often emphasize how valued both the work and the students themselves were. She recalls being incredibly inspired and motivated by the responsibility she had as a ChemE student to make a difference in the world, thanks to Powers.

During her junior and senior years, Bergen served as president of CMU's chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). She remained involved after graduating, serving as the Hampton Roads professional section president and on the SWE Board of Trustees for nine years. Today Bergen remains an active member of SWE and mentors others, even while busy juggling both her career and family. She hopes to become more involved again in the future.

Jobs that exist today aren’t going to be the jobs that exist in 10 years. Developing skills that allow you to adapt, change, and create is so important.

Ester Bergen, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft

After completing her degree at CMU, Bergen worked on Wall Street and then pursued a role in management and strategy consulting. Seven years later, she took a step back to think about where she wanted to go with her career. Bergen wanted to mix her finance, strategy, and chemical engineering skills together to create something of value. She went back to school for an MBA. An internship in product marketing at Microsoft gave her a deeper understanding of both the products being sold and the inner workings of the company and led to her current career there. Bergen has worked on engineering teams for different products, including working on user features for the consumer version of Microsoft Teams.

Bergen is now a product manager at Microsoft, working on Microsoft Office products. She specifically works on APIs that allow users to refine their experience with software like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. "Being able to learn about technology quickly, ask questions, go deep, and understand the details are skills I learned at CMU and use every day," Bergen says.

Bergen recommends that current ChemE students take time to build these foundational skills, no matter how challenging. "Jobs that exist today aren't going to be the jobs that exist in 10 years," she says. "Developing skills that allow you to adapt, change, and create for the future is so important."