Caitlin Tormey

Role: Consultant

Team: Amigo Acids

In this month's #TeamKC Spotlight, we showcase Caitlin Tormey, Consultant on the "Amigo Acids" team here at Karchem. Caitlin talks about her automation expertise, what makes a strong client partnership, and how her team was able to learn an entirely new system to serve a client.

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Caitlin Tormey’s Karchem journey started in a lab like many of her colleagues, but not as a traditional scientist. She studied mechanical engineering with a biomedical focus. An early career as a quality engineer built up her love of data management and gave her an appreciation for lab work. That took her to a data management opportunity at a small biotech company, and then finally to Karchem Consulting. 

“I loved what I was doing but knew I wanted to do it in a different capacity,” she said,  citing her excitement to collaborate with early-stage companies in a faster-paced industry. “Working under a female founder was also inspiring. That led me to Karchem.”

Caitlin spends her days learning quickly from her clients, soaking in every aspect of their work. 

“I get to see a lot of different projects, clients, and the cool science people are working on,” she said. 

One of those projects that stands out the most was a client deploying a system new to the entire Karchem team. 

“We went in and became experts on the system. They had an initial build, but we had to revamp everything from beginning to end as their workflow had evolved. It was very rewarding to see it go from its infancy to deployment,” she said.

Karchem collaborated with that client for more than a year to get their new system off the ground. Caitlin says that a strong partnership with clients and an understanding of best practices are what make for a successful client relationship.She currently leads one project supporting scientists across an organization. Recently, she has been especially focused on integrating instruments and automating data movement into and out of their Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) and Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS). 

“That’s where my strength lies– doing a lot of automation work, gathering data from instruments, and bringing it into the system the client is using,” she said. 

Caitlin says that strength and work ethic is mirrored in her colleagues, something that makes Karchem special. 

“The people here care about the clients, are collaborative, and want to help each other learn,” she said. 

Caitlin takes the discipline and passion she’s developed in the lab and at Karchem outside of the office, too– running half marathons and pushing herself with long hikes. 

“Being a consultant can feel like doing a marathon. It can be crazy, but it’s extremely rewarding. I love a challenge,” she said. 

Learn more about the Karchem Consulting team here.