This time our spotlight is on Mark Calub.
Mark is a Senior Procurement Specialist at Beckman Coulter. He manages the “End of Life”, obsolete, discontinued computer systems and peripheral components. Beckman Coutler is the manufacturer of medical and clinical diagnostic instruments. Mark has been with them for 34 years!
Mark has worked in Procurement 25 years and graduated in 1986 from Cal State, Dominguez Hills with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business with a concentration in Marketing. He also earned a certificate in Purchasing and Materials Management in 1988 at UCLA Extension.
Mark entered the Procurement field while completing his education and working at Beckman Coulter. He was encouraged to pursue a career as a manufacturing planner. He made a decision to get his APICS certification, and took a few basic planning courses. But as fate would have it, a position opened up in Purchasing for an Assistant Buyer. At that point he knew that he wanted to enter into this field. He then went through the UCLA extension program and earned his Purchasing and Materials Management Certificate.
Mark enjoys the diverse personal interaction with all the disciplines within Beckman Coutler and more so with external suppliers. From his perspective, the enjoyable part of Procurement is that each day is different and not routine. Each day brings new priorities and challenges such as delivery challenges, quality issues, price negotiations, etc. With new products and the utilization of new technologies continuing to change his job, learning and getting hands on experience make his duties more intriguing every day.
One of Mark’s most challenging projects is happening right now. He’s currently involved in soliciting preliminary bids for a large portion of a major commodity at Beckman Coulter, and is qualifying suppliers for a reverse auction. This product has many issues that include decreased demand from their legacy products and keeping good relations with the current supplier, who has been invited to bid on his own business. It’ll be tough to maintain good relationships and still achieve their cost reduction goals.
Mark has been a member of NAPM-OC on and off for 25 years and can often be seen at many of the dinner meetings.
He has been married for 28 years to his lovely wife, Cristina. They have two sons and a daughter, all living in SoCal. Mark Jr.is a Sales Manager at a Jaguar/ Land Rover dealer in Beverly Hills (good to know!) Matthew is an EMT with the Long Beach Fire Department and Amy works in Accounting for a company in Hermosa Beach. Mark also has a 2 ½ year old grandson named Nicholas that keeps him pretty busy.
In his “spare time”, Mark has been very active in his church as the Sports Ministry Leader for the last 20 years and has been organizing and overseeing different adult sports leagues during that time. The purpose of the leagues is not to win games, but to provide a vehicle where people can come and fellowship together. It’s a time where people can meet other people, outside of the normal Sunday morning service, and just have fun.
NAPM-OC has eight dinner meetings a year and interesting, well-rounded professionals such as Mark attend on a regular basis. We hope to see you at a NAPM-OC dinner meeting soon.
