blog-header.jpg

Blog

Meet Amanda (Hentz) Vogtmann, Class of 2005

Posted by Whitney Dotson on Sep 26, 2022 3:30:00 PM

In Amanda’s senior LCL yearbook, Mr. Brazgel, Mr. Bahr, and Mr. Hoffman made a prediction of what she would be doing 20 years later. “Professional student working on her fourth doctorate degree, CEO of Hentz Financial Corporation, or astronaut.” While none of those happened, the course of her life that began leaning towards those areas led her to exactly where she wanted to be. 

LCL Alumni“I went to college at the University of Notre Dame. In high school, I always especially liked math and science, so I initially selected aerospace engineering as my major because it’s science-y and it sounded cool. My freshman year of college, I realized I wasn’t a fan of college-level physics, but I loved programming, so I switched my major to Computer Science.”

After college, Amanda applied to jobs both back in Wisconsin and elsewhere. She accepted a position at an engineering firm in New York. Moving and living out of state seemed to be the right opportunity once again. She has been at the company ever since, moving into different roles over the years. She also received her Masters in Systems Engineering as part of a development program in the company. In this program, she met many fellow members around her age which became her new friend group. 

She and her now-husband Nick met through the program and continue to work in the same company on different projects. They have two boys, Jonathan (5) and Samuel (3) and will celebrate their 10-year anniversary this summer. They also found a church for their family in New York.

Amanda currently works part-time as the Deputy Integration and Test lead for a large program’s software. She helps set up an automated test environment that runs the software they’re developing through a series of tests every night. She maintains that environment, writes tests for it, investigates if things go wrong and why it happened, and gets it fixed. This summer, she’s spending more time training two summer interns and a new engineer to write those tests.

Looking back on her time at LCL, a cross country experience sticks out in her mind. This is when the school was building extra-curricular programs from the ground up. “I was one of 3 members (and the only girl) on the cross country team my sophomore year. The whole team fit very comfortably in Mr. Newman’s Jeep. We finally got a couple more girls on the track team by my junior year. This all was excellent practice for being one of the few women around in any particular context in engineering!”

Reflecting on her (almost) 20-year prediction, Amanda had to laugh. “I guess astronaut is the closest, even if I did ultimately pick a different area of engineering. Working on my masters while I also had a full-time job put me off of trying to do any more schooling after that, and I have no desire to be a CEO of anything or even a manager. I moved to part-time work after my first son was born and I wouldn’t want it any other way. The balance between still keeping a foot in the engineering world but also having more time for my family and my household has been wonderful.”

Her final thought was of expectations. “I’ve always been seen as ‘the smart one’ who should eventually do something super amazing and flashy and headline-worthy, but over the years I’ve realized that I’m honestly happiest living my quiet little life with my family and my comfortable job.”

Subscribe to Email

Recent Posts

Posts by Topic