WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP
Sonia Susac
President and Owner , TECMA by Judy Farah
Sonia Susac has been interested in space ever since she was a little girl . She would go out to her backyard at night and look up at the sky , gazing at the stars , planets and moon .
“ I grew up this little space geek ,” says Susac , president and owner of TECMA in Sacramento . “ People used to make fun of me for liking ‘ Star Wars ,’ ‘ Star Trek ’ and ‘ Battlestar Galactica .’ Because the reality is that my dad made a part that is sitting on the moon right now , the lunar lander .”
Susac ’ s father , Fred Schwarz , manufactured parts for the lunar lander , NASA ’ s spacecraft that landed on the moon ’ s surface as part of the U . S . Apollo program in the 1960s and 1970s . Schwarz founded TECMA , which stands for technical manufacturing , in 1957 in Sacramento . It now provides more than 250 precision , mission-critical , small-to-medium parts for NASA , the Department of Defense , Blue Origin and other aerospace agencies . TECMA has been involved in 84 space programs and produced parts for nearly every rocket engine and moon landing from Saturn and Apollo to the Space Shuttle .
Susac began helping out at TECMA when she was 8 years old , pulling weeds and doing some fill-in accounting work during college . Although she enjoyed working with her father , he discouraged her from getting into the gritty world of machinery and parts manufacturing . She earned a master ’ s degree in communications from Sacramento State instead .
She worked on and off at TEC- MA then took 10 years off to raise her family . During that time , she faced a life
“ Without precision machine shops , reaching the moon or Mars would just be a dream .”
challenge : In 2005 , she was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 38 . The cancer was caught early . Susac has since raised more than $ 250,000 for Susan G . Komen for breast cancer research . She is involved in the Sacramento-based Albie Aware Breast Cancer Foundation and continues to counsel women diagnosed with breast cancer . “ I will stop whatever I ’ m doing to take a call from someone who needs someone to talk to ,” she says .
With Susac ’ s son and daughter older and in school all day , she asked her father in 2010 if she could return to work . He said she could fill in for his assistant who was going on a monthlong vacation . Two weeks in , tragedy struck . Her father was killed in a car accident . “ I went from being responsible for the bookkeeping to being responsible for everything and every employee ’ s livelihood ,” she says . “ I didn ’ t want my dad ’ s loyal employees to lose their jobs because of a car accident .”
Susac used her organizational skills as a collegiate synchronized swimming coach to keep TECMA running . She called clients to tell them TECMA was still in business . Aerojet Rocketdyne , a longtime TECMA customer , sent workers over to help . Now , she can ’ t believe how far she ’ s come . Susac , a married mother of two , is proud to be the female owner of an aerospace business . A NASA representative visited TECMA to personally thank them for expediting a critical part for its space launch system . In 2021 , Susac met virtually with members of Congress to tell them about her company ’ s legacy during an aerospace conference to build support for deep space exploration .
“ Behind every great rocket scientist and space innovator is a humble machinist who physically makes the idea into a physical object , into reality ,” she says . “ Without precision machine shops , reaching the moon or Mars would just be a dream .”
Susac is very excited about NASA ’ s Artemis program , a U . S . -led international spaceflight program , which begins launching later in 2022 and plans to send the first woman and person of color to the moon . TECMA will provide more than 150 component parts for the mission .
“ I ’ m sitting at my dad ’ s desk and I sit there and go , I know why he loved this so much ,” she says .
Judy Farah is the managing editor of Comstock ’ s and the former news director / senior editor of KFBK radio . Online at www . judyfarah . com and on Twitter @ newsbabe1530 .
50 comstocksmag . com | March 2022