Electric Connector

“I was always mechanically inclined and interested in science,” says Monica Merel SLC ’83, daughter of an electronics engineer, who spent summer vacations working on the assembly line at her parents’ factory building electronic controls that automate machinery. “I was fascinated by homes and buildings and the electrical systems that make them work.”

After Sarah Lawrence, Merel became an electrician, and more recently earned her M.B.A. from Rutgers University. She is owner and president of MGM Properties Electrical Contractors, the New Jersey company she founded five years ago.

“When I go into a space I tend to look up and around. I can ‘see through the walls,’ so to speak, since I understand how the structure has been built. It’s like the inside of the human body. All the physical systems are linked together like a puzzle. I’m looking at a building and seeing its skeleton, arteries, etc. It’s like being a doctor of buildings.”

—J.B.