The tone is light, lively and fun.
Discussion centers on popular plastics industry topics and people who inspire the trade.
Subjects range from CEOs, production managers, and management consultants to sales and marketing directors, and product safety engineers.
“We wanted to do something as an excuse to hang out more and to educate people about the plastics industry,” said Lynzie Nebel, a plastics engineer at Erie-based TechTank and co-host of the podcast “PlastChicks — The Voices of Resin!”
Since March 2018, Nebel, 35, and Mercedes Landazuri, 38, a Chicago resident and member of the Society of Plastics Engineers, have teamed to provide a colorful, informative presentation of interviews and news pertinent to their profession.
Nebel is a Harborcreek Township resident and native of Hamburg, New York. She graduated from Penn State Behrend in 2008, earning a degree in plastics engineering technology.
Nebel has worked at TechTank since 2018 as a program and project engineer. The Erie company, at 1524 E. 10th St., is a plastics injection molding business founded in 2016.
“There’s not that many women in this industry and Mercedes had been featured in a profile,” Nebel said. “My husband was reading an article on her and he said, ‘She’s kind of like you.’ ”
Nebel eventually met the woman who would become her co-host at a 2017 industry conference in Anaheim, California.
“We met up and hit it off and got along ridiculously well,” Nebel recalled.
“They grab a person from industry once a month and start to talk about their specific facets, like how they got started,” TechTank owner Brock Allen said. “They basically do an interview and talk about interesting, new developments in the industry. … I think Lynzie has a fun, bubbly personality. So does Mercedes.”
The women release one podcast per month. Shows vary in length from 15 minutes to 1 hour. Their podcast, sponsored by the Society of Plastics Engineers, can be found at http://bit.ly/plastchicks and on many podcast player apps.
Allen says the women have built a fan base during their 2½-year run with the show.
“We’ve had vendors come into our building and they would see Lynzie doing a show and they would ask, ‘Is she one of the PlastChicks?’ ” Allen said. “There’s a lot of people in the industry who listen to that podcast.
Lynzie is very involved and very connected with clubs and societies in the plastics industry. I think the two of them form a very interesting dialogue with some of the people they have.”
Lately, the women have been presenting both podcasts and video streams of their recording sessions.
“We talk to a lot of people who have cool jobs and we talk to people who weren’t traditionally in the plastics field and moved into the industry,” Nebel said. “We thought we were doing it more for us, but people say, ‘Hey, are you one of the PlastChicks?’ We have industry people asking if they can be on the show. We usually have a list of four or five people who want to be on it.”
Public feedback has been positive.
“They say they like it because we make it fun,” Nebel said.
Contact Ron Leonardi at rleonardi@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter@ETNLeonardi.
About PlastChicks
PlastChicks — The Voices of Resin! A new plastics podcast hosted by Lynzie Nebel and Mercedes Landazuri, discussing popular plastics topics and the people inspiring the industry! Tune in every month on your favorite podcast directory for a new episode of PlastChicks featuring a guest interviews. This podcast is sponsored by SPE-Inspiring Plastics Professionals.
Listen to the latest episodes at
https://www.4spe.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=4743
