Edith Hernandez

Edith Hernandez found a spot at her usual lab bench. Everything felt the same, even 25 years after her final college class – the gray countertops, white walls, metal stands, scales, Bunsen burners. Her classmates – now fellow alumni – chatted with their professor, who still commanded the classroom after all these years. On this day, she was teaching a chemical reaction class during Edith’s reunion at Tecnológico de Monterrey.

The cylinders, multineck flasks, condensers, and separatory funnels looked just as they did when Edith was a chemical engineering student. But one detail struck her almost immediately.

“It was all PYREX,” Edith said, beaming.­

Edith is an operations and strategy senior manager in Corning’s Life Sciences’ (CLS) facility in Monterrey, Mexico – the only CLS glass plant in the world. Simply put, PYREX® is Edith’s career, and it started in this classroom.

“In school, our professor said, ‘If you break something, you have to replace it, but you have to replace it with PYREX because it’s the best in the world,’” Edith recalled. “I felt so proud to see it in the classroom during my visit. When you have this prominent school taking care of the new generation of scientists and introducing them to this vital labware, it is so important.”

After graduation, she joined CLS as an engineer, working her way from supply chain to Monterrey plant manager to product line manager to operations and strategy. She may just be PYREX’s biggest spokesperson.

“PYREX has been in the market for more than 100 years, and there’s a reason for that,” Edith said. “Because of its ability to withstand differences in temperature, it breaks less, and that’s safer in labs. We are part of important discoveries and scientific moments through the years, like the polio vaccine and penicillin. And PYREX continues to be the standard in labs where scientists do critical research.”

Edith’s love of labware goes back to her childhood. Enduring routine lab procedures for her allergies, young Edith became enamored by glass tubes and white coats. She asked for a chemistry set for Christmas.

“I thought, ‘I’d like to be a chemist,’” she said. “Santa brought that set to me, and I was the happiest girl ever.”

She chose Tecnológico de Monterrey for its prominence in the chemistry field in Latin America. Many of her classmates, those who have remained close friends, talked about careers at Corning. Twenty-four years since joining the company, she reflects on her journey with warmth.

“If I have done something at Corning, it is because of the people,” Edith said. “I am filled with respect for what they do.”

Not only did Edith learn about Corning through her university, but it’s where she met her husband as well. She remembers the first time he carried her bulky chemistry book, and when he asked to join her dance group in 1995.

Together, they danced and studied, and eventually married in 2004. At their 15^th graduation anniversary, they put on a performance at the university. Their children got to see their mother and father dancing for the first time.

“My kids were in the first row of the theater, so I remembered to look at their faces,” she said. “They were like, ‘Wow, those are my parents, and they are dancing.’”

Edith and her family do everything together. Gael, 17, Axel, 12, and Aime, 10 – named after cultural figures – like to travel as a family. They go to restaurants, the movies, family barbecues, and the theater.

Edith convinced her older son to enroll in Tecnológico de Monterrey, bringing two circles to a close – one where she started a family and another where she started a career. She laughs to think that PYREX was there through it all.