Nancy E. Uridil

Purdue has always been part of Nancy’s life, starting with being born in Lafayette while her father was earning his doctorate in microbiology from Purdue. Graduating from high school in Los Angeles, she chose Purdue for college.

The theme running through her career is one of being a “builder.” This building theme had its birth in Civil Engineering at Purdue. She started off building technologies and organizations, then products and brands and – finally – global businesses. Nancy says that as long as she is building, she is happy.

While in Civil Engineering, Nancy especially enjoyed structures and fluid mechanics. She still remembers one of her first “building lessons” from Professor Lee who said: “You don’t get partial credit if your bridge falls down.” The sheer scale of the fluids lab provided intrigue and fascination perhaps inspired by Bernoulli himself.

While at Purdue, Nancy began an impactful association with the Society for Women Engineers. SWE helped her get a summer internship at Procter & Gamble that lead to her first full time job as an engineer.

For the next 39 years, Nancy built every aspect of global supply chains, multitudes of new products, innovative organizations and iconic brands with Procter & Gamble, Mary Kay, Estée Lauder, and Moen. She spent 17 of those years as a Senior Vice President on executive teams.

Nancy retired from Moen in 2014 having lead Global Operations for almost nine years. She now continues her commitment to building the economic vitality of the U.S. through her service on two diverse corporate boards – the Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati and Flexsteel Industries, a publically owned furniture company.

Nancy considers one of her most successful building endeavors to be the family she built with her husband, Frank Bossu, who earned his doctorate in Chemistry from Purdue (1976). His career has spanned innovation, research, teaching, and sports. Their daughter, Christen, earned her Bachelor’s from Purdue (2002) followed by her doctorate at Yale. She lives in Stockholm, doing post doc research in evolutionary biology. Their son, Dave, is a civil engineer (PE) from USC, leading consulting engineering in renewable resource technology and lives in Southern California with his wife.

Nancy is deeply grateful to the School of Civil Engineering for providing an extraordinary foundation for her to build her life and career.