Igniter Award Winners Support Their Colleagues — And the Lab’s Missions

The second annual NIF & Photon Science Igniter Awards recognize two team members, Sara Novell and Melissa Meier, who have gone above and beyond to inspire and support their colleagues to reach greater heights, both professionally and personally.

“They have exemplified the culture and the attitudes that are important to create a good working environment,” said NIF&PS Principal Associate Director Jeff Wisoff in announcing the awards in December. “This type of work culture helps drive world-class innovation and brings out the best in our workforce to meet the challenges of our national security missions.”

The Igniter Awards celebrate the people of NIF&PS who inspire others by “igniting” a positive, supportive work culture through inclusiveness and integrity. Novell and Meier were nominated for the award by their co-workers and selected by a review committee; each received a commemorative plaque and a cash award.

Fostering Team Interactions

Meier, who serves as NIF Cryogenic System manager, is a troubleshooter; she helps the Cryo team work through issues and find both short-term fixes and long-term solutions. She also generates, revises, and edits procedures to ensure that the team has the clearest and most up-to-date information, all while training the Cryo System operators.

In the Igniter Award nominations, Meier was praised by her colleagues for her positivity and kindness and for inspiring her team by emphasizing a supportive and participatory culture, ensuring everyone feels valued and respected. She was called a “champion of work group inclusiveness” for always fostering camaraderie and team interactions—particularly in ensuring the participation of the owl shift teams.

For example, she attends shift turnovers regularly “so that all four shifts can get the same information,” Meier said. “I try to make sure I touch base with every one of our operators, just to make sure that there’s no workplace climate issues, or if they do have any concerns that they feel they can bring them up so that we can get anything addressed that we need to.”

Meier also won praise for her performance of her technical responsibilities and for encouraging team members to become experts in specific subtopics, elevating her team’s overall knowledge and preparedness.

A native of Brooks, Georgia, Meier enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served as a chief petty officer aboard the aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Gerald R. Ford. While in the military, she received a degree in technology management at Excelsior University remotely.

She joined the Lab in 2018 as a Cryo System operator and continued her education, studying for an electrical engineering degree at the San Jose, California campus of DeVry University. She is currently pursuing an MBA degree at Golden Gate University in San Francisco.

Along with her supportive work activities, Meier hosts a spring “tie-dye event” for the Cryo group, “and so far, that's been an annual thing,” she said. “The guys seem to enjoy it. So I do what I can to try to make this a pleasant workplace for us.”

Building a Better Culture

Sara Novell, a mechanical engineer in the NIF&PS optics, material science, and technology group, works on the machines and equipment that prepare and transport optics from the Optical Processing Facility to NIF. She was cited by one nominator for “building a better culture for communications and comfort level with the team.”

Novell’s activities in support of fellow employees, interns, and NIF visitors range far and wide beyond her immediate job responsibilities. As another nominator wrote, "her actions inspire others to engage in outreach and inclusivity efforts.”

Early on, she coordinated Lab tours for the Summer Scholar Program, giving NIF&PS summer interns exposure to “all the places at the Lab where you can grow your career,” she said. That effort led her to become a current NIF tour guide, representing NIF to its many visitors.

Novell is also on the leadership committee of the Early Career Employee Resource Group, coordinating events “that support our early career employees, both as workers at the lab, and also as people,” she said.

One such event is the November Mentoring Program Roadshow, where mentoring programs across the Lab set up booths and provide an opportunity for both early career and veteran employees to meet, learn about the Lab’s mentoring programs, “and hopefully, in an ideal world, network and connect,” Novell said.

A native of Livermore, Novell attended Granada High School; as a senior she developed an interest in engineering and attended an engineering pathway course for freshmen at Livermore High School. “I like solving problems and I like working with people, and engineering has a really good combination of those two things,” she said.

She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and started working at the Lab as an intern in 2017, returning in 2018 and 2019. She was finally hired full-time in July 2020—“right in the middle of the pandemic,” she said. “I’m still working in the group that I interned with over seven years ago. I was very lucky to have my internship experience help me through the tough starting time of July 2020. It helps to know people and have really supportive co-workers and leadership through all of that.”

Along with her many other activities, Novell participates in the Engineering Ombuds program, “which has really helped me understand the culture of Lawrence Livermore Lab and understand where we're succeeding and where we have areas of growth,” she said. “It's always amazing to see what our employees can overcome and how we can support them.”

Committee members who reviewed this year’s Igniter nominations were Henry Hui, Kathleen McCandless, Vanessa Peters, Debbie Bradford, Jonathan Stevers, Patrick Poole, and Dwayne Merrill.

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