Beto Dantas: Council of Outstanding Early Career Engineers - 2016

Beto Dantas began his undergraduate education at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte in his hometown of Natal, Brazil, and finished at Oregon State. He got his first job by participating in the Multiple Engineering Cooperative Program (MECOP) as an intern with Merix in Forest Grove, Oregon. While at Merix, Dantas developed an interest in connecting customer ideas to technology and was transferred to the San Francisco Bay Area as an account manager.

In 2000, he returned to Oregon as regional sales manager with Hallmark Circuits, and later became vice president of business development for the Americas and Europe with Multek. The next step up the ladder was a move to Multek’s parent company, Flextronics, where Dantas ultimately concluded his time with the company as vice president of innovation and new ventures. He recently joined ConMet.

Dantas said that the education he received at Oregon State gave him the tools necessary to be adaptable in his career. “I’ve had varying degrees of responsibilities, and every job was slightly different from the other,” he said. “Oregon State helped me be adaptable and an effective problem solver.”Creating a strong business network, which dates back to his first job after college, has been a critical part of his success. “Nothing in this world gets accomplished alone — you never do anything by yourself,” he said. In that vein, he remains an active champion for MECOP at ConMet, believing that a company is stronger when it engages early career talent.