Trucks are Megan Gegesky’s passion, and they have been as far back as she can remember.

“I learned to drive in a truck,” says Gegesky, who channeled her lifelong passion into a career that’s drawn attention over the past few years, including in the Detroit area, where she lives and works.

Gegesky is a fifth-generation Ford Motor Company employee. She’s continuing the tradition started by her great-great-grandfather, John Millos Sr., who joined Ford after his arrival in the United States from Romania in 1906.

Gegesky is also a second-generation S&T graduate. She earned her master’s degree in mechanical engineering in 2016, arriving in Rolla exactly 50 years after her father, P. Scott Gegesky, began working toward his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering, which he earned in 1968. He went on to earn both a master’s and professional degree in mechanical engineering from Missouri S&T in 1970 and 1999, respectively. A career-long Ford employee, he received the university’s alumni service award in 1996 and is a member of Missouri S&T’s Academy of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineers.

Today, the younger Gegesky is a program management supervisor focused on the Ford F-150 Lightning, the all-electric version of Ford’s flagship pickup truck. She joined the Lightning team in early 2021. When the truck launched in 2022, the Lightning pickup won praise from the automotive press as the company’s “most revolutionary” offering since the introduction of the Model T in 1908.

Gegesky thinks of her team as the “mom and dad” of the vehicle.

“There are teams that deal with the components, but program management brings it all together,” she says. “Whether it’s content, packaging, strategy, finance or marketing, we execute what’s best for the customer.”

Gegesky says the diversity of F-150 Lightning buyers makes meeting customer requirements a complex undertaking. A utility company purchasing a truck for its fleet, for example, has specifications that are very different from those of a customer in the market for luxury features, like leather upholstery and sophisticated sound systems. Her team gathers customer feedback from dealers, traditional media outlets and social media platforms and apps.

Gegesky says her engineering background is critical to her role.

“I have to understand how things are made and how they come together,” she says. “If we want to change something in the heating of a seat based on customer feedback, I need to understand how that component functions.”

Her knowledge of how teams function is something she credits largely to her time at Missouri S&T.

“At S&T, I learned to work with groups where there’s a huge diversity of thought, and accepted the fact that everyone arrives at their solutions via different paths,” she says. “That’s been tremendously helpful throughout my career.”

While her employer is one of the oldest and most iconic companies, Gegesky says she often feels like she works at a startup.

“This isn’t just a Tesla with five seats,” she says. “It’s an electric vehicle and a truck. That space is different and it’s fast-paced. No two days are ever the same.”

Working at the intersection of engineering and the environment

Gegesky describes herself as “a bit of an environmentalist.” In her personal life, she strives to be as plastic-free as possible. When she does buy new things for herself, she rejects the notion of ‘fast fashion’ and buys for longevity. She wears boots made of 100 percent recycled materials, and she tries to buy from brands that are working toward net zero, which refers to the practice of balancing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced by human activities with the amount removed from the atmosphere.

Her employer’s environmental practices are yet another reason she feels she belongs at Ford.

“Ford believes sustainability is critical,” Gegesky says. “Beyond the truck line I work on, Ford practices zero waste to landfills and is working toward zero emissions on new vehicles.”

Gegesky is passionate about sustainability. She’s also realistic, and she focuses on progress rather than perfection, personally and professionally, at home and at work.  

“I have a lawn that I fertilize, and I use plastic bins for storage, but I try to reuse as much as possible,” she says.

For electric vehicles to be widely adopted beyond local use will require new infrastructure and a shift toward more planning, but Gegesky believes they are here to stay.

“Batteries are evolving, and charging stations are becoming more common in some places,” she says.

Kicking the tires

Gegesky says her F-150 Lightning delivers benefits she’d expect of any Ford truck, electric or otherwise. She can haul 2,000 pounds in the bed. After she took him for a ride, her truck’s torque-on-demand was described as ‘spectacular’ by her father, a former Ford employee and drag racer. She vouches for the truck’s ability to accelerate to 105 miles per hour – with plenty of acceleration left over.

As an electrical vehicle, her truck delivers an additional set of benefits. Gegesky considers it a charging station on wheels. She uses it to charge her electric chain saw while she’s working in the yard. And it can provide power for televisions, refrigerators and other appliances, which makes it great for tailgating and camping trips. And rather than filling up at the pump, she plugs her vehicle into her house.

And, to top it all off, Gegesky says her truck has a calming effect.

“It’s the quietest thing in the world,” she says. “Having that quiet space between work and home is something I wasn’t expecting, but it really helps my mental energy.”

About Missouri University of Science and Technology

Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students located in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T offers over 100 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top public universities for salary impact, according to the Wall Street Journal. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu.