AI, OT SCADA Con, and Big Updates: an Automation Ladies Catch-Up

Nikki Gonzales has spent 20 years working across industrial automation, AI, and technology commercialization. Her background spans sales engineering, early-stage startups, commercial leadership, advisory work, and industry media. She started at Keyence selling machine vision systems out of college, moved through Festo, CST/Dassault, and an AI supply chain startup called Algo before the term AI became a boardroom buzzword. That work gave her a grounded, practitioner-level view of what the technology can and can't do in real industrial environments.

Today Nikki is Director of Business Development at Weintek USA, where she works with OEM machine builders in packaging, robotics, and process equipment. She is also completing a certificate in AI: Implications for Business Strategy at MIT Sloan and CSAIL.

She co-founded Automation Ladies in 2022 with Alicia Gilpin. What started as a podcast has grown into 100+ episodes, a weekly newsletter, live events, and a community that reaches engineers, integrators, executives, and operators across the automation industry. In 2024, that community became the foundation for OT SCADA CON, a grassroots practitioner conference she co-founded in Houston focused on operational technology, SCADA, and controls.

She's been speaking at industry events since 2017, covering AI, IIoT, OT/IT convergence, and career development. She also serves on the Board of Directors at Process & Controls Energy, a CSIA-member control systems integrator founded by her co-host Alicia Gilpin.

People who know her well call her "Nikkipedia." Friends call her the Director of Silver Linings. Both are accurate.

Alicia Gilpin started as a process engineer and made her way into controls. That path turned out to be a good one. Over the past decade-plus she has worked across systems integration, field commissioning, hazardous location panel design, SCADA implementation, and OT network architecture in industries ranging from food and beverage to oil and gas to aerospace.

Her technical range is broad by design. Early roles at Maverick Technologies and Probat gave her exposure to DCS, PLC, HMI, and SCADA platforms across multiple vendors. At MBC Aerosol Filling Machinery she ran the electrical department, held the UL508A gatekeeper role, and designed control systems for hazardous classified locations from IO list to commissioning. At Harris Group she moved into senior controls engineering and proposals, adding network architecture, instrumentation specification, and project management to the mix.

In 2018, she founded Process & Controls Engineering LLC, a woman-owned CSIA member firm based in Seattle that delivers custom automation solutions, panel design, and controls engineering to clients across industrial markets. She has served as CEO since 2021.

Alicia co-founded Automation Ladies in 2022 with Nikki Gonzales. The podcast became the community, and the community became OT SCADA CON, a grassroots practitioner conference she co-founded in 2024 focused on operational technology, SCADA, and controls. Now in its third year, OT SCADA CON draws working engineers and technicians to Houston each summer for hands-on learning, honest conversation, and notably good food.

She also founded Kids PLC Kits in 2023, a project aimed at introducing the next generation to industrial automation concepts. Bilingual in English and Spanish, she holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, where she graduated valedictorian from high school before earning her EIT certification.

Courtney Fernandez is a controls and robotics engineer who has spent her career getting her hands on virtually every kind of industrial automation system there is. PLCs, robots, machine vision, motion controllers, electrical cabinets, 3D scanners, IO Link sensors. Her standing claim: give her a week with an unfamiliar IDE and she'll figure it out. Control logic is control logic.

She holds a Master's degree in Controls Systems and Robotics and a Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering from California State University, Long Beach, and is a member of Eta Kappa Nu Honor Society. Her early career included electrical engineering at Zero Motorcycles during its startup years and hands-on systems integration work at HNJ Solutions, where she led machine vision projects from concept through commissioning. She has worked with OEM machine builders, system integrators, and robotics companies including Universal Robots and United Robotics Group, and currently works as a Senior Robotics Hardware Engineer at Relativity Space.

In 2017, Courtney co-founded FAST One Solutions with her husband to provide automation engineering consulting and system design for small and mid-sized manufacturers who don't need a full-time engineer on staff but do need someone who actually knows what they're doing.

She joined Automation Ladies in 2022 as co-host, and has been a key voice in bringing honest, technically grounded conversations to the show ever since. She calls herself the Capybara of Industrial Automation. If you've spent any time around her, you'll get it.