Pia Wilson

Bio/Description

Procurement specialist/senior buyer

“What I enjoy most is that every day is different, and it provides new challenges in sourcing and trying to find the best product available at the best value.”

I am the Lab: Pia Wilson

PPPL’s approximately 600 employees support the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory’s primary scientific mission to develop the scientific understanding of plasmas and to develop the knowledge and engineering to enable fusion energy to power the U.S. and the world. Each month we will profile one of our employees at our U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory who exemplifies the wide variety of backgrounds, talents, and interests of our staff.

I am the Lab: Pia Wilson brings decades of experience purchasing components for New Jersey Transit trains to current position purchasing for PPPL’s fusion experiment

Quote: “what I enjoy most is that every day is different, and it provides new challenges in sourcing and trying to find the best product available at the best value.”

Name: Pia Wilson

How long at PPPL: Since 2019 

Position: Procurement specialist/senior buyer

Pia Wilson came to PPPL with 28 years of experience procuring spare parts and services for trains and light rail for New Jersey Transit before becoming a senior buyer for PPPL. Now she is in charge of purchasing components for upgrades on PPPL’s fusion experiment, the National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade (NSTX-U).

Wilson joined NJ Transit a year after graduating high school. She worked her way up to a manager of material purchasing for the Rail Operations Dept. of New Jersey Transit, She was responsible for purchasing of all “spare parts and services “ to support Rail Operations and a distribution center with approximately $100 million worth of inventory. After a brief retirement, she saw an ad for procurement at PPPL and it was a perfect fit. “It was a good for PPPL and a good fit for me!” she said.

“I love buying and being part of a team that makes a difference every day,” Wilson said. “You get to meet a lot of people as a buyer…It’s a lot of meeting and greeting and talking to other people and problem solving and that’s what I enjoy. And, of course I always feel like my contributions are valued and appreciated, so that’s the best part of it all.”

Wilson grew up in Newark, New Jersey. “We didn’t have a whole lot, but we had a lot of love,” she recalled. “My parents were very loving, and my mom always said, ‘You work hard, go to school further your education and you’ll do well.’” Wilson did just that, graduating from Union College in 2003, Rutgers Business School in 2007, and receiving an MBA from Saint Peter’s University in 2009. After her long career for the state, Wilson retired for about two years before being hired for her current job at PPPL.

Wilson and her husband Robert, who is in law enforcement, live in Hillside, New Jersey. They have three grown children, Pia, Charles, and Brittany, and two granddaughters, Nahayla, 12, and Nour, 2.

Please describe your job:

“I am the procurement specialist for the National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade and the Facility for Laboratory Reconnection Experiment (FLARE). It’s very interesting because it involves commodities that I’ve never purchased and I’m dealing with engineers and meeting a lot of new people and a lot of new suppliers. It’s a very interesting job and I like working on the NSTX-U project because of their goal to develop fusion energy. I think, ‘This is really important because it’s cutting edge technology that will make a difference in people’s lives.’”

Three things about yourself:

“I have a lot of empathy for people. I care about other people’s feelings.

“I love my family.”

“I believe in hard work and working together as a team and doing the right thing.”

What does working at PPPL mean to you?

“I love PPPL …I’ve found it to be a very welcoming and an open culture where ideas, viewpoints, and diverse cultures are valued. My experience there has so far been very good working with different cultures and different backgrounds and I’ve enjoyed working with everybody. I’m just happy to be a part of the University and PPPL and I look forward to many more years!”