Monica Pheifer is a Principal Lecturer for the Riccio Graduate Engineering Leadership Program (GradEL) at MIT. She joined the team in 2024 to help develop new curriculum content focused on team experiences with real-world engineering challenges and to support the GradEL Engineering Residency, a high-impact internship experience offered exclusively to high-performing GradEL students to put their classroom learning into practice as a team member at a leading company.
Prior to joining MIT, Monica spent 15 years in industry with Johnson & Johnson. Her career spanned several roles of increasing responsibility across both the Medical Device and Consumer divisions. Her breadth of experience covers Supply Chain, Quality, Design, Operations, and Project Management with particular depth in Quality Systems for Medical Devices and Capability Development for Supply Chain professionals. While with Johnson & Johnson, Monica earned her 6 Sigma Black Belt and graduated from multiple internal leadership development programs: the Global Operations Leadership Development (GOLD) Program and the Shaping Talent & Accelerating Results (STAR) Program.
Monica holds a Bachelors degree in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a Masters in Engineering Management from Tufts University. For 8 years, while working at J&J she also developed and taught an Engineering Management course to engineering undergraduates at Tufts University. She has a real passion for Process Improvement and Talent Development. In her free time, Monica is an avid gamer enjoying all kinds of games (board, card, tabletop, video) and has fun partnering with her husband to train their adorable Samoyed, Haku, who sometimes chooses listen to them.