The Outreach Program That Sparked a Full-Circle Journey
How a hands-on outreach program helped inspire a future engineer and ultimately brought her career back to Zimmer Biomet
In 2018, a high school junior stepped into a Perry Outreach Program hosted by Zimmer Biomet with curiosity, ambition and an interest in understanding how engineering could shape lives. What she experienced that day—hands-on engineering challenges, orthopedic surgical simulations and mentorship from female surgeons and engineers—sparked a passion that would shape her future.
Today, that passion has come full circle. The student who once walked our halls, Elena Parial, is now one of Zimmer Biomet’s newest Quality Engineers, returning in August 2025 to contribute to the very work that first inspired her. Her journey shows how early exposure to STEM opportunities can spark lasting career paths and how industry partnerships can help build the next generation of orthopedic innovators.
Advancing Women in Orthopedics and STEM
For more than a decade, the company along with the ZB Foundation has partnered with The Perry Initiative on their charitable mission to inspire young talent to pursue careers in orthopedic surgery and engineering. Every fall, the Perry Outreach Program is held in Warsaw, Ind., welcoming up to 40 high school students from surrounding school districts for hands-on activities, mentorship and real-world exposure to orthopedic procedures and technologies. Local Zimmer Biomet team members volunteer during the program to share their expertise and assist the students as they learn more about orthopedics. For Elena, that experience made a lasting impression.
“I already knew I wanted to pursue engineering,” Elena Parial noted. “The biomedical field was also one of my interests, so I figured the program would help me see how these fields come together and what career paths might look like.”
What she found was an experience unlike anything she had encountered in a classroom.
“The most memorable moments of the program were suturing a pig leg and using a hand saw in the sawbones lab,” she recalled. “I also remember using a mallet to drive a wooden dowl rod into a broken femur. At the time, I couldn’t believe the force that goes into surgery—and honestly, I still can’t.”
A Path Shaped By Curiosity
In the fall of 2020, Elena traveled to Purdue University to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering. While her coursework did not include biomedical engineering classes, her academic path continued to intersect with medical technology. She joined a research lab focused on additive manufacturing, where a colleague’s doctoral work explored hybrid additive manufacturing with potential applications for biomedical implants.
That research opened her eyes to a new dimension of engineering.
“It got me thinking about the possibilities of customizing implants to meet each patient’s unique needs,” Elena remembered. “That eventually brought me back here.”
A Full-Circle Moment
As Elena searched for full-time roles while finishing up her master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Purdue University, she knew she wanted to work in healthcare, applying engineering to technologies that improve patients’ lives. During the interview process, she met future coworkers and toured one of the manufacturing facilities, an experience that helped her picture herself on the team.
She joined the team as a Quality Engineer on the process monitoring team, focused on overseeing packaging and cleaning process across multiple product lines.
Looking back, Elena says it’s rewarding to realize how that high school outreach experience helped shape her path.
“It’s fulfilling to think that I’m now contributing to the company that gave me one of my first biomedical engineering experiences,” she noted. “Eight years ago, I had no idea where I would end up. Now when I look back, it just makes sense that I ended up at Zimmer Biomet.”
Building the Future of Orthopedics
Elena’s journey reflects both the company’s broader commitment and the ZB Foundation’s funding pillars by investing in early career talent at every stage of the pipeline through:
- Long-standing partnerships with organizations like The Perry Initiative to spark interest in STEM at an early stage
- Robust internship and co-op programs that offer real world experiences to college-aged students
- Mentorship and development opportunities to support students as they transition to full-time roles
Programs like The Perry Initiative help students imagine themselves in STEM careers, particularly in fields like orthopedics where women have historically been underrepresented.
“Getting into STEM can be intimidating,” Elena said. “Programs like this give students hands-on learning and the chance to meet professionals in roles they might want in the future. That kind of exposure can be eye-opening.”
Partnerships like this represent more than community engagement; they’re an investment in the future of orthopedic innovation. And for Elena, they represent something even more personal: the starting point of a journey that ultimately led her back to the place where she first discovered her passion for healthcare.
