Tommy Cristobal

Tommy Cristobal was recognized as the 2023 Employee of the Year. He started at Valin in 2004 as a Buyer/Planner in the Materials Control group. He was later promoted to Materials Supervisor before transitioning into Customer Service as a Customer Service Manager. In 2021, Tommy was promoted to Customer Service Director of Semiconductor and Automation to build a service team to support Valin's key OEM customers. His willingness to dig into problems, data, and systems has made him a power user of P21, and has earned him a reputation across the organization, with customers and suppliers as a problem solver and solutions seeker.

Over the last two years, Tommy has managed through the up and down of the most recent Semiconductor ramp. We all saw the very fast ramp in revenue in our numbers which fared well for all employees at Valin, and then just as quickly the decline as the market oversaturated. What most did not see was the sheer volume of work and the customer gauntlet the Semi team managed to achieve those numbers and then retain the business when the market corrected. Tommy led the Customer Service team to understand the changing needs of our customers and then worked internally and externally to align data and automate data flows to increase the speed of our communications to customer demands. The team accelerated their efforts to automate as many tasks as possible to free their time to assist our key customers with a high level of support.

Due to the fast-paced competitive environment, semiconductor is a very cut throat industry, and customers are very demanding. Tommy manages our customers very professionally and respectfully, even when conversations would at times get heated. He is always calm and prepared with data to answer their questions on the spot. It is quite impressive and demonstrates how conscientious he is to know the customers and anticipate their needs.

Thank you, Tommy, for your contributions that demonstrate value to our teams, customers, and suppliers.