June 2006

Profiles of Success

Celeste Bottorff, B.S. 1975, Physics

Celeste Bottorff was born in Louisville, KY during Derby week—“Dark Star won the Derby that year!” she says—and grew up on the Indiana side of the Ohio River, in Clarksville. She decided to become a physicist when she was about 10 years old after her family visited Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

“I got a ‘radioactive’ souvenir dime there and the story about its half life fascinated me,” she says. “I was hooked!”

Celeste says she chose Purdue because her college research showed that the physics department was considered one of the best in the country. “I was interested in the space program at that time, so Purdue’s reputation in that area played a role in my decision,” she says. “I have to admit that the in-state tuition was also an attractive feature!”

Celeste says that her best memories of her student days are of her physics lab experiences. “I really enjoyed my evening job at the accelerator. Not only was the work interesting, but the graduate students were willing tutors and would let me use their computer access numbers, saving me hours of waiting!” She also enjoyed a thermodynamics class where she constructed a “rubber band heat engine” with a movie reel and some rubber bands. “It took a lot of time to build, but I was delighted when it actually worked the first time and produced consistent data for my experiment,” she says.

Outside the classroom, Celeste was active in the Student Volunteer Corp and her sorority, Alpha Omicron Pi. She also loved playing intramural sports, especially basketball. “The athletics were a welcome break from the academic intensity,” she says. “I also loved everything about Grand Prix week. It was the best week of the year for fun.”

Celeste worked at the accelerator at Fermilab for two years after she graduated from Purdue. She was an engineer for General Electric and American Air Filter before returning to graduate school. Celeste earned her MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia in 1983. “I enjoyed my experience at Mr. Jefferson’s university a great deal,” she says. “It’s in a beautiful location and the graduate business program prepared me well.”

Celeste became a consultant for McKinsey & Co., working on strategy and marketing projects for Fortune 500 technology companies for several years. She held a variety of strategy and marketing positions before joining the Coca Cola Company.

“At Coca Cola, I currently manage a group who develops insights, strategies and marketing programs to assist our Foodservice customers in building their businesses,” she says. “Foodservice is a very challenging business, so operators look to Coca-Cola to provide them with insights into consumers and fresh ideas about how to better meet the changing consumer tastes. My group is responsible for mixing both research and creativity to develop those ideas.” Coca Cola recently partnered with the Culinary Institute of America to create specialty beverage ideas and to use both science and experience to pair those beverages with various foods. “The program has been a hit with consumers and has helped our customers differentiate themselves,” she says.

Celeste recently joined the College of Science Alumni Board. “I became reacquainted with Purdue and the College of Science last year when I attended an alumni event in Atlanta. After hearing about all the great things going on at the school, I decided that I should get involved again,” she says. “Although I don’t work in science currently, the principles of problem-solving that my science education inspired have been the keys to my career success. I am still interested in science subjects, so the Alumni Board was a way for me to explore those interests and give back to the school.”

Celeste hopes to help attract talented students to Science at Purdue. “I’m a big believer that science research is critical to long term economic growth for our country,” she says. “It’s important that we maintain our position as a leader in science, and that depends on the quality and quantity of students we can recruit into science as well as how well we prepare them.”

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