2020 Award Winners

Karl Zimmer has served as President & CEO of Premium Peanut since July 2015. Formed in the fall of 2014 and located in Douglas, Georgia, Premium Peanut is a grower-owned peanut sheller with close to $200 million in annual revenue, processing close to 10% of the U.S.’s peanut crop in addition to its recent expansion into peanut oil production. Prior to joining Premium Peanut, Karl Zimmer spent close to fourteen years with a Fortune 500 global manufacturer of copper and aluminum wire & cable products, where his last assignment was as Senior Vice President Sub-Saharan Africa, Global Supply Chain, and Europe & Africa Product Supply. In these roles, for which he and his wife lived in Barcelona, Spain, he led all manufacturing, engineering, and supply chain activities across two continents, encompassing 12 plants and over 2,000 associates. Mr. Zimmer received a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Cincinnati in Ohio and resides in Douglas, Georgia with his wife Joan.

Sabrina Ali graduated from Washington State University with a BS in Mechanical Engineering in December 2019. During the summer of 2019, Sabrina worked as a Process Engineering Intern at Plexus Corp., at the Boise manufacturing facility.

Her main project revolved around identification of harmful substances. The previous summer, Sabrina worked as an Electrical Engineering Intern at Hargis Engineers in downtown Seattle and was exposed to the build-design industry. Through this internship, she was introduced to energy compliance, photometrics, fault studies and overcurrent protection. Sabrina recently accepted a position as an Instrumentation and Controls Electrical Engineer at Enercon Services Inc., in Richland, WA.

Zachary Montoya is studying Chemical Engineering at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. Zachary was nominated by NMSU’s College of Engineering based on his outstanding achievements as a Co-Op employee in the Technical Services organization at Jabil Healthcare where he has successfully completed two Co-Op rotations at Jabil’s Healthcare facilities in Albuquerque. In his role as a Co-Op, he was assigned work among a $15 million-dollar initiative to implement new equipment for Class II and Class III medical devices. His supervisors at Jabil shared that Zachary has delivered excellent results on increasingly challenging assignments and quickly became a “go-to” person in the organization, where he has displayed his leadership skills and also created a training curriculum on vision systems for the maintenance personnel. As a result of his outstanding accomplishments, Jabil has extended Zachary’s assignment and has transitioned him to a staff position while he completes his degree.