06/25/2025
Meet Erik, Senior Manager, Service Operations, and learn about his 35+ year journey with STERIS – which started out with a role as STERIS’s very first equipment service technician.
Prior to STERIS, Erik worked in international data communications at a company that was later bought out. “A friend of mine and I were doing some electrical contracting work, and I wanted to pursue that. He did not. So, I started looking for bigger jobs, and that’s when I found STERIS.”
In 1989, Erik joined as the Company’s 22nd Associate. Erik was to become a dealer representative, but plans changed shortly after he was hired. Erik’s knowledge and dedication made him the perfect fit for a role in technical service. His first major task? Write the service manual. “We were so small. There was no training program in place yet, so I got to work. I learned a lot about the system—I had to work with Engineering, gather documentation, and figure out how things worked.” Along with the second Service Tech who was hired shortly after Erik, they worked on drawings and schematics to write the theory of operation.
Erik spent most of his early days at STERIS traveling—sometimes visiting both coasts of the United States in the same week. “There were systems locally in Ohio and Pennsylvania, but there were also systems in Montana and Florida, which weren’t easy to get to. I averaged about 20 flights a week during that year.”
Erik says even in the beginning he knew STERIS was going places. Read more from him below.
