Meet the Team

With Meet The HARMAN Luxury Team, our goal is for you to get to know us better. In each edition we feature a different member of the team, and this month it's Noris Onea, Senior Coordinator, Customer Service for HARMAN Luxury Audio Group, HARMAN Professional Solutions and HARMAN Embedded Audio business units.

How would you describe what you do in your current role?

I help field technical support questions and tickets from customers, dealers, distributors and coworkers. My day-to-day involves collaborating with the customer success team, QA, devs, product, partners and design, to ensure that issues and tickets are pushed through the process of escalation/response.

What did you study in school? Did you always imagine yourself doing something like what you’re doing now or did the fates just take you in that direction?

I studied Computer Science at NYU, and I’ve always had a knack for computers since I was a little kid. I built my first desktop PC in middle school as part of the Dell Techknow program and things naturally grew from there. I had a feeling I would end up in the tech field, but I was unsure of where exactly. I explored software development in college, but ultimately I wanted something else, I just wasn’t sure what yet.

How did your career path lead you to HARMAN?

My first serious job after college was working in audio/video, doing custom installs for affluential clients in the NY area – Hamptons, Manhattan, upstate, etc. While in the world of AV, I ended up taking courses for Home Automation programming (Crestron mostly), and started focusing on home audio/video solutions. In my Crestron training, I also ended up taking some classes studying Digital Signal Processing to better understand the input/output signals of audio automation programming, and this is where I picked up my initial audio knowledge.

What is the most important thing you have learned over your career?

You need to have some flexibility, priorities can shift (and sometimes quickly). Knowing you have a solid team backing you up alleviates a lot of the stress surrounding change. Every single one of my coworkers is a rockstar, and I rely daily on them, as they rely on me.

Any other advice you would share with people just starting out in this industry?

Curiosity is a good trait to have. Having a mindset of “how do things work” and “how can you tinker around with products and ideas to make it work the way you want” are questions that are helpful to keep in mind.

What are you most proud of in your life?

“Making it” in America. When I first came to the U.S. in 1999, my family and I were diving headfirst into a brand new life with nothing in our pockets and no English fluency. My family and I had to learn the language and the American way of life from the ground up.

When did you realize you had a passion for music or audio? Was there any one band, song, or movie that did it for you?

Absolutely. Music has always been with me throughout life, but one of my favorite musical experiences was seeing Roger Waters at Nassau Colosseum (now known as Nikon theater in Long Island / NY) with the water in the background. At one point the song the Great Gig in the Sky started to play and it was almost as if perfectly timed, it started pouring rain. Everyone in the audience was drenched, but it was a very unique and unforgettable experience.

What current technology impresses you the most?

OpenAI’s Sora video generation technology feels like something that we’ve been progressing towards for a while, and it’s finally here. The released previews seem already very promising and I was shocked at how far we’ve come in AI generative stuff since my college days.

Favorite music genre?

Progressive rock and Big room house (EDM).

The desert island question, of course. If you were marooned for eternity and could listen to only three albums, what would they be?

Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon

Dream Theater – Octavarium

Robin Schulz - Uncovered

You have the floor. In closing, tell us anything else you want us to know about yourself.

Sure! I’m an avid SCUBA diver, one of my favorite dives was in Iceland at Silfra, and I touched two tectonic plates underwater at the same time! I have a 2^nd degree blackbelt in Shotokan Karate, and have trained in Krav Maga for several years. I co-authored a paper in the field of Artificial Intelligence while in college. I’m originally from the Transylvania area of Romania, but no, I am not a vampire.