After 10 years in corporate communications, I thought no organization announcement could surprise me. There was one period, back in 1989, when my entire living room was papered with the vastness of organizational change at the defense electronics unit where I worked.
However, Boeing’s Feb. 1 leadership shuffle brought organization announcements into an entirely new universe.
First, the announcement concerns the shift of 14 – yes 14 – senior leadership positions. That’s not nothing in terms of moving people about and the number of employees affected as they adjust to new bosses.
Second, as a member of the female gender, I was pleased – though definitely not surprised – three of the 14 folks moving around were women. When I began writing for AVIATION WEEK in 1996, that’s about how many women – total – held senior executive positions within the top 20 aerospace and defense companies. In 1998 Boeing’s Norma Clayton, Raytheon’s Louise Francesconi and Honeywell’s Peg Billson (now chief operating officer at Eclipse Aviation) were the women interviewed for our special feature on Women in Aviation. So congratulations to Debra Rub-Zink, promoted to vice president of weapons programs from vice president-integrated missile defense; Nan Bouchard, vice president/general manager-C3 Networks from vice president-Boeing IDS Engineering; and Ginger Barnes, vice president/deputy program manager- Future Combat Systems and previously deputy program manager Weapons Programs.
The third thing that caught my eye in the announcement was the note that Howard Chambers has a new assignment. Howard, who formerly was C-17 program executive at Boeing, then Boeing IDS’s first program management/performance excellence vice president and most recently vp/gm-Space and Intelligence Systems, was one of the founding members of the AVIATION WEEK Program Excellence initiative. We give out a prize each year to the Program Excellence evaluator who is the toughest scorer of entries – the Howard Chambers Award. Howard’s new assignment takes him to the Boeing Commercial Airplanes 787 program.
