Taking an Engineer's Approach at Lockheed Martin

"You might say, 'What would work for the Social Security Administration have at all to do with law enforcement?' And you would have really missed a huge opportunity to contribute meaningful value," Stevens said. "That's part of weaving this fabric of a global security company that taps into diversity, including different perspectives, different points of view and different experiences, and taking the time to ask, 'Is there any part that is relevant to this diverse set of experiences that we have had that we can apply to this mission here?' Now, Linda has the rhythm of that embedded in her professional life."

Judy F. Marks, president of Rockville-based Lockheed Martin Transportation and Security Solutions, is also leading several high-profile contracts, including one to modernize the security and surveillance systems in New York City's subway system, a job she is well aware carries huge risks and responsibilities. "We're not talking about bleeding-edge," she said. "We're talking 100-year-old tunnels."

Marks, like Gooden and Stevens, focuses on building strong connections to universities, stressing the need to graduate more engineers and scientists. Marks estimates that Lockheed hires a full 5 percent of those eligible for security clearance from each year's U.S. graduating classes with degrees in engineering and computer science. "We concentrate on how to open that pool, how to get high schoolers interested in science degrees, even middle schoolers," she said. She said schools are having more success attracting women and minorities to those disciplines; when she graduated in 1984, she was one of eight women in a class of 135 engineering majors.

Among Marks's nearly 2,500 employees, about 31 percent are minorities and 30 percent are women; more than half are engineers. Only 29 percent are 51 or older, so her company is among the younger at Lockheed.

The management challenge in bringing in such large pools of new employees lies in teaching them the standards and expectations of the corporation without trying to make everyone homogeneous. Lockheed needs the knowledge of a generation who grew up with instant messaging, iPods and cellphones.

"There's a value to having the right information at the right time," Marks said. "That's the challenge we're all trying to solve in different ways" for federal clients such as the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.

"We won't tell you how to design software," Marks added, but Lockheed will train employees on its process for coding, selling and delivering software to customers. "But we need our people to ask, 'Why not have a chat function' " built into new programs?

While Lockheed focuses on feeding the pipeline, Stevens is also aware that the top ranks of the corporation remain dominated by white men. Both Gooden and Marks are examples of how that is changing, and both said they were confident that headquarters leadership would change in time -- something top female executives, of course, have been saying for decades.

This time, though, they were right. On Friday, Lockheed announced that Joanne M. Maguire will replace retiring G. Thomas Marsh as head of the company's space systems business, one of five executive vice presidents of operating units reporting to Stevens. That is a company first. Stevens vows she won't be the last.