Commitment to the Development of Others w/ Stephanie C. Hill

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really happy to be here. And yes, I am a proud Gigi. That's my grandma name. And Harper Grace is my little girl, and she's about to turn three, so life is exciting. Love it.

Yes, I said I'm a Baltimore girl through and through. I grew up in Baltimore City, and I'm a product of the Baltimore City Public School System. I actually graduated from the oldest public all-girl school in the nation, called Western High School. We were called the Western Doves. All three of us—I'm the youngest of three girls—all three of us attended Western High School. I grew up with amazing parents. My father was a judge, and my mother was a kindergarten teacher who actually retired when I was born. She said she became a domestic engineer, so I guess technically she was the first engineer in the family.

Wow. So I often get asked who my most significant mentors are, who the people who influence me the most are. And Chris, I always start with my family. My mother, as a kindergarten teacher and just as who she is—she's alive today, 93, and still the most amazing person I know, and certainly the most amazing mother. She was a nurturer. She would give us so much support. She and my father both would say to all of us, 'You can do anything in the world you put your mind to, as long as you are willing to work hard and treat people well.' It was interesting as I talked to people, I don't hear a lot of people have those two things kind of come together, but from Mommy and Daddy, that's what it was about. And Mommy also used to say to me, 'If you know better, you have to do better.' Irrespective of what anybody else is doing, if you know better, you do better. Daddy, as I said, was a judge. He had grown up, started his career as a civil rights attorney in the 1950s. He went on in Maryland to become the first African-American state senator of Maryland in 1954, and then he went on to become the first Black judge on the Maryland Supreme Court, which is called the Court of Appeals. So Daddy had very, very high standards for us. He had worked very hard and was committed to making a difference in the lives of others. So my sisters and I were all really good students. I can remember coming home with a good, great, I'll get 95 on a test, Chris, and I'm all excited, I'm bringing it home. And Mommy's like, 'Oh baby, I'm so proud of you.' And Daddy was serious. He said, 'Where are the other five points?' And you know, bringing 98 the next time, and 'Where are the...' It was hard, Chris, as a child. It was very, very hard because I thought he wanted me to be perfect. What I learned—and my father's gone now, but I'm so grateful that I learned this before he left us, and I was able to tell him—he wasn't trying to get us to be perfect. He was trying to say, 'If you don't have to leave five points on the table, why should you? And if you don't push beyond what you are currently achieving, you'll never get the opportunity to figure out what your potential is.' So if you kind of keep pushing beyond, then you can figure out what you're capable of doing. So for me, my parents were kind of that perfect leader combined: somebody just pushing you to do everything you could do, and then my mother's unconditional support in whatever you did. I just feel grateful for having that experience.

You know, it's funny. I was really good at math growing up. Both my parents were professionals, so I knew a lot of professional people. The one thing I didn't know is any actual engineers. I didn't have any electrical engineers or systems engineers at that time. There were really no software engineers, or very few, when I started going to college. So when I started at UMBC, I knew a lot of new accountants, so I said I'm going to be an accountant. I majored in economics, I was getting an accounting certificate, and I was going to go on to get my CPA to be a certified public accountant. As we all have to do in college, you take an elective course. So I said, 'Let me get out of my comfort zone, let me try something.' And I took a really old programming language, Chris—but you already said I've worked with Lockheed Martin for 36 years, so everybody knows how old I am—it was COBOL programming. I hope they don't teach COBOL programming anymore, but it was COBOL programming, and I absolutely fell in love with it. It was kind of a dream come true. So you say, why did I do both? Remember, I said I didn't know any engineers. STEM wasn't an acronym when I was coming along. So I said I wanted to hold on to economics because I knew I could get a job in economics as an accountant. I didn't know yet what I would do with engineering and with computer science. So I did internships. I had wonderful career counselors at UMBC who helped me find an internship where I could actually use the work I was doing. I found an amazing job and became a software engineer. But you're right, there weren't a whole lot of women there at the time, but there were a fair number. When we had our study groups and our intensive classes, there were women there. I wasn't by myself at that time. There were certainly more men, but I wasn't by myself. I call myself an accidental engineer because if I hadn't taken that course in COBOL, I wouldn't be where I am today. When I tell people, I'm very passionate about telling every young person in particular that we need you to consider a career in STEM. When you think about our nation, the U.S., we need as many engineers and scientists as we possibly can to maintain our competitive advantage. It is particularly important for people in underrepresented communities, like women, like people of color, to understand that this is a career for them. I didn't know any engineers. I literally, Chris, didn't even know this was an option for me. When I told my family—and my family is the most supportive people in the world—when I told them that I was going to become an engineer, my sister, who loves me to death, said, 'Stephanie, why would you do that? You're a people person. You're never going to get fulfilled by this career.' So I think we've got to tell our stories. We have to shout from the rooftops because people think of an engineer and they think, 'Okay, you're going to be sitting in a room by yourself in the dark, never talking to anybody.' Everything we do, we do as a team. Yes, there are times when I was a young engineer when I was by myself writing code and writing software, but there were so many more times when we're with people and doing work as a team. We need people to do that. I get really excited about it, very passionate about it, because it has given me—I told you my father's life was dedicated to making a difference. I have found such an incredible way to work hard to make a difference through this career in engineering. I'm really grateful that I found it.

Yeah, so after becoming an engineer and loving it, entering the aerospace and defense industry was not something I planned from high school or college. I have found that it is amazing as an engineer. Like we talked about, you have an opportunity to make a difference in so many different fields. The customers Lockheed Martin serves—the military customers all around the world—we get to provide them with some of the best capabilities to help them protect their nations all around the world, to literally save lives, and to make a difference. I'll tell you one story. When I talk about shouting stories from the rooftops, this is one story that I tell because I never thought I would have an opportunity to make a difference in so many different ways in partnership with the customer. So I'll tell you a story about a program called PTDS, the Persistent Threat Detection System. It was a system we were developing for the U.S. Army back in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, so it was a while ago. There are so many examples of this, but this story I think will speak to you. I know it speaks to me. PTDS is basically a blimp with a surveillance system. It's got a lot of cameras, radars, and things hanging from it, and it's mobile. What they used PTDS for in Iraq and Afghanistan was as an improvised explosive device, IED, encounter device. You heard about all that in those wars and how they were killing so many of our soldiers. When we were working on this program, to make sure we were keeping up on our production ramp, our Army customer actually brought footage, video footage, of what our systems were doing in the field. So we got to see the insurgents plant IEDs in the street. Then we heard the PTDS operator say to that brigade, 'You've got to reroute. You've got IEDs here.' Then they rerouted, and we knew we had saved lives that day. Then the PTDS panned around and followed the insurgents as they left and saw them go to their neighborhoods where they had arsenals of weapons. Then you saw the U.S. and Afghan soldiers go and be able to get those weapons, secure them. You got to see this. The mothers in Afghanistan would call PTDS the angel in the sky. Remember, I said it was a blimp. They would only let their children go outside and play if PTDS was flying. When you think about that, that's just emblematic of the things Lockheed Martin does every day to provide capability to our customers. It's inspiring to me. The other thing I'll say about the military industry: we work with some of the finest people on the planet. When I think about my Lockheed Martin colleagues, I've been here for 36 years and I have literally never looked for another job. It's been because of the mission and because of the people. I'll share just one quick story about the kind of people we work with. I have so many over 36 years. Just in COVID—you talked about starting this Next Steps Forward in COVID. At the beginning of COVID, in September of 2020, before there were any vaccines or anything else, my 90-year-old mother at the time contracted COVID. She was living independently, but we were in isolation. You couldn't see anybody. She got COVID. You know what was happening to most 90-year-olds who got COVID. There were many strenuous times for me. I'm the only daughter still in Baltimore, so I'm kind of her caregiver, which is a privilege and an honor, not a burden. My mother, the best person in the world, will often say to me, 'Stephanie, thank you so much for what you do.' I said, 'Mommy, what I do doesn't compare to what you did for me and what you continue to do for me.' But the piece of this is, there were times when she was going through that when I was on the phone with the doctors, trying to get her care, whatever I was having to do. I had to lean on my team. You read my bio: $16 billion business, 35,000 people. I had to say to my amazing team, 'I can't go to represent us at this meeting. I need you to represent me.' And you know what they said? 'Look at you.' And they just did it. They did it in a way that—I've heard people say, 'Yeah, I've had my team step in for me too. When they step in for me, sometimes they try to not support me as much.' Well, 'Stephanie couldn't make it'—that never happened. They completely had my back. I hope that I show them that I have theirs. It's just, I've got so many stories like that. These are the kind of people we have the privilege of working with at Lockheed Martin, and I believe in our industry.

Oh my goodness. So it certainly has evolved, and in some ways it feels like we've come full circle. When you look at the geopolitical situation we're in now, over the course of my 36-year career at Lockheed Martin, I've seen that threat landscape change drastically. We've essentially come full circle since I joined the industry at the end of the Cold War, when the U.S. and Soviet Union were locked in this global chess match to gain the technological advantage over the other. Our customers at that time were depending on us to help them keep an upper hand. Today, Chris, we're once again in an era of great power competition, where near-peer adversaries are working diligently to erode our technological advantage once again, except this time our adversaries are able to close the gap much faster. As I meet with our customers across the United States and around the world, the message I've heard consistently nearly everywhere is that the threats we're facing today are the most volatile and most complex we've seen since the end of the Cold War. They need more capable and agile solutions, and we need to produce them faster than ever before with the same or better quality. That's why Lockheed Martin is focused on what we call 21st Century Security. It's our vision to modernize the global aerospace and defense enterprise. We're focused on building networks that tie together all of our customers' platforms and systems, regardless of whether they're manufactured by Lockheed Martin or another technology provider. We're working to provide a comprehensive picture across all domains. You talked about how in our business, I've got land, sea, undersea, space, cyber. We're looking broadly at that comprehensive picture across all of those domains to detect threats earlier and make decisions faster than the adversary. That's what's going to win. We're integrating rapidly advancing technologies like artificial intelligence, advanced computing, 5G communications into the platforms and systems we have. We're partnering with other technology companies around the world and certainly partnering with our customers because they need us to bring them capability more quickly, and it needs to be more quickly modified. A key enabler for that is what we call business and digital transformation. We're transforming our products. We have digital twins of products. We're using robots that are building on the production floor. We have our factories across different geographies connected, so we can be in Owego, New York, and 3D print a part in Fort Worth, Texas. We're doing all of these amazing things to make sure we are able to deliver faster, with the same or better quality, and do it more affordably. The threats are different, they're faster, and we have to respond. We do that in very close partnership with our customers.

Yes, so again, that's why STEM is so important, why cybersecurity is so important. But it's also when you think about all the platforms and systems we have across different domains, if we can connect those systems and products and platforms that our customers already have, they become a force multiplier for the threat, and it helps them to have that decision dominance that they need.

Yeah.