Michele Evans Oversaw Lockheed Martin's Biggest Project
January 21 2021 - 9:03AM
Dow Jones News
By James R. Hagerty
Growing up in Owego, N.Y., Michele Evans wanted to know what
made mechanical things tick. She took apart her family's stalled
cuckoo clock, found a gear that had come loose and managed to
repair it.
She was also athletic and later had a chance to attend Vassar
College on a field-hockey scholarship. Determined to study
mechanical engineering, she enrolled instead at Clarkson University
in Potsdam, N.Y.
That led to challenges far beyond cuckoo clocks. In 2018, she
was promoted to head Lockheed Martin Corp.'s aeronautics arm, the
defense contractor's largest business, with nearly 30,000 employees
and annual sales of more than $25 billion.
The job made her a contender to become Lockheed's chief
executive and put her under severe pressure to find ways to reduce
the costs of the world's most expensive military program, the F-35
combat jet.
In December 2016, President-elect Donald Trump had turned up the
heat by tweeting that the cost of the radar-evading jet was "out of
control." Ms. Evans accelerated plans to cut the cost of an F-35
below $80 million from $95 million in early 2018, a spokesman
said.
Her responsibilities also included Lockheed's Skunk Works
facility, where the company explores new technologies.
Over the past 18 months, Ms. Evans combined her job with cancer
treatments. She died Jan. 1 at the age of 55.
Produced in a mile-long factory near Fort Worth, Texas, the F-35
is Lockheed's most important product.
Shortly after winning her promotion, Ms. Evans told the Dallas
Business Journal that she sometimes wondered whether she was ready
for it. A bit of self-doubt, she said, could be helpful. "I think
it keeps you humble, " she said, adding: "I actually think it's
something you want. To me, the worst characteristic a leader can
take on is arrogance."
Michele Ann Marzo, the sixth of seven children, was born July
27, 1965. Her father was a school administrator. Her mother was a
homemaker who later worked for an insurance agency.
Growing up with four older brothers was helpful training for a
business career. Most of the family's sports equipment was
right-handed. Though she was left-handed, young Michele had to
adapt herself to playing games as if she was right-handed. She did
that well enough to become a captain of her school field hockey,
basketball and track teams.
In 1988, she married David Evans, also a mechanical engineer and
a friend since high school.
After earning her engineering degree at Clarkson, she worked for
International Business Machines Corp.'s Federal Systems unit. That
business was acquired by Loral Corp. in 1994 and two years later by
Lockheed Martin.
As her career progressed, requiring more hours and
round-the-clock availability for phone calls from customers, she
and Mr. Evans had to work out how to share parenting duties for
their two sons. By working as a consultant, he said, he was able to
"take care of the home front while she was traveling."
At a meeting with other female executives several years ago, she
said, "One of my core beliefs was that if I failed as a parent,
none of my other accomplishments mattered. You must draw your
lines, and you have to find people in your life who will honestly
tell you when you need to rebalance."
She served on the boards of the Smithsonian National Air and
Space Museum and of Girls Inc., which promotes education and
leadership skills.
Ms. Evans, who is survived by her husband and two sons, kept a
reminder on her computer to think at the end of each day about
someone she had met and send a quick email expressing thanks.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 21, 2021 08:48 ET (13:48 GMT)
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