2014 Influential Women in Defense Electronics: Lynn Bamford, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions
StoryMarch 06, 2014
Lynn Bamford, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Defense Solutions division of Curtiss-Wright, is responsible for directing five business units located around the globe. She has held various engineering, marketing, and operation positions at Curtiss-Wright and other defense electronics companies. Ms. Bamford earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University, and a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from George Mason University.
Q: What are the biggest challenges you face every day as a woman in the defense industry?
The reality is that the challenges I confront are no different from those that a man must face. Ours is a very competitive industry and I face challenges as an individual and as a leader. Over and over again the keys for personal success for each gender prove to be integrity, well-maintained relationships, and leadership performance. As a leader you need to create a world-class company that attracts talent, measures performance, values customer satisfaction, and strives to be technically excellent. I believe – especially today – that industry decision makers want a person they can trust and one they can count on during a crisis. While some people think a woman must work harder to prove her capabilities, my own experience tells me that what matters most, regardless of gender, is proving you keep your word, ensuring your company lives up to its promises, and seeing that your company delivers compelling industry solutions.
Q: How do you overcome those challenges? What or who is your inspiration?
During my career I’ve seen many people who have understood and embraced, or completely misunderstood and disregarded, the motto, “only the paranoid survive,” made famous by Andy Grove when he served as CEO of Intel. Consequently, I have witnessed, depending on which camp a person fell into, their particular successes and failures. We have all seen once-great companies fail completely. For me, Grove’s valuable message is to never take your company’s position in the industry for granted. I believe that your company and you as an individual must continuously evolve along with your industry or you will simply be left behind. Companies can stay nimble by encouraging and developing a highly diverse work force that enables flexibility via the myriad viewpoints that people from different industries, professional backgrounds, and cultures bring to the mix. Ensuring that our company evolves and continues to lead the industry is a challenge that I am paranoid of – in the best sense of the word – every single day! I believe in data and measuring as much as you can, while also staying as close as possible to your customers. Many failures come from ignoring reality and only believing what you want the truth to be, regardless of what the data tells you.
Q: How can women be more prepared to enter the male-dominated defense industry and, for that matter, traditionally male fields such as the engineering profession?
My answer is straightforward, and for some, perhaps a bit surprising: Relax. Don’t proceed in your career under the assumption that you will be treated differently. Your greatest asset is the person that you are. Assert your best self by being technically excellent and then demonstrating it. A smart way to conduct yourself is to act as though the age-old adage that a woman needs to be better and work harder than a man would in the same position, is true, even if it isn’t. Better to challenge yourself to be a leader than to settle for a place in the middle of the pack. Today, the best companies recognize the value that comes from diversity in leadership. There’s never been a better time, no matter who you are, for achieving success by being your best, which really comes down to having integrity, being technically capable, and working hard. More than anything people respect and want to work with people who possess these attributes.
Q: During your career in the defense electronics industry what were the most significant events and disruptive technologies?
If you go back 10-15 years, our industry was very fragmented, with many small, private companies. During the past decade the industry has experienced a lot of consolidation, resulting in a platform for Curtiss-Wright, as well as our main competitors, to deliver much more technically capable and mature offerings to the industry. I take great pride in knowing that our industry and my company have played a significant role in helping to maintain our military’s unmatched strength and ability to respond as needed around the globe. Our industry has consistently proven the value proposition of the COTS approach – complex electronics technology qualified and developed on a company’s own IRAD [Internal Research and Development] dollars. While there are still pockets in the industry wanting embedded subsystem designs kept in-house, time will continue to prove this a losing strategy, both financially and technically.
Q: The defense market’s budget-constrained environment makes forecasting tough. Given that fact, what segments of the military market will have the most growth potential over the next five years for producers of defense electronics?
With defense budgets tightening, the days of defense programs spending billions of dollars to develop new custom technology are gone. Defense acquisition reform has placed an increased emphasis on affordable, mature technology already developed by industry. Program managers want suppliers that provide the lowest priced, technically acceptable solution. Based on this trend, market forecasters predict an increased use of COTS technology and open architectures to manage funding cuts in defense programs. Having said that, the military market segments I see having the most growth potential are C4ISR and electronic warfare, and I see this growth across all military services. Upgrades to existing platforms in these segments will see more growth compared to new program starts.
