Lockheed Space chief had no grand plan but her star rose quickly

By Roger Fillion, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published October 31, 2008 at 8:05 p.m.

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Photo by Barry Gutierrez / The Rocky

Joanne Maguire, who heads Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Space Systems Co., ranked No. 31 on Fortune's list of most powerful women in business this year.

Photo by Pat Corkery / Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin engineers from Joanne Maguire's team cheer at their South Jeffco facility as images from Mars are sent by the Phoenix Lander just after it landed on the surface of Mars in June.

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What kind of life can help a person rise to become "one of the 50 most powerful" women in the world of business?

Ask Joanne Maguire. A top executive in the male-dominated business of engineering and aerospace, this trained engineer links her success to two unusual attributes:

* Growing up as one of 12 kids in an Irish-Catholic home.

* And, later, developing a keen interest in Eastern religion and philosophy.

Maguire heads an $8.2 billion company: Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. in Jefferson County.

Fortune has ranked her among its 50 most powerful women in business the past three years. Maguire was No. 31 this year.

Maguire has been head of the Lockheed Martin Corp. business unit since July 2006. The 54-year-old chalks up her business acumen in part to growing up on the East Coast among seven brothers and four sisters.

Maguire - who stands 5 feet, 10 inches - honed her competitive edge on the basketball court, playing her brothers. She learned to sink baskets from outside.

The young Maguire also learned to compromise. It was up to the kids to figure out, say, what to watch together on TV, or who got the window seat in the car.

"My parents were pretty good about not settling our fights and our disputes for us. We figured it out amongst ourselves," Maguire said in a recent interview.

Hinduism shapes views

This daughter of an aerospace engineer also looks to the teachings of Hinduism for guidance in the rough-and-tumble world of business.

"I think some of the basic philosophies have kind of seeped in and become part of how I look at the world," Maguire said.

For example? "There's more to be gained from pursuing excellence than to be gained from achieving excellence," Maguire explained.

As the head of a company that makes spy satellites, planetary spacecraft, rockets and missile defense systems, Maguire, an executive vice president at Lockheed Martin, has far exceeded her expectations.

"I never had a grand plan," she said. "For me, it was always about following my passions."

Overseeing 18,000 workers

Lockheed Martin Space Systems does business with the likes of NASA, the Pentagon, corporate customers and a hush-hush spy satellite agency named the National Reconnaissance Office.

Maguire oversees a business employing 18,000. She splits a good chunk of her time between here and the company's big Sunnyvale, Calif., facilities. Weekends often are spent in California with her two young children.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems' operations extend from Silicon Valley to King of Prussia, Pa., and south to Florida's Atlantic coast, at Cocoa Beach. In 2007, the company accounted for about 20 percent of parent Lockheed Martin Corp.'s $42 billion in revenues.

"They're a diversified space company," said Paul Nisbet, an aerospace analyst at JSA Research Inc. in Rhode Island. "They're profitable and doing well."

The company is building a next- generation spacecraft to ferry humans to the moon and perhaps beyond. It's overseeing the construction of satellites engineered to alert military brass to enemy missile launches.

In May it won a contract worth up to $3.6 billion to design and build a fleet of next-generation military navigational satellites for the Air Force.

Family of 12 taught lessons

Growing up, aerospace and engineering weren't on Maguire's career radar. Teaching, perhaps.

Those early years in a large family proved formative.

"You learn to be probably more self-reliant than your average kid early on," Maguire said.

She was born in New Britain, Conn., the fifth child in the family. Her father worked as an aerospace engineer at Pratt & Whitney. Her mother oversaw the household.

By the time Maguire was 8, her father's job changes and pursuits led the family to live in three states before settling back in Connecticut.

Whether you were a boy or a girl was not an issue in the household. Maguire's parents demanded "excellence" from all their kids.

"They didn't gender assign us," she said. "Anybody was going to do the dishes. Anybody was going to carry in the groceries. Anybody was going to fold the laundry. Anybody was going to mow the lawn."

Maguire played basketball and touch football with her brothers. She raced them in the swimming pool. Beat them at Scrabble and Monopoly, and took them on at the pingpong table in the basement.

"Having seven brothers just meant it was a little rough-and- tumble," Maguire recalled.

Years later, in the 1970s, it meant Maguire didn't dwell on being one of only three women sitting in an engineering class of 30 at Michigan State University.

"I was oblivious to it," she said.

Engineering held appeal

Early on in her life, Maguire thought she might want to become a teacher. But by junior high school, she realized math and science were more to her liking.

When she entered the honors college at Michigan State, she declared herself a math major. But by her sophomore year she had changed her mind. Math seemed too abstract and theoretical - not very practical.

The instructor would spend the class largely with his back to the students, scribbling theories and proofs on the chalkboard.

"It was really just the accumulation of having to spend a lot of time doing mental gymnastics that didn't seem like they were going anywhere," Maguire said.

Maguire transferred to the engineering school to bone up on a subject she thought she could use in life. But when handed her engineering degree at graduation, she wasn't focused on aerospace. That was a love affair that developed over time.

She took a job with the former technology conglomerate TRW Inc. in Redondo Beach in Southern California. As a control systems engineer, Maguire focused on making sure spacecraft, such as satellites, would maintain a stable position without wobbling in space.

TRW was deeply involved in aerospace, building gear such as a 45-foot-tall X-ray observatory satellite that would allow scientists to peer deep into space to learn more about black holes and other celestial phenomena. TRW also handled defense work, building satellites that kept watch for missile launches or "nuclear events."

Fascinating work, but Maguire admits it was California's warm, sunny climate that attracted her to TRW. She'd grown up in snowy New England. At MSU, Michigan winters could be dreary.

"I would love to say I was captivated by the work and the mission," Maguire said of TRW. "I was not. It would be pretty interesting. They seemed like nice people.

"But I was really quite taken with an opportunity to relocate to California."

She took advantage of the sun and surf. Her first apartment was half a block off the beach. She played pickup basketball there.

'An outstanding engineer'

Still, Maguire impressed her superiors at TRW.

"After the first time I sat down and talked with her, I thought, 'Wow! This person is just outstanding,' " recalled Daniel Goldin, the former NASA chief who was a top executive at TRW.

"She was at the heart and soul of every spacecraft we built," Goldin added. He noted that as a control systems engineer, Maguire, figuratively speaking, was "at the controls" of each TRW spacecraft.

"I saw her as an outstanding engineer and leader."

Maguire's rise within the engineering ranks occurred in an industry dominated by men. It continues to be.

"It's a very male-dominated industry," said Robert Davis, dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado.

Davis, who knows Maguire, said women probably make up about 10 percent to 15 percent of the engineering work force. The number of female undergraduate engineers, he added, is about 20 percent.

What's it like for Maguire to be a top executive at a big company in the aerospace business?

"I suspect it's a lot like being a man," she said. "There are a lot of things that are common. If you're a leader in this industry you're going to be called upon to create a compelling vision.

"And in that case having passion for the business really helps fundamentally."

Maguire said her interest in Eastern religion and philosophy is something many people don't know about.

At Michigan State, she took a course in Eastern religions. Later, in California, she came across a bookstore in West Hollywood - the Bodhi Tree - specializing in Eastern philosophy and religions. She took training in meditation.

"I found it kind of intellectually appealing, and then ultimately it became kind of emotionally appealing to me, as well," Maguire said.

She's not a full-fledged practitioner of Eastern religion or beliefs. For example, she hasn't "mastered" the Hindu and Buddhist doctrine of ahimsa, which forbids harming living beings.

"I'm not a vegetarian. I will still kill a mosquito if it's biting me," Maguire said.

Not to mention that Lockheed Martin handles loads of work for the military.

'Not all about you'

Still, Maguire has tapped into Eastern beliefs to navigate the stresses of the business world.

She points to the concept of "nonattachment."

"That's not to be confused with lack of commitment," said Maguire. "You learn over time . . . that it's not all about you."

How does that help her deal with adverse times?

Maguire said she is not so attached to what impact the outcome of a situation might have on her personally, either for the better or for the worse.

"It tends to give you better clarity of mind when you're in really those intense times of high stress trying to find solutions."

That's a change. As a young school girl, Maguire was "timid" and prone to break into tears.

"If the nun said, 'What ninny left their mittens out on the playground at lunchtime?' And if it was me, she would know because I would immediately start crying. I was very sensitive."

Maguire spent 28 years at TRW. She reckoned she'd be a lifer there. She'd climbed the ranks.

But in 2002 Northrop Grumman Corp. acquired TRW. With the change in ownership, Maguire looked for other opportunities.

"I had known Lockheed Martin mostly from their Sunnyvale operation because TRW had partnered with them," Maguire said.

Contacts were made.

In 2003, Thomas Marsh, then head of Lockheed Martin Space Systems, brought Maguire on board as his deputy. She was named his successor in 2006.

Maguire still gets calls from corporate headhunters interested in luring her to another job. But she's not biting.

The headhunters ask: Don't you want to go do this?

"No, I'm in love with what I'm doing," Maguire tells them.

This from a woman who, as a young girl, never dreamed of being where she is today.

"I feel very fortunate to have just kind of wandered into it. Like I say, it was never part of a grand plan for me."

fillionr@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2467

Joanne Maguire

* Age: 54

* Job: Executive vice president, Lockheed Martin Corp. and head of its Space Systems Co. in Jefferson County

* Assumed job: 2006

* Joined Lockheed Martin: 2003

* Prior executive work: Held posts at Redondo Beach, Calif.-based TRW Inc., acquired by Northrop Grumman Corp. in 2002

* Education: Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, Michigan State University; master's degree in engineering, University of California at Los Angeles

* Children: Son, 11; daughter who will turn 8 on Sunday

* Outside interests: Hanging out with her kids, basketball, Sudoku, surfing the Internet

* Recent book read: Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love

* What keeps her up at night: "I worry that we're going to squander this nation's birthright as the pre-eminent space-faring nation in the world for lack of vision."

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