Marillyn Hewson: The Engineer Who Ran Lockheed Martin

Marillyn Hewson is one of the most consequential chief executives in American industrial history — and one of the few who started as an entry-level engineer and finished running the entire company. As Chairman, President and CEO of Lockheed Martin from 2013 to 2020, she led the world's largest defense contractor through the F-35 program's make-or-break years, nearly doubled the company's stock value, and became a fixture on every "most powerful women in business" list. In 2026, though retired from Lockheed, she remains highly active — sitting on the boards of Johnson & Johnson and Chevron and speaking publicly on leadership and the future of aerospace.

Marillyn Hewson Key Facts

Early Life: Resilience Before the Résumé

Hewson was born in Junction City, Kansas, and raised largely in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Her father died when she was nine, leaving her mother — a former Army nurse — to raise five children alone. Hewson has repeatedly credited that upbringing for the resilience and work ethic that carried her career. She earned a bachelor's degree in business administration and a master's in economics from the University of Alabama, then started her working life as an economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Thirty-Seven Years at One Company

In 1983 she joined Lockheed (later Lockheed Martin) as an industrial engineer — and never left. Over nearly four decades she held more than twenty leadership roles across the corporation, including:

• President of Lockheed Martin Systems Integration (Owego, New York)
• Executive Vice President of Global Sustainment, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics
• Executive Vice President of the Electronic Systems business area
• President and Chief Operating Officer (2012)

Her path to the top had an extraordinary twist: in late 2012, incoming CEO Christopher Kubasik was forced out after an ethics investigation, and the board turned to Hewson. She became CEO on January 1, 2013, and Chairman a year later — the first woman to lead the world's largest defense company.

The Lockheed Martin Years: F-35, Growth, and a Record Backlog

Hewson's tenure coincided with the most scrutinized weapons program in history — the F-35 Lightning II. When she took over, the program was a political punching bag for cost overruns; by her departure, unit costs had fallen dramatically and international orders had stacked up. Under her leadership Lockheed Martin:

• Grew annual revenue past $59 billion with a record order backlog
• Acquired Sikorsky, maker of Black Hawk helicopters, in a $9 billion deal (2015)
• Expanded hypersonics, space, and missile-defense programs
• Delivered total shareholder returns that ranked among the best of any Fortune 100 industrial

She handed the CEO role to James Taiclet in June 2020, stayed on as Executive Chairman through March 2021, and retired from the board — on her own timing and her own recommendation, a rarity in Fortune 100 transitions.

What Marillyn Hewson Is Doing Now (2026)

Retirement from Lockheed hasn't meant retirement from influence. In 2026 she serves on the boards of Johnson & Johnson and Chevron — two of the largest companies in healthcare and energy — and advises organizations including World 50, Catalyst, and the Air & Space Forces Association's StellarXplorers STEM program. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and remains a sought-after speaker on leadership — including a notable 2026 university conversation on the future of aerospace and defense. She is also a major benefactor of her alma mater, the University of Alabama.

Leadership Lessons From Her Career

Hewson's story is studied in business schools for a reason: she is the archetype of the insider CEO — someone who mastered every layer of one organization before leading it. That pattern — decades of operational depth inside a single company before the corner office — is the same one behind PepsiCo chief Ramon Laguarta, a 30-year company veteran, and stands in contrast to outsider-CEO stories elsewhere in corporate America. Her oft-quoted advice: take the hard assignments nobody wants, deliver, and let the results speak. It's a playbook echoed by technology leaders too — former Google CEO Eric Schmidt similarly built engineering credibility for decades before being trusted with one of the world's most important companies.

Why Marillyn Hewson Still Matters

Beyond the milestones, Hewson changed what the top of American heavy industry looks like. She proved a woman could run the most security-sensitive company in the world through its highest-stakes program, exit on her own terms, and remain a governance force across healthcare, energy, and aerospace. For anyone researching leadership, defense, or women in business, her career is required reading.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Marillyn Hewson