Flying high with Boeing

The gig: Boeing Co. vice president and general manager of the Global Mobility Systems business, which includes oversight of the $8-billion-a-year C-17 Globemaster III military transport program in Long Beach. The sprawling C-17 factory next to Long Beach Airport employs more than 5,000 workers and is the last remaining airplane final assembly line left in Southern California. Six hundred fifty suppliers employing 30,000 workers in 43 states make parts for the C-17.

Most stressful part of the job: The potential shutdown of the C-17 plant if it doesn’t get more orders from the U.S. Air Force. Since 2006, the Pentagon has sought to end production, citing lack of funds, but Congress has earmarked funding every year for additional planes. Without another earmark, the plant is scheduled to be closed sometime next year.

“I would be less than honest if I didn’t say it weighs heavily on my mind and keeps me up at night,” Chamberlin says. “There are a significant number of families and individual business livelihoods that are riding on this aircraft. That’s a lot to think about.”

Stress relief: An avid runner, Chamberlin is on a treadmill by 4 a.m. weekdays or jogs near her downtown Long Beach home on weekends. She is preparing for the Long Beach half-marathon in the fall. “I try to use that as a means to explain to people what a C-17 is and why we need more.”

From nursing to making planes: Chamberlin’s “first love and interest” was in taking care of people. “From the time I can remember I was putting Band-Aids on dolls and dogs,” she says. Her first job was as a candy striper at a local hospital. After getting a nursing degree, she worked nights helping deliver babies and later working in a burn unit.

But when her daughter was a year old, Chamberlin decided to switch careers to have “a semblance of a family life” and pursue her other interest in “all things mechanical.” She began taking manufacturing engineering courses at a local community college at nights and was hired by Boeing as an industrial engineer to work on the production line for the 737 passenger jet in Renton, Wash.

Early aviation career: Chamberlin quickly rose through the ranks and was involved in many of the nation’s top military aircraft programs, including the Comanche radar-evading helicopter, the F-22 fighter jet and the B-2 stealth bomber. In 2004, she served two years as a test director for Boeing’s satellite-making division in Seal Beach and El Segundo.

She was named C-17 program manager in 2007, and in 2008 took on the added responsibility of overseeing other military airlift programs including the electronic upgrades to the C-130 transport. “We came back to California because we loved it so much. We couldn’t stay away,” she said.

“C-17 is certainly a highlight of my career because I’m able to see where my beginnings in nursing is actually being fulfilled through providing C-17 planes that have been used for air medevac missions,” she said, noting how the use of the plane as a flying hospital has increased the survival rate for soldiers in Iraq to 90% from 77% in the previous Iraq war.

Nursing as a management skill: “I use my nursing background each and every day,” Chamberlin says, noting how as a nurse she learned how to communicate better and understand the “psychology of how folks operate.”

“Those five years as a nurse gave me a really good basis for the work that I do with organizations and in team building,” she says.

Personal: Chamberlin, 55, grew up in Tacoma, Wash., where her father retired as a senior master sergeant at nearby McChord Air Force Base. “I always had planes flying around in my backyard.” Chamberlin married her high school sweetheart, Scott, who is retired, and has a grown daughter. For their 32nd wedding anniversary the couple attended a Porsche driving school.

Education: A nursing degree from the University of Washington and a master’s in engineering management from Stanford University.

A minority in aviation: Even though Chamberlin is one of the few high-ranking female executives in aerospace, she says she never encountered discrimination because of her gender. “I didn’t focus on whether I was a woman. I focused on people having a hard time looking at differences or working with someone they didn’t grow up with,” Chamberlin says. “If I felt that I was having trouble communicating because of my style or because I was female, I ended up just confronting it and having a frank talk.”

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