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CEO
General Dynamics
| Appointee | Phebe Novakovic |
|---|---|
| Role | CEO |
| Organisation | General Dynamics |
| Domain | Corporate Leadership |
| Start | 1 January 2013 |
| End | Currently in role |
| Notes | First woman CEO of General Dynamics |
Institutional context
General Dynamics Corporation is one of the five largest US defence contractors by annual revenue. It is best known for nuclear submarine production at Electric Boat (Groton, Connecticut), Abrams tank production, Gulfstream business-aviation manufacture, and IT services. From the corporation's 1952 founding through January 2013 every CEO was male.
Career path
Phebe N. Novakovic (born 1957) earned a BA from Smith College and an MBA from the Wharton School. She served as a Central Intelligence Agency staff officer for an unspecified period during the 1980s and 1990s and held senior positions at the Office of Management and Budget and at the US Department of Defense before joining General Dynamics in 2001. She served as Chief Operating Officer from 2010 and as President from 2012.
Appointment
General Dynamics announced her selection as Chairwoman and CEO effective 1 January 2013. She is the first woman CEO of General Dynamics.
Tenure
Active. Tenure has covered substantial growth in submarine and shipbuilding programmes (the Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarine production starting in 2015, Virginia-class continued production), Gulfstream aviation expansion, and the General Dynamics IT-services business through the 2018 acquisition of CSRA.
Cluster context
Novakovic's January 2013 appointment is contemporaneous with Marillyn Hewson's at Lockheed Martin. The two simultaneous defence-industry firsts in a single month, at the largest and second-largest US defence contractors, are the dataset's tightest within-month corporate-leadership concentration. The pattern was extended by Kathy Warden at Northrop Grumman in 2019.