Boeing Names Ann Schmidt Eighth CCO In Past Eight Years
Date
12/27/2024 10:11:20 AM
(MENAFN- PRovoke)
SEATTLE-Boeing chief executive Kelly Ortberg has named Ann Schmidt, who has been with the company since 2005, as senior vice president of communications, the eighth person in the past eight years to lead the troubled aerospace company's brand and communications function.
Schmidt had been the interim head of communications since her predecessor, Brian Besanceney, retired in October.
In October, two months after taking over as CEO, Ortberg told investment analysts that Boeing has lost its iconic status and needed a "fundamental culture change." Since then, he has made a number of senior management changes.
Schmidt will be "an important enabler of our recovery and efforts to rebuild trust,” Ortberg said in an email to employees making the announcement.
Schmidt is the latest in a procession of Boeing CCOs, few of whom have lasted as long as a year in the role. The latest, Besanceney, joined Boeing from Walmart in 2022, following the departure of Ed Dandridge and a brief period when Schmidt held the role on an interim basis.
Dandridge succeeded executive VP and chief financial officer Greg Smith , who had been serving as interim CCO since the July resignation of Niel Golightly.
Golightly left Boeing following just six months
in the role after an employee complained about a letter he wrote in 1987 saying women should not be in combat.
Golightly had replaced
Anne Toulouse , who retired at the end of 2019 after a three-decade career with the company. Toulouse had stepped into the CCO role in September 2018 when Phil Musser, citing family reasons, left Boeing a year after being hired to replace longtime communications chief Tom Downey, who had retired in 2017.
The high turnover at the C-level has come amid a series of crises at Boeing. In 2018 and 2019, two fatal crashes of the 737 Max killed 346 people, and the plane was grounded for 20 months as a result. In January of this year, a door plug blew out in midair on an Alaska Airlines 737, leading to a further grounding. And in September, the company suffered through a strike the halted production and deepened the company's financial difficulties.
The various crises have led many observers to question the company's commitment to safety, with a report by the FAA suggesting that,“Boeing's SMS [safety management systems] documents do not effectively result in understanding by the average employee of their role in Boeing's SMS.” In interviews, employees expressed "distrust in the anonymity of the Speak Up program" that was intended as a cornerstone of the company's stated commitment to safety.
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