EP 19 — Spirit Electronics’ Marti McCurdy on Inspiring the Next Generation in STEM

On this week's episode of the DIB Innovators podcast, David speaks with Marti McCurdy, CEO of Spirit Electronics. Marti shares her remarkable journey from serving in the Air Force to leading an aerospace and defense company. She discusses the challenges she faced and overcame, the importance of fostering innovation within her industry, and her dedication to engaging the younger generation in STEM fields. 

Marti emphasizes the value of a strong network and the critical role of teamwork in driving success. She also offers her strategies for creating a strong, collaborative company culture. Marti also touches on the challenges she faced as a woman in a male-dominated field and her commitment to supporting the next generation of STEM professionals.

Topics discussed:

• The biggest challenges of starting and leading a company, and the strategies used to overcome them.
• Fostering a culture of innovation within the company to stay ahead in the competitive aerospace and defense sector.
• The importance of creating a collaborative and adaptive culture that accommodates multiple generations of employees.
• The critical role of teamwork and having a strong network in driving the success of her company.
• The commitment to engaging and inspiring the next generation of STEM professionals to ensure a bright future for the industry.
• The complexities of meeting compliance and security requirements in the aerospace and defense industry.
• Addressing the challenges related to supply chain security and how to manage these effectively.
• The need for specialized skill sets in the industry and the gaps in the current education system.

Guest Quotes: 

“Everybody is there to share and grow and bring the other team up. Right? If not, you stunt your growth and you've got to be able to share what you know and enable everybody to make decisions and to, if you make the wrong decision, we're going to pivot and keep on moving. It's not a, you know, you're not going to, you know, get your hands slapped by making the wrong decision. So that's kind of the culture. It's bring everybody up with us.”

“I do study some things continually because you're always getting employees that are younger and coming out of different generations and you got to figure out how to manage them, right? Everybody wants to talk about the Gen Xers or the whoever, you know, the Gen Zs and all that. You've got to figure out how do you manage them differently than your own peer group.”

“So I do know that, you know, when I go to a conference and I speak and, you know, four or five of the other women that are there, we all know each other for the last 20 years, and we're basically, you know, like specks of pepper and a sea of salt. Everybody's, you know, 500 men in dark suits, and then there's us. So we. We realize that people might know us and we don't know them because you're just, you know, a standout from the oddity.”

“They cover everything, commercial, industrial, all of these other arenas where we are very focused and got blinders on that we are in the aerospace and defense market, and we run deep there. So I think when you have high touch and you have a, you know, a single focus on this market segment, I think you cover it well.”

Get in touch with Marti McCurdy:  

LinkedIn 

Website 

Get in touch with your host, David Graff: 

LinkedIn 

Listen to more episodes: 

Apple 

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