Michele Evans Oversaw Lockheed Martin's Biggest Project

By James R. Hagerty 

Growing up in Owego, N.Y., Michele Evans wanted to know what made mechanical things tick. She took apart her family's stalled cuckoo clock, found a gear that had come loose and managed to repair it.

She was also athletic and later had a chance to attend Vassar College on a field-hockey scholarship. Determined to study mechanical engineering, she enrolled instead at Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y.

That led to challenges far beyond cuckoo clocks. In 2018, she was promoted to head Lockheed Martin Corp.'s aeronautics arm, the defense contractor's largest business, with nearly 30,000 employees and annual sales of more than $25 billion.

The job made her a contender to become Lockheed's chief executive and put her under severe pressure to find ways to reduce the costs of the world's most expensive military program, the F-35 combat jet.

In December 2016, President-elect Donald Trump had turned up the heat by tweeting that the cost of the radar-evading jet was "out of control." Ms. Evans accelerated plans to cut the cost of an F-35 below $80 million from $95 million in early 2018, a spokesman said.

Her responsibilities also included Lockheed's Skunk Works facility, where the company explores new technologies.

Over the past 18 months, Ms. Evans combined her job with cancer treatments. She died Jan. 1 at the age of 55.

Produced in a mile-long factory near Fort Worth, Texas, the F-35 is Lockheed's most important product.

Shortly after winning her promotion, Ms. Evans told the Dallas Business Journal that she sometimes wondered whether she was ready for it. A bit of self-doubt, she said, could be helpful. "I think it keeps you humble, " she said, adding: "I actually think it's something you want. To me, the worst characteristic a leader can take on is arrogance."

Michele Ann Marzo, the sixth of seven children, was born July 27, 1965. Her father was a school administrator. Her mother was a homemaker who later worked for an insurance agency.

Growing up with four older brothers was helpful training for a business career. Most of the family's sports equipment was right-handed. Though she was left-handed, young Michele had to adapt herself to playing games as if she was right-handed. She did that well enough to become a captain of her school field hockey, basketball and track teams.

In 1988, she married David Evans, also a mechanical engineer and a friend since high school.

After earning her engineering degree at Clarkson, she worked for International Business Machines Corp.'s Federal Systems unit. That business was acquired by Loral Corp. in 1994 and two years later by Lockheed Martin.

As her career progressed, requiring more hours and round-the-clock availability for phone calls from customers, she and Mr. Evans had to work out how to share parenting duties for their two sons. By working as a consultant, he said, he was able to "take care of the home front while she was traveling."

At a meeting with other female executives several years ago, she said, "One of my core beliefs was that if I failed as a parent, none of my other accomplishments mattered. You must draw your lines, and you have to find people in your life who will honestly tell you when you need to rebalance."

She served on the boards of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and of Girls Inc., which promotes education and leadership skills.

Ms. Evans, who is survived by her husband and two sons, kept a reminder on her computer to think at the end of each day about someone she had met and send a quick email expressing thanks.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 21, 2021 08:48 ET (13:48 GMT)

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