Oral history interview with Lynne Anderson

Abstract

Lynne Anderson grew up in Moorhead, Minnesota, and graduated in 1985 with an electrical engineering degree from North Dakota State University. She joined Sperry (later Lockheed Martin) working at Plant 8 in Eagan, Minnesota (where she worked for 28 years). She joined an electrical engineering design group, and worked on a variety of military aircraft and avionics projects, including the F-4, P-3, P-4 and others. She offers a close description of the design and specification-writing processes, along with the design reviews that accompanied these projects. She discusses her experiences in working with male-heavy teams as well as the characteristics of effective project management. She rotated through several high-profile areas, including cost engineering, project engineering, and program management that gave her wide insight into Sperry/Lockheed projects. Much of her work involved proposal development and project management. Later programs she was involved with were the Q-70 and Joint Strike Fighter. She shares observations about the change in management style with Lockheed Martin’s ownership.

This material is based on work funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation award B2014-07 “Tripling Women’s Participation in Computing (1965-1985).”