Jennica Dearborn, 2026 Outstanding Women in Business Recipient

Jennica Dearborn, Vice President of Operations BAE Systems

Jennica Dearborn
Vice President of Operations, BAE Systems

Jennica Dearborn serves as vice president of operations at BAE Systems, where she leads the end to end supply chain and manufacturing organization for the Aerospace and Mission Systems segment.

Jennica, who began her career with BAE as a software engineer, has more than 20 years of experience. The New Hampshire native and Keene State College graduate has supported her community through working with the Adult Learning Center and expanding educational opportunities in greater Nashua.

In her free time, Jennica enjoys spending time with her family, which includes her husband, her 5-year-old daughter and her 25-year-old stepdaughter.

“That’s where I find a lot of my energy to recharge,” she says. “I also like getting my hands dirty. I’m a big garden landscaper.”

Q. What advice would you give to young women in technical fields who want to forge a similar path to what you did to reach an executive role?

The technical field is a means to create a really strong foundation to build from, whether you’re in the technical field and want to become a subject matter expert, transition to business or management, or want to get up to the executive levels. I started my career in software engineering, and I went through other disciplines as well. I did systems engineering and program engineering management before moving on to the program management role. It truly was an anchor for how I process information, how I look at problems and critical thinking.

For a lot of the women that I mentor who are in or recently out of the technical field, there are a couple things that I always share with them. Seek out the opportunities to solve the really hard problems, or go to programs and efforts that are going to really stretch you. Find roles that are going to show you the bigger picture and how it all fits together, where you’re going to learn something new, even if it’s really itchy and uncomfortable, because that’s naturally what happens when you start to stretch yourself. From my experience, curiosity, courage and leadership transcend any function or any business model or any company. Finding ways to demonstrate that strength of yours is really important. The other piece of advice that I consistently share is just be yourself. That’s something that I’ve had to consistently remind myself of throughout my career.

Q. As someone who oversees a team of more than 5,600 people, what do you consider your primary responsibilities as a leader?

My job is about creating the conditions where people can succeed, where they can do their best, and then making sure they’re all moving in the same direction. It’s setting a very clear vision for where we’re heading and really allowing others to connect themselves to that vision all the way through the organization. In my team, I have manufacturing and I have supply chain across 20 different sites in the U.S., the U.K. and Mexico. Supply chain really faces a lot of challenging dynamic market conditions right now. It’s really creating a very clear vision of where we’re heading and what our focus is and what our priorities are.

The second part is to ensure that we’ve got the right team and structures in place. We spend a lot of time focusing on identifying and developing talent, because that’s really what makes us successful. Getting the right team in the right place in the right role is foundational.

The last but almost more important ingredient is the culture, making sure people feel like they can thrive and be themselves at work, making sure we got the right balance of trust and accountability. We do really hard things, and we need to make sure people feel recognized and seen for the hard work that they do.

Q. What inspires you to do the work you do at BAE and the company’s overall role in the aerospace and defense sector?

I’ve worked at BAE for my entire adult career. I graduated Keene State, but I was a software engineering intern before joining full-time. What has really kept me here — while there’s a lot around successes and people and opportunities and the complexities of the role — has really been the mission of how we protect those that protect us. I don’t say that as a tagline; I say that around like the DNA of how we operate. I love that I can go down to the factory floor and I can see a microwave module that’s getting assembled that I know is going into an electronic warfare suite that gets installed on the F-35 (fighter jet).

I love the fact that the individual sitting at the bench building that microwave module came from Nashua Community College, the microelectronics bootcamp, and has joined us to grow in their career. Seeing that whole thing come full picture from the factory floor all the way to the products getting delivered operating, I know I’m really making a difference in the world.