Dive Brief:
- Boeing appointed Susan Doniz as chief information officer and senior vice president of information technology and data analytics, the aerospace company announced Wednesday. Doniz will assume her role in May.
- Most recently, Doniz held the CIO role at Australian airline Qantas, and has served in leadership roles at SAP, Aimia and Procter & Gamble. She succeeds current interim CIO Vishwa Uddanwadiker, who held the role since October 2019.
- Doniz will oversee the company's IT, data and analytics, and information security strategies, reporting directly to President and CEO David Calhoun.
Dive Insight:
Boeing is undergoing a leadership transition. In December, CEO Dennis Muilenburg resigned amid a flurry of criticism over how the company handled the 737 Max production process. The company's board appointed long-time Boeing exec David Calhoun as CEO.
Investigators determined a software bug in the jet's Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) played a role in two deadly 737 Max crashes in Asia and Africa. Aviation authorities are still grounding the airplane model. Boeing lost $1 billion in Q4 because the 737 Max was grounded, the company reported in January, the Chicago Sun Times reports. Costs following the crashes exceed $18 billion.
Doniz joins the company in a time of transition, with a new CEO and continued fallout from the 737 Max crashes. In January, the company's current CEO assumed his position with a pledge to "improve transparency and rebuild trust with our customers, regulators, suppliers and the flying public."
Doniz' work will support the company as it works on its No. 1 priority, as stated by Calhoun in an email to staff: returning the 737 Max model back into service. But shaping a clear technology strategy is another key priority for the leadership team.
"Technology is advancing at a pace we've never seen before," Calhoun said. "Boeing must keep innovating to succeed. We'll continue to invest in our global workforce and new processes and technologies that will help us become safer and more efficient as we define the future of aerospace."
Enabling artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as increasing data awareness to break data silos, have shaped key tech priorities at Boeing.
