AIAA events like AIAA SciTech Forum and AIAA AVIATION Forum serve as an important mechanism for engineering professional development, recognition, and mentoring. I don’t recall missing an AIAA SciTech Forum or its predecessors since my first one in 2006. AIAA is where I found the part of my career that had been missing since the beginning – the exhilaration of networking and sharing ideas with aerospace industry peers outside of Lockheed Martin. My career satisfaction numbers went way up after experiencing a full week of sharing with my industry colleagues.
Today, as the LM Fellows program manager for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, I proudly serve the 100+ people in our ~17,000-member technical workforce who are Fellows—the best of the best in their technical disciplines. When considering a person as a Fellows candidate, one of the very important factors is how they engage externally and represent Lockheed Martin to the external community. Individuals who serve AIAA, presenting papers, leading technical committees, etc., tend to stand out among their peers when it comes to Fellows candidacy.
Unfortunately, this path to professional recognition often is difficult to attain for our newest engineering talent.
Engage Talent Early in the Face of the Engineer Shortage
Given that the United States is facing a significant engineering shortage, engaging these bright minds is increasingly important. Recent statistics project that we need 3,800 new engineers annually, even as the industry continues to struggle with employee retention, turnover, and workforce capacity. In fact, National Defense Magazine reported in 2023 that 8 in 10 defense firms reported difficulty finding qualified STEM workers.
It’s a competitive environment today to keep our early-career folks working for us. They are the future, so any opportunity to invest in them gives them another reason to stay.
Generally, engineering leaders have a limited allocation of discretionary dollars available for select employees to attend AIAA events. Those selected tend to be already active on technical committees, have recently published a paper, or are contributing to the Institute in some significant manner. The way we prioritize attendance doesn’t favor the early-career person.
Target Early-Career Professionals
The Revitalizing Early-Career AIAA Participation (RECAP) Program was developed five years ago to overcome this gap.
Designed as a competition across different parts of Lockheed Martin’s businesses each year, RECAP is open to our early career engineering employee population. These junior staff usually have less than three years of experience. Hundreds of employees have applied and over 100 RECAP participants from across Lockheed Martin business areas have gone to AIAA forums and events since the program began in 2019.
“It’s an experience to be able to go to these conferences at such an early time in your career,” said RECAP participant Sofia Franco, a flight safety engineer for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics’ flight safety team.
Franco attended the 2024 AIAA AVIATION Forum, and this year, she served as RECAP program manager, accompanying 13 RECAP participants to AIAA SciTech Forum in Orlando. As program manager, she oversees logistics from selection to ensuring participants get to the forum and feel comfortable navigating corporate travel.
Help Open Doors
“We’ve had the opportunity to volunteer at the company booth in the forum Expo Hall. We get to meet a lot of other technical subject-matter experts. It really opens a lot of doors for mentorship,” noted Franco of her own experience as an attendee.
Franco, who will celebrate her fourth year at Lockheed Martin in June, also told me how she was able to meet people she normally wouldn’t have both in and outside of Lockheed Martin by attending AIAA forums.
“I was able to create really impactful networking opportunities but more than that, friendships from people I met while a RECAP participant.”
So, how can other AIAA corporate members create their own RECAP-type program?
Be Budget Minded and Intentional
Budget is always the limiting factor in a program like RECAP. What worked for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics was being intentional about carving out a budget for this purpose that’s protected for these 10 or so early-career folks.
Designing the program as a competition also has worked well. Many early-career employees who were deeply involved with their university student branch of AIAA are motivated to continue membership and excited about the opportunity to return to a forum they are familiar with. These individuals are eager to express the importance of AIAA in their education and how it continues to shape their current roles within Lockheed Martin.
If you can, work with AIAA to make this part of your annual benefits package as an AIAA Corporate Member. That could include allocating annual memberships to these young career team members or providing access to AIAA courses, so they gain year-round access to AIAA programs and learning opportunities.
Advice: Leverage AIAA
“Often companies will use the majority of the benefits from their corporate membership for their executives. But Lockheed Martin is being deliberate about executing a program that recognizes their younger professionals,” explained Chris Semon, director, Enterprise Accounts and Corporate Operations at AIAA. “We’ve gone out of our way to give each RECAP cohort special introductions to AIAA leaders, as well as networking and special social opportunities.”
Our partnership with AIAA is an important tenet for making RECAP work. The 2025 RECAP cohort met with the new CEO of AIAA, Clay Mowry, at AIAA SciTech Forum. They also spent time with senior Lockheed Martin leaders, including JD McFarlan III, vice president of Air Vehicle Engineering, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, and Linda O’Brien, vice president and chief engineer, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics. AIAA and Lockheed Martin also included our group at networking and social events, including AIAA’s popular Meet the Employers event.
RECAP is an important initiative for Lockheed Martin’s newest generation of technical talent. The industry exposure and engagement it provides our high-performing, early-career engineering employees can be an important factor affecting satisfaction, motivation, and retention. We urge our RECAP cohort members to get deeply connected during this experience to build rationale for participation at the next relevant conference. One person in our most recent RECAP cohort attended a technical committee meeting as a guest and ended up being invited to serve as a friend of the committee. That’s how you do it!
