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Watson Honored by Lockheed Martin for Outstanding Contributions

As many corporate leaders seek to maintain a healthy STEM workforce, Brynn (Mundahl) Watson ’89 is “laser-sharp focused” on promoting STEM (science/technology/engineering/math) careers for middle school students (especially girls) and has been known to “take her show on the road.” As director of software engineering at Lockheed Martin, where she has served since 1996 and currently leads over 1,200 software engineers in the Space Systems Company (SSC), Watson has concluded that diversity drives performance and innovation, and she is determined to “pay it forward.”

S/W Systems Architect DirShe continues to speak at various local and regional STEM events, and was recently at the Houston Space Center as the keynote welcome speaker for the Spirit of Innovation Challenge finals sponsored by the Conrad Foundation, which gathers high school STEM students and their coaches for a session in developing innovative products to help solve global and local problems in a sustainable way.

Recently honored by Lockheed Martin with a 2013 Full Spectrum Leadership NOVA Award, Watson was recognized for her commitment to creating and fostering an inclusive environment to complete performance evaluations across the entire SSC Software organization with a newly adopted enterprise-focused process. The annual NOVA award is granted by the company to a select few employees who have made outstanding contributions to customers, business, and strategic goals. In a workforce of over 115,000, only 58 of the awards were granted in 2013.  The black-tie award ceremony, held at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C., was an incredibly exciting event and venue for Watson, especially since the museum showcases the very industry that the company serves.

Just a year earlier, Watson had been overwhelmed by the recognition she received from the Silicon Valley YWCA with their Tribute to Women (TWIN) award. She has since joined that organization’s board and is excited about its commitment to empower women, children, and families, and to eliminate racism, hatred, and prejudice. She is helping to grow their TechGYRLS program, an after-school empowerment program that provides girls aged 5-14 with opportunities to increase their skills and confidence in the use of technology and engineering.

Watson remembers asking many “how questions” as a youngster, and was always intrigued by how things work. It was in the tenth grade WatsonPicthat she decided she wanted to become a computer programmer, perhaps inspired by her frustration with games like Pong. The encouragement of family and friends and the mentorship of her professors at Augsburg played a big role in shaping her future, especially with regard to “thinking big” and becoming a creative problem solver. She feels very fortunate to be in a position now to support such fascinating programs as Orion (the next generation of human space flight), the MAVEN and JUNO spacecraft that will explore the atmosphere on Mars and Jupiter, and other space and missile defense systems that protect our freedom every day.

After corporate relocations from Riverside, Calif. (where she earned her M.S. and met her husband of nearly 22 years), to Colorado Springs, Denver, and McLean, Virg., Watson and her husband Tim have happily settled in Silicon Valley (Los Altos, Calif.), where they live with their 10-year-old daughter, Claire, and a golden retriever named Liberty.