Meet Boeing Commercial Airplanes’ first female chief mechanic

Jennifer Radtke has been preparing to serve as a chief mechanic at Boeing all her life. Her father encouraged her to help with sheet metal work in their garage when she was a child. She learned the joy of an elegant design, a quality product and a hard job well done.

Today, she is the first woman to serve as a chief mechanic at Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Supporting Product Development, her primary focus is on one of the production system tenets: respect for people.

Designing for mechanics

“My job is to be the voice of the customer and the voice of the factory mechanic,” she said. “I keep that voice present for our engineering team as they create new designs.

“I’ve done some of the hardest jobs required to support an airplane in service, and I have made it a mission to understand what our own mechanics go through in building airplanes. Every mechanic — at Boeing and at the airline — has asked themselves at some point what the designers were thinking, because they don’t always make it easy to do required tasks.”

Radtke’s career started at the airlines with washing airplanes. She progressed through a series of assignments to eventually become director of maintenance. Her move to Boeing enabled her to work with designers. What she found was that many didn’t know how their designs would impact mechanics.

“Respect for people means we’re making our airplanes a joy to work on,” she said. “It means we’re thinking about mechanics’ safety, their work environment and their workload. We’re not just creating elegant designs; we’re being practical.”

To accomplish that task, Radtke and her team participate in design decisions. They help review proposed approaches and negotiate with designers, challenging them to rework elements that would otherwise be a burden for mechanics.

“It’s not always easy finding a balance. For an airplane to work, it has to meet sizing and weight requirements. But more often than not, when we sit down together and think about the mechanic as part of the design equation, we can find improvements,” she said.

Creating advocates

Radtke also sees mentoring as a key part of her job. Creating more advocates for mechanics and helping to develop the next generation of leaders is a way she honors the investment that her mentors have made in her.

“I have had role models who invested in me,” she said. “They pushed me; they insisted I learn but did not let me fail.” Her list of mentors begins with her father. She also counts a host of managers, co-workers and role models who encourage her personal and professional growth.

Within her own team, Radtke prioritizes creating an environment of caring and sharing. “If you have a solid, trusting team, you create environments that allow you to have challenging conversations and still respect each other,” she said. “We set the bar higher and higher for each other, and that makes us all better and makes work much more rewarding.”

A path well-charted

Radtke looks back at her childhood and 25 years in aviation and sees a straight, intentional path from her father’s garage to Boeing. One that her husband, daughter and son have traveled with her — moving across the country as her career progressed and providing an endless source of support.

“Without my family, I could not have had the experiences that led me to this point in my career,” she said. “They are a part of every accomplishment.

“I have the courage to be the first person to champion an idea, to advocate for change and to point out opportunities for improvement,” she said. “But it takes a team to get anything done. If I put my energy and confidence in the team, if I stay true to my mission, I know we’re going to make a difference in the products we develop for future generations of mechanics, pilots and passengers.”

By Lori Gunter