A Message from Boeing’s New CEO Kelly Ortberg

Kelly Ortberg’s First Announcement as Boeing CEO

Boeing President and CEO Kelly Ortberg shared the following message with all employees:

Team,

I can’t tell you how proud and excited I am to be a member of the Boeing team. While we clearly have a lot of work to do in restoring trust, I’m confident that working together, we will return the company to be the industry leader we all expect.

Restoring trust starts with meeting our commitments — whether that’s building high quality, safe commercial aircraft, delivering on defense and space products that allow our customers to meet their mission, or servicing our products to keep our customers running 24/7. It also means meeting our commitments to each other and working collaboratively across Boeing to meet our goals. People’s lives depend on what we do every day, and we must keep that top of mind with every decision we make.

Because what we do is complex, I firmly believe that we need to get closer to the production lines and development programs across the company. I plan to be based in Seattle so that I can be close to the commercial airplane programs. In fact, I’ll be on the factory floor in Renton today, talking with employees and learning about challenges we need to overcome, while also reviewing our safety and quality plans. Soon I’ll be visiting many of our sites and I look forward to meeting with teammates around the world.

In speaking with our customers and industry partners leading up to today, I can tell you that without exception, everyone wants us to succeed. In many cases, they NEED us to succeed.  This is a great foundation for us to build upon.

I will be transparent with you every step of the way, sharing news on progress as well as where we must do things better. You’ll begin to see routine report outs from me through email and our BNN channel, giving you timely updates of what I’m seeing and hearing on the ground from our teammates and our stakeholders.

Throughout my career in aerospace over the last three decades, I have had the pleasure to work with The Boeing Company and I’ve always been impressed with the great employees here. We have what it takes to win, and I’m committed to working with you to focus the company in a way that makes us all proud to be a part of Boeing.

Thanks for your support and I’m excited to dig in!
Best,
Kelly