Celebrating International Women’s Day at Iridium
To celebrate International Women’s Day 2019, we sat down with our new Chief Operations Officer Suzi McBride to discuss her career and what it’s like being a woman in a STEM field.
About McBride:
McBride has more than 25 years of experience, including building and launching the original Iridium satellite constellation while at Motorola’s Satellite Communications Group as a senior engineer in the 1990s. During her first tenure at Iridium, lasting over nine years, McBride served as Vice President of Program Management and Launch Services, playing a key leadership role in developing the Iridium NEXT system, leading launch strategy, engineering and hosted payload programs.
McBride returned to Iridium as the COO in February 2019 to lead operations of the Iridium network, including the satellite constellation and associated ground gateways and terminals. She also oversees all technology innovation on Iridium’s new network, including the development and manufacturing of subscriber equipment, new services and applications. Prior to rejoining Iridium, McBride spent the past two-and-a-half years at OneWeb, where she served as COO and Senior Vice President.
McBride received her MBA from the University of Tennessee in the Executive Aerospace and Defense program, and her dual undergraduate degrees are from Columbia University in Industrial Engineering and Claremont McKenna College in Management Engineering. McBride also holds a master’s degree in Program Management from George Washington University and is Project Management Institute certified.
