Lockheed Martin’s CEO flew 5,000+ hours as an Air Force pilot and Casey’s CEO fought in the Gulf War—now they’re running Fortune 500 companies
Air Force Academy and served as a pilot from 1985 to 1991—logging more than 5,000 flight hours in a Lockheed C-141B Starlifter, including during the Gulf War.
Key points
- “The mission dedication that you have whether it’s Lockheed Martin or any other company—[if] you get a veteran on your team, they’re going to be committed.” Darren Rebelez went from Gulf War infantry officer to KFC manager—and eventually the head of $25 billion Casey’s Darren Rebelez became CEO of Casey’s General Stores, ranked No.
- Today, the Air Force veteran runs Lockheed Martin, the defense giant ranked No.
- This Veterans Day, several leaders have said the lessons they learned in the military—such as attention to detail, a willingness to take responsibility, and the composure to make decisions under pressure—still shape how they lead thousands of employees.
Lockheed Martin CEO says the skills learned as a veteran can be taken ‘forward your whole career’ Jim Taiclet, the CEO of Lockheed Martin, grew up in a military family.
“In my mid-twenties, I was commanding multi-million dollar aircraft and experienced air crews on classified missions all over the world,” he said in a 2017 interview (at the time he was CEO of American Tower).
Additional details
- But Taiclet has said he believes the value veterans bring extends beyond their technical expertise or familiarity with the defense industry—it’s also the leadership skills and sense of responsibility they develop through military service.
- Military Academy at West Point in 1988 and spent the next three years as an infantry officer, including a deployment to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War.
- 61 on the Fortune 500, where roughly one in five of its 120,000 employees has also served.
- He went on to hold leadership positions at Pratt & Whitney and Honeywell before becoming CEO of American Tower, a wireless communications infrastructure company, in 2004.
- “On a few of these, the mission briefer’s parting words were, ‘If anything happens, we never heard of you.’” The experience also taught him how to lead people with different levels of experience, skills and seniority, while simultaneously performing under pressure when the stakes couldn’t be higher.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
Advertisement
Every article behind this summary — 1 article from 1 outlet
Get stories like this in your inbox.
Subscribe — it's freeOne free email at 6am — your topics, deduplicated, five minutes. No account, no paywall.