09-12-2021 Hall of Fame - Flipbook - Page 26
26 Baltimore Sun Media | Sunday, September 12, 2021
BALTIMORE SUN’S 2021
BUSINESS AND CIVIC HALL OF FAME HONOREE
LINDA
R. GOODEN
L
inda Gooden’s first act as chair of the University System
of Maryland Board of Regents was to apologize. It was
November 2018, and the board had taken blistering criticism for its vote to retain University of Maryland football coach D.J. Durkin following the heatstroke death of
19-year-old offensive lineman Jordan McNair and reports
of abusive behavior by Coach Durkin’s staff. At the same
time, Wallace Loh, the College Park president, announced
his retirement.
Critics said the regents got it all wrong, that they were prioritizing football over
university standards while undercutting Dr. Loh, who wanted Coach Durkin
fired. In the midst of that storm, the chairman of the board stepped down. Ms.
Gooden, a board member since 2009 and its treasurer, stepped up.
“While the board’s decision was far from unanimous, and many members
voted a different way, everyone on the board now understands that the board’s
personnel recommendations were wrong,” Ms. Gooden said at the time. “For
that, we apologize to the McNair family, the University of Maryland, College Park
community, and to the citizens of our state.”
After the dust settled, Coach
Durkin was gone and a new football
coach had been named. Dr. Dr. Loh
stayed on as president until 2020,
when Ms. Gooden and the regents
name Darryll Pines the university’s 34th president. Two years later,
the university reached a financial
settlement with the McNair family.
“Linda is extremely intelligent,”
says fellow regent Gary Attman, the
president and CEO of FutureCare
Health. “But what is truly impressive is her emotional intelligence.
She understands what motivates
people and has a good ear for what
will resonate with our constituents.
We had suffered a loss of support
because of [the Durkin vote]. The
first thing Linda said as our chair
was that we made a mistake, and
she apologized. That kind of frank
recognition and communication is
emblematic of her tenure.”
At the time she became chair,
Ms. Gooden had retired after a long
career as one of the top executives
at Lockheed Martin and had served
BACKGROUND
Age: 68
Hometown: Youngstown, Ohio
Current residence: Riva, Maryland
Education: B.S. in computer
technology, Youngstown State
University; B.S. in business
administration, M.B.A., UMUC
Career highlights: Retired as
the executive vice president of
Lockheed Martin’s Information
Systems & Global Solutions;
founder and president, Lockheed
Martin Information Technology
Civic and charitable activities:
Chair, University System of
Maryland Board of Regents; audit
chair, American Heart Association
Family: Husband, Laird Lott
on several corporate boards. Hailed
as one of the nation’s top women in
technology, she’s been a mentor to
college students and aspiring engineers.
Those who’ve worked with Ms.
Gooden say she’s an amazing leader,
who brings rich experience from
the corporate world. She knows
how to listen carefully, to ask good
questions, and to create partnerships in higher education.
The woman who led Lockheed
Martin’s information technology
sector to $10 billion in sales, and
who now oversees a university
system with a $6.2 billion budget,
started out in the Ohio steel town
of Youngstown with a desire to
be a math teacher. She went to
Youngstown State University in the
early 1970s, one of only two female
students majoring in math. One day,
while waiting in line to speak to her
dean, something caught Ms. Gooden’s eye.
“They were rolling in a new
computer, an IBM mainframe, a
big 360,” she says. “And there was
a room full of guys working on it,
all in nice white coats, and they had
it blinking, with reels turning, and
I thought, ‘Hmmm, that’s pretty
interesting.’ So I asked the dean,
‘How do I work on that?’ And he
said, ‘You want a degree in computers.’ ”
In that moment Ms. Gooden saw
her future. She became the rare
woman — and Black woman — in
STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) long before
anyone called it that.
She earned degrees in computer
technology, interned at General
Motors and, as the world of computers started to grow, learned how
to write software, picking up jobs
at General Dynamics and Martin
Marietta as an aerospace software
engineer.
For several years, she worked on
missile systems. She then embarked
on a long career with Lockheed
Martin, the capstone being her
creation of the company’s Information Systems and Global Solutions
sector. She took the aerospace giant
into IT services for government
agencies.
“I had an idea,” she says, “that,
with all of the capability at Lockheed Martin and our brand recognition we could actually build
“She understands
what motivates people
and has a good ear
for what will resonate
with our constituents.
We had suffered a loss
of support because of
[the Durkin vote]. The
first thing Linda said as
our chair was that we
made a mistake, and she
apologized. That kind
of frank recognition
and communication
is emblematic of her
tenure.”
— Gary Attman, president
and CEO of FutureCare Health
an information line of business
within the corporation.” Ms.
Gooden believed that, by offering
IT services, government agencies
would see that Lockheed offered
them “something different than
planes and things that go boom.”
The first IT contract was for $8
million with the Social Security
Administration. Ms. Gooden’s idea
eventually grew into a $10 billion
line of business for Lockheed,
operating in all 50 states and 19
countries with 40,000 employees.
Lockheed has since refocused on
its aerospace and defense business,
sending its thriving IT division to
another company in a $4.6 billion
deal in 2016. Its IT efforts became a
vital business that other aerospace
companies soon emulated.
And for that, Ms. Gooden is
“an absolute legend,” says Tyrone
Taborn, publisher of US Black Engineer & Information Technology
magazine. Her idea, he says, was
daring and innovative. “No one was
even looking at this [sector] until
Linda did,” Mr. Taborn notes. “She
transformed the landscape. She
had the sophistication and tenacity
needed to muster support for her
idea.”