The shareholder representatives of the Eurofighter consortium have appointed Andrea Thompson from BAE Systems as the Chair of the Supervisory Board with effect from 1st January 2022.
Andrea is Managing Director of the Europe & International business at BAE Systems, where her responsibilities include leading the company’s role on the Eurofighter Typhoon programme.
She joined the company’s Air business in 2016 as Senior Vice President, before she was promoted to run the Europe & International business in three years later. In 2019, Andrea was named in the UK Top 100 Most Influential Women in the Engineering Sector.
Andrea said:
This is an exciting time to be taking up this role as we continue to develop the capability of Eurofighter Typhoon to ensure its role as the backbone of air defence for decades to come.
Eurofighter Typhoon now benefits from a clear roadmap, agreed with the Eurofighter partner nations, which takes us towards the end of the decade - all of which builds on a series of capability enhancements, together with further aircraft acquisition from the German Air Force to continue the aircraft’s capability journey.
Through the strength of European collaboration, we were delighted to see the first aircraft arrive in Kuwait last year and are preparing to deliver the first jets to Qatar later this year, so there is a lot of work to do - now and in the future.
Eurofighter Jagdflugzeug GmbH also recently announced the appointment of a new CEO, Carlo Mancusi, who joined from Leonardo, and commenced his role as of 1st January 2022. He is joined on the Board of Management by Wolfgang Gammel, who is appointed Chief Operating Officer Programmes, and Andy Eddleston, who has been named Chief Operating Officer Capabilities.
Andrea said:
I look forward to working with Carlo Mancusi and his team together with my Supervisory Board colleagues to further strengthen our partnership to deliver further military, political and industrial benefits to our global operators.
Having started her career in the US in the automotive industry, Andrea returned to the UK in 2009 to become the first female Managing Director of Leyland Trucks in its 120-year history. There she helped the company win the Queen’s Award for Engineering after overseeing a significant increase in exports.
She went on to spend four years as Executive Vice President at Rolls-Royce before joining BAE Systems.