As Kim Pastega settles on a hard chair in a Howe Hall classroom—a chair that is better suited for keeping students alert during class than for hosting a prestigious guest—she does not seem the least bit uncomfortable. Never mind that she has just walked downstairs from a ceremony that inducted her into the Department of Aerospace Engineering’s Hall of Distinguished Alumni.
She is at a place she once called home. And it still feels that way.
In the late Eighties, Pastega was an aerospace engineering student, a young woman in a male-dominated field acting with instinct and on the advice of a high school counselor. Today, she is an executive at Boeing, a risk-taker and a leader, confident yet unassuming.
“There are many times throughout my career where it would have been easier to have stayed where I was, doing what I was, because I knew how to do it,” Pastega says with quiet resolve.
Instead, she boldly forged ahead with purpose. Her record is one of consistent success, and she is willing to credit others for most of it.
Pastega’s journey began when a high school counselor recommended engineering to her. She took that advice and declared aerospace engineering as her major. While still in college, Pastega completed two summer internships with Boeing and was offered a full-time position upon graduation in 1991.
Her first major venture was as the chief engineer and 787 program manager for the Interiors Responsibility Center within Boeing Commercial Airplanes. She then became the deputy program manager and engineering leader on the 777 Freighter program. After her success with the 777 program, she was named the director of Boeing 777 Manufacturing. In her current role, she is the vice president and general manager of the 767 Program. She oversees all facets of the 767 program, including preparing the program for the introduction of the U.S. Air Force Tanker.
Pastega has encountered plenty of challenges along the way. She believes that occasional missteps and times of uncertainty have helped her progress. Accepting a position with the 777 Freighter program and eventually the 777 production line pushed her into unfamiliar territory. After spending years designing airplanes, she was suddenly working next to the plane and with the people assembling it. Her role put her in charge of a large workforce and required her to understand the business-side of the operation.
Undaunted, she developed ways to make production more efficient through lean manufacturing while maintaining or increasing quality. During Pastega’s time with the program, the 777 Freighter was introduced and became the largest, most capable twin-engine cargo plane on the market.
“It’s truly one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had,” she recalls.
Pastega admits that not all things turn out well, simply saying, “There are going to be failures.” The point, she says, is to turn failure into a lesson instead of allowing it to be just a disappointment.
“You learn as much from what doesn’t work for how to succeed the next time with that perspective,” she says. “Sometimes when those things happen you just get up and dust yourself off, and you move on. So that’s a really big one for me, too, just learning how to move on.”
Pastega’s attitude and approach, as well as her first experiences with leadership, were cultivated at Iowa State. She was the scholarship chair for her sorority, the secretary for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics student chapter, and tackled the position of chief engineer for her senior design project.
Such collegiate pursuits prepared her for the bigger challenges Pastega would surely face as a professional. “Young leadership experiences become very relevant later on,” she says. “I mean, anyone who is going to put themselves out in front can’t be afraid to have some things that they’re going to learn from, too.”
Perhaps Pastega’s success can be attributed to her belief that “no challenge is unsolvable.”
By taking the approach that a challenge is “just one more opportunity. Then you have the opportunity to bring together other folks who have the experience to solve it. I have seen some amazing things solved,” Pastega says.
She acknowledges the nature of engineering means some problems will seem to have no solution. Sometimes, she says, the process may begin with perplexed faces among the team and plenty of questions with no answers. But then comes that feeling of relief when the problem is unraveled.
These moments leave Pastega confident. “I don’t get discouraged because I’ve learned from experience that there is always some way.” She continues, “I love working with people, and I love bringing ideas together and starting to kind of create a path, or blaze a trail.”
As a woman in aerospace engineering, she certainly has paved a way for others. Despite being outnumbered by men, Pastega has never felt like an outsider. “I never worried about the fact or thought about the fact that I was going into a traditionally male field, nor that I’m still in a traditionally male field,” she explains.
She credits two female leaders for both sparking her interest in aerospace engineering and for keeping her oblivious to the idea it may not be for women.
Astronaut and science teacher Christa McAuliffe made aerospace “very visible.” McAuliffe was on the Challenger space shuttle when an accident killed all on board. Pastega, a high school junior at the time, was still deciding what to study in college. The event, although tragic, drew attention to a prominent woman in the field of science, and that influenced her decision.
Pastega offers a more personal thank you to her high school calculus teacher. Because of her, she says, “I never knew a barrier existed because I had a woman teaching [math].”
Yet Pastega dismisses the suggestion that she too could be considered a role model. “I don’t see myself that way,” she softly laughs. “I’ve just had tremendous opportunity.”
But she does see a role for herself. “I think what I would like to see is [to] help inspire other women to go into this field, because it’s challenging and it’s fun. It really is a complex field, and we do sophisticated things that give you an opportunity to contribute to the world.”
Encouraging women in engineering is something she sees Boeing do daily. There are five commercial airplane programs within Boeing. Currently women lead three of them. “Boeing really embraced diversity and embraced it in all aspects of diversity, not just in gender. I never, ever really felt in any job I had there that I stuck out, if you will,” she says.
Seeing women in leadership positions is not the only progress she says Boeing is making. The word “innovation” infuses her discussion about the state of aerospace engineering today. She uses it when talking about new ideas, new technologies, and new engineers. She references the 787 specifically, saying manufacturing processes for it have changed drastically. Now the 787 consumes less fuel, travels at faster speeds, and also provides passengers with a more comfortable experience than it did 10 years ago. Pastega describes the 787 as “the verge of really new, really big. The amount of innovation that’s happened on that airplane has been incredible,” she says.
In her two-decade career at Boeing, she has witnessed incredible change in how airplanes are engineered. “Technologies that were just maybe dreams back 20 years ago have become leading state-of-the-art technologies that are going to be on airplanes flying throughout the world,” she says.
That type of innovation is what encourages Boeing and Iowa State’s strong bond.
“[There are] many, many outstanding graduates of Iowa State at Boeing, and so being able to come back and work with the university [and] some current undergraduates and graduates who may become our future employees [is] really important to us,” explains Pastega. “Being able to have relationships with strong research and development partners like Iowa State is very important.”
Although 20 years have passed since Pastega herself was an undergraduate, when she returns to campus it feels as though it could have been yesterday. “As soon as you walk back on campus you get to that point where the years just melt away and all these memories start coming back,” Pastega reminisces.
“The magic of what happened here set me up for a world I couldn’t have even envisioned,” she shares. As she continues, a smile spreads across her face. Her eyes gaze away, almost surely envisioning an airplane she helped create.
“Watching an airplane take off for the first time, it’s almost an indescribable moment,” she marvels. “It’s just breathless.”