Meet our Leaders: Victoria Coleman, CEO of Acubed and Airbus’ Head of Research & Technology for North America

There was a time in Victoria Coleman’s life when she had three passports. Born in Greece, she then moved to the UK where she married her husband and had three children. Approximately 30 years ago, Victoria moved to the US with her family and the rest, as they say, is history. She is a true mixed-European / American that has long excelled at multitasking - growing her career, running a household, and raising her children (who are now thankfully grown!).

The first avionics system Victoria worked on was the Air Data Computer of the F-14 Tomcat. During the first Gulf War, when the aircraft was key to the Allies air superiority, she was glued to the television thinking, “that’s my plane!” Victoria has a deep love and fascination with airplanes; after her illustrious career in the government, she knew she wanted to stay in the aerospace industry.

A computer scientist by training, Victoria has three degrees in that discipline. She was inspired to go into computer science after watching the moon landing at age nine. Her father bought the family’s first TV set to watch the moon landing and it blew young Victoria’s mind. She knew from that day forward she wanted to be part of the enterprise that accomplished society-changing missions.

Victoria began her career at the University of London as a professor, teaching computer science before joining the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) when she came to the US. There she was involved in a lot of DARPA work, which was Victoria’s first experience with the US government ecosystem. She always wanted to do work that made a large-scale impact beyond only publishing papers. To that end, Victoria joined Intel running security products. Then Samsung where the team built the first Android mobile phone, here in Silicon Valley. From there, Victoria went to Nokia (just down the street from Acubed), building mobile phones from the ground up (the whole shebang!) – all the way from the antenna, to the industrial design, to the operating system, to the UX, and the power supply. Her time at Nokia was a particularly incredible experience, taking a business strategy and creating a real collection of artifacts embodying that strategy.

As Victoria’s career progressed, she decided to move towards more web services work joining Yahoo and then serving as the CTO of the Wikimedia Foundation. There she was responsible for all of the tech infrastructure, the software, the data centers, the data analytics, and the fundraising tech. This work is what set the stage for her growth into a mission-oriented leader, which is how she ended up transitioning to government.

In 2020 Victoria became the Director of DARPA and when the administration turned over she was fortunate to be hired by the US Air Force as the 37th Chief Scientist. For the last four years, Victoria has been working in the Pentagon and is now re-adjusting to corporate life where she can take photos at work and bring laptops to meetings!

Through Victoria’s experience in government, she is well-versed in complex organizations that are working hard to achieve goals that have truly global impact. With the knowledge that sometimes it takes a long time to accomplish these objectives, she knows that if there is meaningful change at the end, it’s worth the investment.

Victoria joined Acubed and Airbus after many of her colleagues in Airbus’ Star Program had joined the organization over the years. Having a trusted support network is essential to be successful in her new role and having that network was part of what drew her to join. With big changes ahead, Victoria is thrilled to be able to work so closely with various teams. In her own words, “When you come in from the outside, regardless of your focus area, you need to first learn how to accelerate your understanding of the unique, internal systems and how you make progress in a world you don’t completely understand. Tolerating ambiguity is something that's been necessary at every single new job I went to because if I tried to comprehend the entire organization before I actually did anything, I wouldn't live long enough to do it!”

One of the lessons Victoria took away from the Department of Defense is that DARPA was exceptionally effective because like Acubed, it’s self-contained. People bring projects to DARPA because they can execute with speed and precision. Victoria’s ambition for Acubed is to be the place Airbus brings particularly challenging and forward-facing problems to solve. The organization has the DNA and infrastructure to do this.

Victoria’s ambitions are that Acubed creates and delivers even more value to the company in the years to come. The job of Acubed is to take calculated and managed risks for high payoffs and do so on a regular basis. In her dual role as head of Airbus Americas R&T, Victoria sees great synergies. At Airbus Americas, Victoria is uniquely able to bring together three of her discrete areas of focus over her career: academia, industry, and government. Within Airbus Americas R&T, the organization is broadly focused on advanced technology partnerships. There she will oversee university partnerships, those with national laboratories, and Airbus’ participation in standards bodies and other significant industry associations and groups. With a very deliberate approach to these types of partnerships across the US and Canada, Victoria believes they can be impactful for Airbus Americas as well as Acubed with each group executing on their missions in concert with one another, improving business outcomes and technological advancements.

The role Victoria holds at Airbus Americas is perhaps the pinnacle way to leverage her robust network across universities, standards organizations, and industry at this moment in her career. Few leaders in the aerospace industry have worked for so long in such a cross-disciplinary way and Airbus can benefit from putting her unique experience to good use. Additionally, Victoria is personally and professionally very passionate about ensuring the aerospace industry continues to innovate and thrive into the future. To do so takes talent – not just the kinds of talent Airbus has always leaned on, but new types of workers from varying educational backgrounds with new experiences to bring to the organization. She believes that to be successful as a manufacturing company, Airbus needs to look broadly at the entire ecosystem and be deliberate about how the company grows and maintains access to a broad talent pool. In her role as Head of Airbus Americas R&T, there is immense opportunity to support Airbus’ future workforce.

So far, Victoria has been very impressed by just how much the existing R&T team is taking on. The types of advanced technology partnerships that Airbus Americas pursues are far reaching and yet no organization can commit to every partner they’re presented with. She is spending time learning about the current evaluation and decision rubric used. She also seeks to be a new set of eyes on the opportunities Airbus is presented with such that the company can be a true asset to these organizations that are educating future colleagues, exploring uncharted research and ideas, and guiding the industry on safe and reliable standards.

Join us in welcoming this exceptional leader to Team Airbus.