A new chapter begins

This week I am saying au revoir to Airbus after 12 fantastic years to take up an exciting new challenge with Siemens in Munich. I would like to take this opportunity to thank just some of the outstanding leadership & team members I have worked with during my varied career with Airbus.

Mark Bentall who was instrumental in my joining the company back in 2006, Andre-Hubert Roussel my first boss, Yann Barbaux and the entire Innovation Works team who transformed upstream R&T within our company under a single cohesive brand and Ulrike Steinhorst who worked tirelessly to run the Global Innovation Network.

We forged new paths & research centres in Singapore, India, Russia, US, Malaysia, Canada amongst others – many thanks to a great LinkedIn contributor David Woon in Singapore, about to embark on his new journey. The list of people is far too long for this post, but special mentions to Kevin Jones and his team, Tony Bagnall for being the best right-hand man I ever worked with and Rhys Phillips – good luck with your science/jazz/radio fusion Rhys!

All this under the inspiring leadership of Tom Enders as CEO and Jean Botti as CTO – a big shout out to you, Lawrence, Valerie Manning and the others – your vision was bigger than all of us, Jean - I wish you the best of luck with VoltAero.

Looking back I would say that I am most proud of what we achieved in Wales, from opening our flagship R&D centre, employing over 100 specialists, creating strong bonds with Government & Academia that I hope will last far beyond today – I will be keeping a close eye on the newly announced Cyber Security Innovation Lab we worked so hard to push over the line for the last 2 years. I will forever remember spending time with a good friend Rhodri Morgan, discussing rugby, the finer points of chicken husbandry and almost everything in-between. Rhodri, we miss you and your inspirational work on behalf of a great country. Also, many thanks to Ian Risk for his support and doing such a great job – we could not have done it without you.

In my last chapter at Airbus I have been fortunate enough to specialise in Security Innovation, with great help from Axel Krein, Pascal Andrei and all the teams in Toulouse, Munich, UK and much farther afield, including the fun I have had mentoring students at Skoltech – nothing re-invigorates you more than listening and debating with students who want to change the world, you should be very proud Professor Alexander Kuleshov.

To all my new colleagues at Siemens, I am looking forward to executing the amazing vision that Natalia Oropeza and Roland Busch have to bring a holistic approach to Cyber Security – together we will make it real – because it matters.