09 Leadership / Company

Nine people
who sign things

Six of the nine came up through engineering roles inside the business. Three were hired in. All of them are expected to be in a design review at least once a month, and to have an opinion when they get there.

The executive meets weekly. Anything affecting flight safety, airworthiness or a customer's schedule goes to the whole group rather than to one director, and the Director of Quality has a veto that does not require the Chief Executive's agreement.

Executive

The team

Contact details for each are on the request; media enquiries should go through the newsroom address rather than directly.

Portrait of Nadia Okonkwo
Chief Executive

Nadia Okonkwo

Joined in 2015 to run programme delivery, took over as chief executive in 2021. Spent eleven years in commercial aircraft structures before that. Chairs the anomaly review board.

Portrait of Anders Fisker
Founder & Chief Engineer

Anders Fisker

Founded the company in 2009 and has held the chief engineer role since 2018, having decided he was a mediocre chief executive. Design authority for the propulsion product lines.

Portrait of Tom Redgrave
Chief Operating Officer

Tom Redgrave

Runs manufacturing, supply chain and the six sites. Came from automotive tier one production and has never fully forgiven aerospace for its batch sizes.

Portrait of Sarah Lindqvist
Chief Financial Officer

Sarah Lindqvist

Joined in 2019 from a listed engineering group. Responsible for the decision to keep the business privately held, and for explaining that decision roughly twice a year.

Portrait of Marcus Adeyemi
Director, Propulsion

Marcus Adeyemi

Led the FULMAR-2 development from a sketch on a Westcott whiteboard to qualification. Started at Fisker as a graduate in 2012.

Portrait of Elin Vaughan
Director, Space Systems

Elin Vaughan

Responsible for the HALYARD platforms and the integration halls. Previously ran spacecraft AIT for a European prime. Leads the design-for-demise research line.

Portrait of Duncan Kerr
Director, Avionics & Software

Duncan Kerr

Built the SEINE flight stack with four people in 2016 and now runs a group of ninety. Insists on hardware-in-the-loop testing to a degree colleagues describe as unreasonable.

Portrait of Hamish Grant
Director, Defence Programmes

Hamish Grant

Runs Farnborough. Twenty-two years in airborne systems, six of them in service. Holds the security authority for the List X facility.

Portrait of Rosa Delgado
Director, Quality & Airworthiness

Rosa Delgado

Reports to the board rather than to operations, deliberately. Has stopped four shipments in three years, and been right about all four.

Governance

Who decides what,
and who can stop it

A private company can be run badly in private. We publish the decision structure so that customers and staff can see where authority actually sits, and so that nobody has to guess who to escalate to at two in the morning.

BoardFive directors: three executive, two non-executive. Meets monthly.
Non-executivesAppointed 2019 and 2023, both from outside aerospace, both with audit committee experience
ShareholdingFounder 41 %, employee benefit trust 27 %, executive and staff 32 %
Flight safety authorityDirector of Quality & Airworthiness, independent of programme management
Anomaly review boardChaired by the Chief Executive, convenes within 24 hours of a class 1 event
Ethics reportingIndependent third-party line, results reported to the board quarterly
Overhead view of a shared working table with laptops and notes
Programme review, level 2Every Tuesday
Employee ownership

The employee benefit trust was set up in 2021 and now holds 27 % of the company. Every permanent employee is a beneficiary after twelve months, and the trustees include two shop-floor representatives elected by staff.

Glass office building against a blue sky
Enquiries

Speaking requests,
interviews and board matters

Media contact

We answer most press enquiries within a working day, and we will say no clearly rather than go quiet.