There are people who receive awards, and then there are people whose careers eventually explain why the award mattered in the first place. Linda R. Gooden belongs in that second category.
Twenty years ago, in 2006, US Black Engineer & Information Technology magazine named Linda Gooden the Black Engineer of the Year.
At the time, she was president of Lockheed Martin Information Technology and had already established herself as one of the most accomplished Black women in America's technology and defense industry. She was only the third woman to receive BEYA's highest honor, and there was already plenty of evidence that she deserved to stand among the extraordinary engineers and technology leaders who had preceded her.
But one of the advantages of being around long enough to watch careers unfold is that you get to see things that were impossible to see at the time.
Looking back from 2026, I believe Linda Gooden's career tells us something much larger about leadership, engineering, and the purpose behind the Black Engineer of the Year Awards.
When Linda walked across the BEYA stage twenty years ago, we were recognizing an extraordinary engineer and corporate executive. What we could not know then was that we were also recognizing a future institution builder whose influence would extend far beyond Lockheed Martin and eventually help shape the direction of higher education throughout Maryland.
From Engineering to Enterprise Leadership
When we created BEYA more than four decades ago, one of the challenges facing Black engineers was not simply getting into the profession. The larger challenge was moving through the profession and into the rooms where major decisions were being made. We wanted young people to see engineers who were technical experts, but we also wanted them to understand that an engineering education could be a pathway to leadership.
Linda Gooden became one of the clearest examples of that possibility.
At Lockheed Martin, she rose through increasingly important leadership positions, eventually becoming executive vice president of Information Systems & Global Solutions and an officer of Lockheed Martin Corporation. She led organizations involving tens of thousands of employees and billions of dollars in business. She was operating in an environment where technology, national security, government, business strategy and workforce requirements all came together.
That distinction is important because Linda was not simply an engineer who was invited into the executive room. She became one of the executives responsible for determining what happened in that room. Her technical background did not limit her career; it became part of the foundation upon which she built it.
Her leadership later extended into corporate governance through service on major corporate boards. Those experiences provided another level of understanding about how large institutions function: how capital is allocated, how organizations manage risk, how leadership is selected, how technology investments are evaluated and how boards hold institutions accountable for performance. That experience would become extremely important in the next chapter of her career.
From Corporate Leadership to Higher Education
Linda Gooden has spent decades building bridges between industry and education. Her involvement has touched engineering schools, business schools, community colleges, STEM organizations and institutions throughout Maryland. She understood something that I have believed throughout my own career: education and industry cannot operate as separate worlds when the future of our workforce depends upon the two understanding each other.
In July 2009, Linda joined the University System of Maryland Board of Regents. She would eventually become chair of the board, placing her in one of the most consequential higher-education leadership positions in Maryland.
The significance of that responsibility is sometimes underestimated. The Board of Regents is not an honorary advisory board. It governs the University System of Maryland and exercises oversight of institutions responsible for educating a significant portion of Maryland's college and graduate students. Its decisions affect academic policy, institutional leadership, financial priorities, research, workforce development and the long-term direction of public higher education in the state.
Think about that progression for a moment. A woman who began her professional journey in technology and engineering, rose to the executive ranks of one of America's largest technology and defense companies, and is now helping provide governance over a university system that includes many of Maryland's most important educational and research institutions.
For me, that is the larger Linda Gooden story. Her influence can no longer be measured by a single company, a single university or a single title. It reaches across Maryland's education, technology, business and workforce-development ecosystem.
Why Her Background Matters Even More
Today, believe Linda's technology background may be more important to higher education today than at any previous point during her service.
Higher education is entering one of the most disruptive periods we have experienced in generations.
Artificial intelligence is changing how students learn, how faculty teach and how research is conducted.
Automation is changing the skills employers require.
Cybersecurity has become both an economic and national-security imperative.
Data centers, energy infrastructure, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, autonomous systems and other next-generation technologies are creating workforce requirements that barely existed when many of today's academic programs were designed.
At the same time, the dividing line between higher education and workforce development is disappearing. Universities will always have the responsibility of educating students broadly and preparing them for careers and citizenship over a lifetime. But increasingly, they must also respond to a much faster question: What do Maryland's workers and employers need now?
I often describe this as the difference between what people need to know four years from now and what they need to know Monday morning. Both are important, but they require institutions to think differently about how knowledge is delivered, how quickly curricula can respond to technology and how universities work with employers.
This is where Linda's career becomes particularly relevant. She understands what universities produce because she has spent years in higher-education governance. She also understands what employers need because she spent decades inside one of America's largest technology enterprises. She understands engineering, management, technology investment, corporate governance and workforce development, and she understands how difficult it can be to move large institutions from recognizing change to actually responding to it. There are not many people who have spent significant portions of their careers on both sides of that equation.
What BEYA Was Supposed to Become
For those of us who have been associated with the Black Engineer of the Year Awards from the beginning, Linda's journey has another meaning.
BEYA was never intended to be simply an awards ceremony where we put successful Black engineers on a stage, applauded them for an evening and then sent everyone home. Recognition was important, particularly at a time when Black engineers and scientists were too often invisible in mainstream America, but recognition was never the final objective.
The larger objective was to make excellence visible, create role models, build networks and develop a community of technical leaders capable of changing institutions. That is why I pay attention to what happens after someone receives an award. An award captures a moment. Legacy tells us what the moment meant.
When Linda received the Black Engineer of the Year Award in 2006, she spoke about those who had received the award before her and the opportunities their accomplishments helped create for the generations that followed. She understood that leadership is cumulative.
One generation opens a door, another walks through it, and eventually someone who walked through that door finds themselves in a position to build an entirely new doorway for the people coming behind them. Twenty years later, Linda Gooden has become part of that continuum.
Thousands of young engineers, students and technology professionals have participated in BEYA since Linda received its highest honor. Many will never work for her, and many may never meet her personally. Yet they are building careers inside institutions and within a professional environment that has been shaped in part by leaders like Linda Gooden. That is what legacy looks like to me.
Maryland's Next Chapter
Maryland now stands at another important moment. Few states possess our combination of universities, HBCUs, federal laboratories, defense and intelligence installations, cybersecurity organizations, healthcare institutions, technology companies and highly educated workforce. Artificial intelligence and next-generation technologies add another dimension to that extraordinary collection of assets.
But having assets does not automatically produce leadership.
Technology alone will not determine Maryland's future. The institutions we build, the people we educate, the workers we prepare, the investments we make and the decisions our leaders make today will determine whether Maryland simply participates in the next technological revolution or helps lead it.
That is why I believe Linda Gooden's position at this moment is so consequential. Her career sits at the intersection of the worlds that increasingly must come together: education, technology, business and workforce development.
Perhaps that is also the most important lesson I take from looking back at the decision we made twenty years ago.
In 2006, we called Linda Gooden the Black Engineer of the Year. We knew we were recognizing an outstanding engineer, an extraordinary corporate leader and a woman who had broken barriers in an industry where very few Black women had reached her level. Twenty years later, we can see something else. We were recognizing an institution builder.
Linda Gooden's career reminds us that engineers do much more than build technologies. They can build companies, create opportunities, develop people, strengthen universities and influence the institutions upon which communities depend. And sometimes, if you give an engineer enough time and enough opportunity, she can help engineer the future of an entire state.
That may ultimately be the most important engineering Linda Gooden has ever done.