Jacqueline D. O’Brien Named as President & Chief Operating Officer of BMC
Cleveland, OH August 18, 2022. Bartlett Maritime Corporation is pleased to announce that Jacqueline D. O’Brien has been elected as President and Chief Operating Officer of Bartlett Maritime Corporation, effective immediately. In a separate, concurrent action, she has been elected to the company’s Board of Directors.
The nation’s Submarine Industrial Base, which in the 1960’s consistently delivered a new submarine into service every 44 days while properly maintaining this rapidly growing fleet and as recently as the 1980’s delivered 5 new submarines into service per year while properly maintaining a Submarine Force of more than 100 submarines, is in the midst of a now-widely acknowledged and well understood capacity and capability crisis. There are many reports from various agencies detailing his crisis, summarized at on our website.
In response, Bartlett Maritime Corporation is preparing to execute its immediately actionable, cost-effective public-private-partnership proposal – The Bartlett Maritime Plan™ – to add the required capacity and capability to the Submarine Industrial Base. The company’s team includes an exceptionally well-qualified team of senior leaders in both Naval shipbuilding & maintenance and in various key aspects of commercial industry on both the company’s Senior Advisory Board and the company’s senior operating staff. As a key next step in organizing for success, Ms. Jacqueline D. O’Brien has been elected as President and Chief Operating Officer and concurrently but separately, to the corporation’s Board of Directors, accelerating preparations for project execution.
O’Brien initially joined Bartlett Maritime in March 2022 as Vice President, Corporate Development following an extensive career in driving the development and execution of growth strategies within aerospace and defense, infrastructure, energy, and marine markets. Her most recent assignment before joining the company was as Chief Executive Officer and Secretary of the Board following having served as a Member of the Board of Directors at Engineers Without Borders. Prior to that she served as Executive Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at Vigor, based out of their Seattle and Portland Shipyards. O’Brien led the sales, marketing, technology and estimating functions through the sale of the company to The Carlyle Group and Stellex Capital Management. O’Brien came to Vigor following a twenty-five-year career at Alcoa, Arconic, and Howmet, created by Alcoa’s separation into independent companies. Most recently she served as Vice President of Business Development and Global Affairs driving successful growth strategies for Arconic while managing teams across the world. As a native of Northeast Ohio, O’Brien holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the Ohio State University and a Master of Business Administration degree from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. O’Brien, 54, and her husband Dr. John O’Brien, Ph.D., have 3 grown daughters and live in Vermillion, OH.
Commenting on these new positions for Jacqueline O’Brien, Founder and Chief Executive Officer CAPT Edward Bartlett, noted “In the 5 months since Jackie joined the company, she has clearly distinguished herself as a standout leader who is ideally prepared for the challenges of this new position. While I am and will remain fully engaged in executing our singular corporate strategy of supporting the rapid expansion of the US Navy’s Submarine Industrial Base, the challenges inherent in successfully delivering this objective are immense and the depth and breadth of our scope are both vast. In this environment, driven by the national strategic urgency of this overarching effort, our tactical approach is to both organize for success and to empower our outstanding team – both internally and through our industry partners – to execute the plan. With Jackie O’Brien joining me in this key overall enterprise leadership role I am reassured that the confidence placed in us by the Navy’s leadership in playing a key role in resolving this urgent, pernicious crisis will be very quickly validated.”
Continuing, Bartlett added, “We are intensely focused as we quickly transition from planning and program development to program execution. I encourage everyone, both within our company and in our community and marketplace, to take a moment to congratulate Jackie on both distinguishing herself and agreeing to undertake this much larger challenge.
In a book to be published later this year, "69 Day Run", I share what it was like to be deployed on an American Attack Submarine at the height of the Cold War. One purpose of the book is to share just how deadly serious this business really is, and always has been – and how very important every single person and organization in the Submarine Industrial Base is to both the safety of the intrepid men and women who sail these phenomenal ships and to the security of the entire nation. With that in mind, I will close by saluting and thanking every member of the Bartlett Maritime Team, with a special appreciation to Jacqueline O’Brien for accepting the mantle of senior leadership in this most serious of businesses. As I state in “69 Day Run”, “the reality (is) that the heroes “in the breach” at sea require heroes in port, from design concept through sustainment, to make it all possible.”