Heart Aerospace has appointed Brittany Churchill as Vice President of Operations and member of the company's Executive Leadership Team. In her new role, Churchill will lead Heart's integrated manufacturing and operations functions, covering production, quality, safety, supply chain, facilities and manufacturing engineering.
A mechanical engineer by training and an experienced manufacturing executive, Churchill brings a wealth of expertise in scaling complex hardware programmes across commercial aviation, traditional aerospace, and emerging space launch technologies. She will be responsible for driving the industrialisation of Heart's ES-30 regional hybrid-electric aircraft, steering its development from prototype to full-scale production. Her immediate focus will include completing the Heart X1 prototype, managing manufacturing of the X2 demonstrator, and establishing the production system for the ES-30.
Churchill joins Heart from ABL Space Systems (now Long Wall), where she served as Vice President of Operations. In that role, she led the end-to-end manufacturing of the RS1 launch vehicle, an orbital rocket designed for commercial satellite launches and U.S. national defence customers.
Earlier in her career, Churchill held the position of Production Manager at SpaceX, where she oversaw the shift from single use to rapidly reusable launch systems. Based at the company's Hawthorne, California facility, she led a 70-person team in producing and refurbishing key components of the Falcon 9 orbital rocket.
Her background also includes engineering roles at Delta Air Lines TechOps, where she was responsible for the reliability of Boeing 757, 767 and 777 subsystems, and later, powerplant reliability for the 717's Rolls-Royce BR715 engines. She began her career at Boeing as a structural design engineer on the 777X programme.
Churchill holds a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is based at Heart's El Segundo headquarters and assumes her new position with immediate effect.
