Executive Vice Chair and Board Director, Palladyne AI; Vice President, China Business Development, Boeing Commercial Airplanes (former)
Seattle, Washington
Laura Peterson is Executive Vice Chairman and a Board Director of Palladyne AI Corp., formerly Sarcos Technology and Robotics. A Director of the company since 2021, she was appointed Interim CEO in May 2023, and President and CEO in October 2023. As CEO, she led a major restructuring and product pivot, leveraging the company’s robotics AI/ML software platform to establish Palladyne AI Corp.
She is a Board Director of Air Transport Services Group, and Accelya Group, a Vista Equity Partners SaaS portfolio company.
Laura possesses a deep understanding of the strategic considerations and challenges associated with complex, highly regulated and technology-intensive global industries. Her career and corporate board experience span multinational industrial, high-growth technology, and transportation and logistics sectors.
Prior to becoming a DCI Fellow in 2018, she held a series of executive positions in airplane sales, international business development, global strategy, government relations and homeland security at Boeing, and served on the Executive Leadership Team of three Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) CEOs, as well as BCA Airplane Production and Supplier Management, BCA Strategy and Boeing International. She was frequently tapped to lead on priority and emergent areas of high strategic and financial importance to the company. Her most recent role was Vice President, Business Development for China, Boeing’s largest commercial market. Laura also led relationships with key customers and the achievement of $10 billion in new airplane sales; developed and negotiated international agreements with implications for sales, production, technology and services operations; managed $3 billion in offset obligations in growth markets including India, Korea and Southeast Asia and led post-911 stand-up workforce planning with the Transportation Security Administration for the onboarding of 30,000 employees.
Laura received her engineering degree from Stanford University and an MBA from The Wharton School. She has served on boards in the education, medical, economic development and arts arenas for over 20 years in executive and director capacities.