New Boeing exec comes from timber, aviation pioneers, but wants to be judged on her own
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Nicole Piasecki is a progeny of privilege, the daughter of a Weyerhaeuser heiress and an aviation pioneer who founded the company now known as Boeing Helicopters.
Three weeks ago, Boeing Commercial Airplanes promoted Piasecki to vice president of business strategy and marketing. That makes her the company's highest-ranking woman directly involved with aircraft strategy.
At 39, Piasecki already has a résumé that would be dazzling in someone two decades older: a pair of Ivy League degrees; stints with three aerospace companies; an assignment in Japan for Weyerhaeuser, the timber giant founded by her great-great grandfather; and five promotions at Boeing in 10 years.
But Piasecki is no silver-spooner whose success is fueled more by pedigree than talent. She has carved out her own spotlight by outworking and outstriving a family of overachievers.
"I'm not shy to say that I work hard and that I should be measured on my performance," said Piasecki, a mother of two who listens with the intense gaze of a person registering every word.
Piasecki's personal traits and professional pursuits were shaped, in large part, by her father, Frank, who in 1943 flew the second commercially successful helicopter in the United States.
Frank Piasecki was a strict, workaholic engineer whose seven children rarely saw him idle. He drafted all his kids to work for his aircraft business, scrubbing floors when they were youngsters and later accompanying him to Congress as he lobbied for military contracts.
Nicole Piasecki recalled that even as a 5-year-old, she got no slack from her demanding father. Once, he critiqued one of her crayon drawings by asking, "How can this helicopter fly? You forgot the rotorblades."
"At the time, we thought we were under persecution," Piasecki said. "But he wanted us to understand what it meant to work."
Frank Piasecki, now 82 and recovering from a stroke, still shows up at his office near Philadelphia every day. He said Nicole, his second-oldest child, always had a "tremendous amount of energy" that she burned off through various activities, including tennis and the piano.
Frank Piasecki's work ethic and drive rubbed off on his daughter. Nicole graduated from Yale in 1984 with a mechanical-engineering degree. She was captain of the field-hockey team, the most valuable player in lacrosse, and won the university's female athlete of the year honor. According to her younger brother, John, the award was as much a testament to her determination as her athletic prowess.
"She was the best because she wanted to be the best," John Piasecki said. "Being the daughter of one of the captains of the aviation industry has had a big effect on her."
Piasecki's mother, Vivian Weyerhaeuser Piasecki, is a Philadelphia philanthropist and a fourth-generation member of the family that founded the Federal Way-based wood-products company.
Frank Piasecki is considered one of the pioneers in rotorcraft. With his PV-2, he became the second person after Igor Sikorsky to fly a helicopter successfully in this country. His company, Piasecki Helicopter, became Vertol Aircraft in 1956, then was sold four years later to Boeing.
With two of his sons, Piasecki operates Piasecki Aircraft, a research-and-development company with 50 employees.
Nicole Piasecki said her parents were a union of German-American levelheadedness and Polish-American temper and passion. "I think I'm the best of both," she said, without boasting.
Piasecki is married to management consultant Peter Heymann, a former Microsoft manager who in 1996 co-founded Intermind, an Internet software company. They met while serving on the board of Washington Works, which helps women get off welfare. The couple have two toddler sons.
Piasecki says her famous middle and last names weren't quite the assets people might believe.
"I don't think the people in the Puget Sound area are that familiar with the Piasecki name," she said. "And I grew up on the East Coast, so the Weyerhaeuser name is no big deal at all."
But Jim Jamieson, who as head of customer engineering in Everett interviewed Piasecki for her first job at Boeing, admitted she wasn't just any anonymous job candidate.
"I was certainly aware of the name Piasecki. And with a name like Weyerhaeuser... ," Jamieson recalled with a laugh.
Jamieson, now Boeing Commercial Airplanes executive vice president of airplane programs, said Piasecki impressed him with the breadth of her knowledge and an innate understanding of the aerospace industry that comes from having grown up in the business.
When she joined Boeing in 1992 as a 777 customer engineer, Piasecki was not yet 30. She had earned an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. At Wharton, she was one of three students selected to attend the Keio Business School in Yokohama, Japan, to study Japanese business practices.
Now, as then, Jamieson said, Piasecki adroitly juggles the different demands of her job, mingling as easily with blue-collar workers as with airline executives.
"She's very good working with people in different social situations," he said. "One minute you are on the factory floor, then with engineering, then working with customers."
Jamieson said Piasecki will be "really valuable" to Boeing in her new job. As the head of business strategy and marketing, Piasecki will be responsible for ensuring Boeing offers its customers the right lineup of airplane models and services.
Piasecki is one of four women among 15 vice presidents who report directly to Alan Mulally, chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. She previously had been vice president of sales for leasing companies.
Piasecki said she studied mechanical engineering at the urging of her father, who argued she could always find work with a technical degree. And like her father, she is a pilot.
But ironically, Frank Piasecki also is the reason his daughter has chosen the business side of aerospace instead of engineering.
"I never saw myself as a design genius as my father was," she said. "What I do have is the commitment, energy and drive to work ... to accomplish good things."
Kyung M. Song can be reached at 206-464-2423 or ksong@seattletimes.com.