Also balances career and family life
Biggi is pursuing her master of business administration at the Rutgers School of Business–Camden while skillfully balancing her engineering career at Lockheed Martin, her large family, and various community activities. It makes for long hours with little free time, but she’s up to the challenge.
“I run from one activity to the next from the minute I wake up in the morning until I crash in the late evening,” says Biggi, who will graduate from Rutgers–Camden in May.
Biggi is the Lockheed Martin lead systems engineer for the U.S. Coast Guard’s fourth National Security Cutter Hamilton. National Security Cutters are the largest and most technically advanced vessels in the Coast Guard, with capabilities for maritime homeland security, law enforcement, and national defense missions.
Although she already excels in a demanding technical leadership position in the male-dominated field of shipbuilding, Biggi was seeking a new challenge when she decided to pursue her MBA at Rutgers–Camden.
“I had a solid technical background, but I wanted to build my management and leadership skills and enhance my knowledge on the best business practices to execute long-term programs in today’s business environment,” Biggi explains.
She says her goal when she started the program in 2007 was to migrate to a leadership role from a technical role as an individual contributor designing and configuring computer and network infrastructures for ship-based platforms.
Biggi saw an opportunity to achieve that goal by developing her management skills through the Rutgers School of Business–Camden, which delivers a master of business administration program with flexible options for career-minded students on either a part-time or full-time basis.
“I want to leave a legacy for my kids, so I am proud that I can tell them their mother was instrumental in the design and configuration of four Coast Guard cutters,” Biggi says.
Originally from Clarksville, Md., Biggi received her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech before moving to Reston, Va. She moved to New Jersey when she began working for Lockheed Martin in 1999.
She started out as a contributing engineer on Lockheed Martin’s Coast Guard Systems team and became the lead of the computing and network infrastructure team within two years.
Due to her success in leading the large team of 25 engineers, Biggi was selected to be the lead systems engineer for the National Security Cutter Hamilton. The ship is expected to be sold off to the Coast Guard in September of 2014.
When she’s not engineering ships, the mother of five can be found at the helm of a different kind of team.
“I love coaching softball because I want to help my daughters and other girls in the community develop the skills to have a competitive edge and be the best they can be,” Biggi says. “I think all parents should give back to the community in some way, and softball happens to be the sport where I have the most knowledge and experience.”
In 2009, Biggi was recognized with the Graduate Merit Award from the Executive Women of New Jersey. She was awarded with an academic scholarship from the organization, which promotes the advancement of women to the highest levels of business, the professions, and government.
“It was an extreme honor to be selected and receive the award along with so many other driven women in the state of New Jersey with growing careers,” Biggi says. “I still consider myself very young in this industry, and I will continue to execute to the best of my ability because I think the best is yet to come.”
Media Contact: Ed Moorhouse
(856) 225-6759
E-mail: ejmoor@camden.rutgers.edu