'The real sovereign capability is the workforce'

Rebecca Humble has spent more close to three decades in defence industry across the US, UK, Europe and Australia, much of it inside the sector’s largest organisations. In 2025 she became CEO of Aurizn, an Australian-owned defence technology company assembled from several businesses and scaling fast. We sat down with her to talk about the part of capability that rarely makes the headlines - the people.

Capability is a people story

Ask most people what sovereign capability means and they will describe hardware. Rebecca starts elsewhere. “People picture sovereign capability as ships, submarines, missiles, advanced manufacturing. Those things are important, but the real sovereign capability is the workforce that sits behind them.” It is, she explains, decades of accumulated engineering knowledge, trusted relationships, and an industrial workforce that understands the complexity it operates in. “Technology changes and platforms evolve, but the enduring national advantage is having the people with the expertise to adapt as the requirements adapt - and they inevitably will.”

The hardest gap to close, though, isn’t skills. “It’s tempting to say skills, because that is the big issue. But I’d actually say it’s a structural challenge.” The nation is asking more of its defence industrial base than ever, while everyone competes for the same engineers, technicians and specialists - people whose experience takes years to build. The answer, in her view, is less about training and more about how the system works together. “Structurally, it’s about how we collaborate - defence, government, industry, academia, research bodies, even schools. Fix that, and the capacity issue starts to resolve itself.”

She points to a recent address by Minister Pat Conroy, who acknowledged that industry needs a demand signal, but that as a nation we may need to build capability before we buy. “His point was that the Defence strategy has been set - the work now is in the execution. And all of us, not just industry, are going to have to do things differently, and think about how to do them better.”

Building people, and keeping them

For a business under constant delivery pressure, investing in early-career talent can feel like a luxury. Rebecca calls that a false choice. “Meaningful early-career work isn’t choosing between development and project delivery. It’s finding ways to achieve both.” At Aurizn that means putting emerging engineers onto real projects, pairing them with a mentor or line manager, and encouraging them to ask questions and stay curious. “It’s real-time learning, supported by experienced people who understand the sector. That’s what they need.”

Keeping those people, in a market where defence, mining, energy and transport all compete for them, rests on three things: purpose, development and culture. “Most people want to know how their role contributes to something bigger than themselves,” she says - and at Aurizn that anchor is a purpose built around creating a more secure future. Development keeps people learning on new projects. And culture, she argues, is decisive. “People stay because they work with good people and good leaders. If they don’t, they leave.”

Larger competitors and their pay packets don’t rattle her. “Pay is a motivator, of course it is. But if it’s the only one, that person probably isn’t the right fit for us.” What she sees energising her people - engineers especially - is something else entirely: celebrating a success, calling out good work delivered for the customer, and understanding how it all moves the strategy forward.

Scale versus building scale

“The principles transfer remarkably well. But the processes don’t.”

Rebecca’s career has largely been inside large, mature organisations; Aurizn is the opposite. Whether a business has 50 people or 50,000, she says, the fundamentals are the same - a clear strategy, the customer’s trust, the right people, consistent execution. What changes is complexity and speed. “In a growing business you can move much faster, you can pivot. You don’t want to import layers of governance that stifle your ability to make decisions quickly - that speed is your differentiator.” Her contribution is to bring the discipline of complex programs - execution, risk management, customer focus - while protecting the agility and entrepreneurial mindset that made the company what it is. “You don’t want to look the same as everyone else.”

What surprised her most in the first months as CEO was how much of the work rests on trusted relationships. “Everything comes back to credibility and delivering consistently” - with the customer, with partners, and down through the supply chain. The role itself, she found, is not about having every answer. “It’s to create clarity, set the strategic vision, remove the blockers, and help people do their best work. I deliberately employ people a lot smarter than me - it makes my job easier.”

The missing middle, and what it costs to hold it

Aurizn sits deliberately between the primes and the small end - the “missing middle” defence has debated for years, and a gap Rebecca first noticed returning to Australia after 19 years abroad. “Our defence industrial base looked really different from the US and the UK. The question was why.” Occupying that ground, she says, carries a real organisational cost. “The cost is in resisting both extremes. Become too much like a large organisation and you lose the agility that makes you valuable. Stay too informal and you hit a ceiling, because you can’t scale consistently.”

The balancing act is to build enough integration that the customer sees one company, while keeping enough autonomy that teams stay fast and innovative. “It takes time, leadership attention and investment. It’s a really hard place to be - but the payoff is that the customer doesn’t have to choose between scale and agility.”

Growth will inevitably change the culture, and she treats that as the point rather than the problem. “If it’s feeling a bit uncomfortable, that’s actually okay. It means we’re moving in the right direction. It shouldn’t feel like what you did a year ago.” Some people thrive on that; others decide it isn’t for them, “and that’s okay too.” She keeps returning to the well-worn idea that culture eats strategy for breakfast. “Developing the strategy is the easy bit. It’s the execution, and taking people on the journey.” An executive team gets it because they built it - the harder work is cascading the ‘why’ through every level of the business.

A global career, an Australian advantage

Having worked across the US, UK and Europe, Rebecca found the fundamentals of the sector remarkably consistent - customers everywhere want trusted partners who deliver, manage risk and bring innovation. Where Australia differs is context. “We’re a smaller market with a smaller industrial base and workforce, so collaboration isn’t optional, it’s a must. Companies compete on one program and partner on the next. No single organisation can do everything here.” That connectedness, she argues, is the country’s quiet strength. “We might be a smaller nation, but that connection is our force multiplier.”

She experienced it first-hand on returning home. Warned that 19 years away would cost her a network, she found the opposite - the people she started with were still in the sector. “Everyone knows everyone. It comes back to trusted relationships.” The time abroad left her with a global mindset, and a conviction that the goal is not to copy other nations but to stay curious. “Take the lessons, learn what worked and what didn’t, then build on your own strengths.” It also left her valuing difference - people whose life experiences have shaped them to think differently. “There’s incredible value in a room full of people who think and feel differently from you. That’s how you make better-informed decisions.”

Defence as a national dividend

Rebecca sees success in Australian defence measured by more than commercial outcomes - it is also about contribution to the national ecosystem and enduring capability. She frames AUKUS in those terms: a national endeavour whose infrastructure, housing and jobs will flow well beyond defence into the wider national economy. That, she believes, is where social licence is built. “If people can see the positive economic impact on their lives, their children’s job opportunities, their town, they’ll feel differently about defence spending - not because they’re frightened of a threat, but because they can see the upside.” She points to Barrow-in-Furness in the UK, a submarine-building town that grew, deliberately and over decades, into a community people want to live and raise families in. “It can’t happen overnight, and it can’t happen by default. You need that conscious thought at the start.”

Joining the dots

For someone leading a technology company, Rebecca’s degree is an unlikely one: a Bachelor of Arts in Chinese and Russian history. She chose it because she was drawn to big questions and big-picture thinking, not because she had a career mapped out - and her advice to newer talent echoes it: think about what motivates you, not the job title. The choice drew a memorable warning from her father, who was sure feminist politics and Russian history would leave her unemployable. She promptly doubled down. Its real legacy is a habit of mind. “I like joining the dots - getting multiple sources of information, reading widely, then putting the jigsaw together and asking what it means for the business.”

On acting early

Asked for one decision that shaped Aurizn’s direction, Rebecca points to the value of acting early. A new CEO, she says, has a limited window to make deliberate calls about the team and the direction, and getting the right people around the table - aligned to the strategy, and willing to think differently - is the foundation everything else rests on. “You have a honeymoon period as a CEO. If you don’t make those decisions early - not change for change’s sake - then nothing changes.” The strategy, she says, was always the easy part. The capability was always the people.