Rebecca Neu

When she began her career as a highly-regarded chemist, Rebecca was eager to follow in the scientific footsteps of her family. “Both my parents were physicians,” she says, “and I thought for sure I wanted to be in medicine.”

Now, as director of strategic offsets and proposals at General Dynamics Mission Systems–Canada, Rebecca reflects on her stark career shift, and how she is proof that you can successfully pivot to a new field and find ways to bring valued expertise with you.

Recognizing her innate talent in science, she thought the scientific community was her only path. “I had a lot of success in the research and development field, and graduated from a well-respected PhD program in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Toronto,” she says, “Everyone in my research group followed their graduate careers with post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard University or MIT. We were doing cutting edge work; but for me, there is this element where you can be very good at something, but at the same time lack the passion necessary to sustain you.”

It was this realization that made Rebecca appreciate her true calling was no longer in the lab. Instead, after completing her PhD, she was inspired to take her STEM expertise and apply everything she learned through a business-focused lens.

An opportunity to provisionally patent a component of her research introduced her to the intersection between the benchtop and business.

“It was that moment when I realized I wanted to pursue an avenue that brought together my STEM expertise and business, with a focus on the pharmaceutical or chemical manufacturing industries,” she says.
She shares how her PhD opened doors and was the catalyst for making the career-defining decision to move from Toronto to Ottawa to pursue Carleton University’s MBA program.

An internship posting in the university’s MBA graduate student lounge marked the beginning of a career in the defence sector. Rebecca attributes her success to one individual – who later became a mentor and long-time friend – sharing that: “Someone took a real chance on me; they thought that I would have a lot to offer, they believed in me.”

Rebecca applied and joined a team that gave her exposure to a SATCOM project as a market research analyst. “I thought to myself ‘this sounds pretty cool’ I had taken enough physics courses to feel that I could really understand the technology.’” Rebecca explains that she needed to step away from her comfort zone of chemistry to fully immerse herself in a new business challenge.

From that point, she was intrigued by what the defence industry had to offer. Since then, she has spent over a decade expanding her expertise in proposals, capture management, and more recently in strategic offsets, with a focus on defence and technology procurement.

When asked about her first encounter with General Dynamics, Rebecca shares: “The best things in life appear serendipitously.” Despite being fulfilled in her previous role, the opportunity to lead the Proposal Development Team at General Dynamics was one that she could not let slip by.

“I had been introduced to General Dynamics previously and liked how they were involved in everything in the defence sector, supporting customers in all domains: land, air, sea, space, and cyber. But what I really liked was the idea of working on a complex portfolio,” she says. Rebecca found it to be the perfect fit.

In 2020, despite the changing nature of work in a global pandemic, Rebecca embraced her new position as senior manager of proposals. “I really like the well-defined start and end of a proposal effort; you see so many different situations and problems, it gives you the opportunity to really challenge yourself,” she says. There is a fast and furious nature to proposals, which encouraged Rebecca – using her methodical thinking – to look at it as an opportunity for creativity.

With buy-in from her small, but mighty team, they quickly set to work. “We implemented new processes to streamline and aid our efforts and found a new sense of purpose along the way.” Closely collaborating with business development, Rebecca now leads the strategic offsets division, in addition to proposals. No two days are the same and that’s what makes it so rewarding.

“Both offsets and proposals are enablers for business development and capture,” she explains, “although it took time to get accustomed to a new world, it was the best professional decision I ever made.”

Rebecca attributes the team’s success to the processes they implemented and the hard work they have put in all of these years. She beams when sharing that her proudest moment was being part of the team that led to General Dynamics’ recent win of the Land C4ISR contracts, valued at up to $1.68 billion.

“It was a mega effort both professionally and personally,” she says, “it was one of the most rewarding things I have worked on at General Dynamics because people – jobs – were behind that, and it was the people that delivered.”