Leading Through Urgency in Defence: Rebecca Humble, CEO of Aurizn

“Urgency is now a structural feature of our operating environment. It’s not temporary, and it’s not going away.”

We’re joined by Rebecca Humble, CEO of Aurizn, a leading Australian defence and national security company delivering advanced capability across modelling, simulation, and mission support.

With more than 30 years of global experience across Australia, the UK, and the US, Rebecca shares what it takes to lead and scale in one of the most complex and highly regulated sectors.

In this episode, Rebecca shares:

• How the changing global threat environment is reshaping strategy and decision-making
 • Building and retaining talent in a highly constrained, mission-driven sector
 • Executing a buy-and-build strategy to strengthen Australia’s defence capability
 • Navigating the transition from founder-led to CEO-led leadership
 • The role of AI in defence and why trust and regulation matter
 • Leading with integrity, transparency, courage, and a “pay it forward” mindset

Guest: Rebecca Humble, CEO, Aurizn
Host: Mark Bryan, Managing Director, Pemba Capital Partners
Podcast Producer: Martine McMahon

Thanks for listening and keep striving for your next summit!

Transcript

This series is produced on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. PEMBA respectfully acknowledges traditional custodians throughout Australia. We recognize their continuing connections to country and culture and we pay our respects to elders and leaders past and present.

A very warm welcome to View to the Summit, the PEMBA podcast for founders and CEOs looking to scale to their next summit. For our returning listeners, thank you for joining us again and for those tuning in for the first time, it's great to have you on the journey. I'm Mark Bryan, one of the Managing Directors here at PEMBA and today we're delighted to welcome Rebecca Humble, CEO of Aurizn, to the podcast.

We're also excited to be recording View to the Summit from Aurizn 's HQ in Adelaide, South Australia. Aurizn is a leading Australian defence and national security company delivering capability across areas such as modeling and simulation and mission solution support. Rebecca brings more than 30 years of global defence and national security experience, having worked across Australia, the UK and the US.

She's led complex organizations through growth, international expansion, acquisitions and transformation, including stepping into the CEO role following a founder-led phase. We're very proud at PEMBA to be partnered with Aurizn and to be supporting the business as it scales Australia's capability in areas of national importance. Rebecca, it's great to have you with us.

Welcome to View to the Summit. Thank you, Mark. Today we'll explore the changing defence environment, private capital's role in readiness, scaling defence capability, leadership transitions and building high-performing teams.

So Rebecca, to set the scene, can you please tell us about your career journey, particularly how you came to work across defence and national security in multiple international markets and what ultimately led you to be the CEO at Aurizn?

[Rebecca Humble] (1:53 - 3:36)

Great, good to be here, Mark. Well, I'd like to say it was part of a grand plan, but the reality is it wasn't. I sort of fell into defence as a sector.

I was one of those people who left school not really knowing what role I wanted to do, but knowing what I enjoyed and what interested me. And also I knew from a very young age that if presented with the opportunity, I would like to live and work overseas for extended periods of time. So I always liked the big picture thinking, geopolitics, so I ended up doing a Bachelor of Arts degree in Russian and Chinese history, which seems quite topical now, doesn't it?

And I then saw an advertisement, as you did in the day, from British Aerospace, who is now BA Systems Australia, our largest defence prime here in Australia, who was looking to actually employ an arts graduate to balance out the cadre of engineers that they had in their employee base. So I reflect on that and actually think that's very forward-leaning at the time to do that. So my first role in my early twenties had the illustrious title of a proposal coordinator.

And then I got asked if I'd like to take up a two-year secondment in corporate headquarters at the parent company in the UK in their corporate strategy team and doing M&A. I learned a lot in that role in two years as a business analyst. Two years ended up becoming nine in the UK, which was great.

I ended up working for the man who ended up becoming the CEO of the global BA Systems business for about nine years and learned an awful lot from him. He probably gave me my big break at about 28 when he offered me the role of head of strategy for the business that he was heading up.

[Mark Bryan] (3:36 - 3:38)

I was quite young for a role of responsibility.

[Rebecca Humble] (3:39 - 8:11)

Quite young, quite young. Yes, you keep emphasizing I've been in this game for 30 years, so that was a great experience. I was head of strategy for the company's global sustainment group, which had a portfolio in the UK, the Nordics, South Africa, as well as the Australian BA Systems Australia.

After doing that for a number of years, he had the conversation with me about, well, Bec, if you ever want to progress and be CEO one day, you'd better go and get operational experience. I got sent up to the north of England, you'd know, very wheelie up there on a RAF base, looking after and being involved in the Tornado military aircraft program, which was worth about a billion pounds at the time. That was a really great experience for me because it was a transformational contract in its time.

The Ministry of Defence at the time had a burning platform. They needed to get 15% cost out of their defence budget. Essentially, what was different about that contract was that BA Systems was remunerated for the number of flying hours that Tornado was actually in the air as opposed to inputs, so it was an outcomes-based contract.

That's something we don't see a lot of here in the Australian defence sector, so that was a learning for me that if you want different outcomes, you want to get capability out faster and more efficiently, then you need to look at different commercial constructs and be open to that because that will then drive different behaviours. I was then transferred to the U.S. in Washington, D.C. That was for another two-year gig, which ended up becoming eight. I became Vice President of Global Strategy for the land and armaments business.

It was worth about $15 billion U.S. at its peak, and I was brought in to really understand what the core and true size of that business was. So again, another interesting analogy for me is we bought that business at the peak of the U.S. deployment of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. The business was manufacturing Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, turning them off the production line every day to go over there and support, but I was brought in to truly assess when that market context changed and U.S. troops were withdrawn, what would the true core and value of the business be? It was a really interesting one for me because we just bought this business. The market didn't quite understand why then we started divesting things. Employees didn't quite understand it either, but the true core of the business ended up being about $8 billion U.S. dollars. When that withdrawal of troops happened, we were at the forefront because we'd already done a lot of the work to respond to that and deliver sustainable, profitable growth, and we weren't reacting to a market change. I then spent a couple of years in Europe. In total, I think it amounted to about 19 years away from Australia, but we made the good decision to come back in 2018, and that was when I decided, well, look, I've had the bulk of my career working with major primes.

I also did a bit of consulting when I was in the U.S. to government. It's probably time for a change, so I made the decision that I'd like to go and work with smaller Australian defence companies to take some of that global learning and know-how that I was fortunate enough to have and apply that to smaller defence companies in Australia to help them scale and grow. I did a few of those roles, and then I was approached for the CEO role of Verizon.

That sort of followed that ethos, I think, from early on in my career that if you're presented with an opportunity, it might not have been in the grand plan, but if it sounds good and you think you can do it, give it a go. I think also I realized as a long-term strategist with a background in mergers and acquisitions that that sets me up well as a CEO of a business such as Verizon, which has a buy and build model, because I get that space. I get the market intimately, but I also know how you do it in a very heavily regulated, structured market such as defence.

That's what attracted me. The other thing that attracted me, and I know we'll probably talk about this more later, was we're one of only maybe two or three examples at the moment in Australia of a defence company being private equity backed. That excited me because I understand the optionality that that can bring to support the scale and growth.

[Mark Bryan] (8:12 - 9:12)

Brilliant. How fortunate are we to have such a well-credentialed CEO? That was an excellent run-through.

I find it really interesting, Rebecca, that so many of the guests on View to the Summit actually, when they first start their career journey, didn't really know exactly where they would end up. I think it's a great reminder that our careers are marathons and not sprints, and they develop over time potentially in ways that you weren't originally planning. Thank you for providing us with the background there.

Maybe let's jump into the strategy. Defence obviously is always topical, but particularly at the moment, given some of the global conflict that's occurring. 2024 was a turning point really for Australia.

It marked a significant shift, particularly the move from the long-held assumption that we'd always have an extended warning time before a major threat develops. How's that urgency changed the way you make decisions as a leader, whether it be capital allocation, risk appetite, or your execution of strategy plans? I'm keen to understand how you think about the strategy.

[Rebecca Humble] (9:13 - 11:43)

Australia is an island nation, and we're geographically remote. I think that serves us very well in one respect, because we're somewhat isolated from the conflict. While the threat environment is very real and heightened at the moment, as you've articulated, people listening to the podcast have probably heard that statement that we're facing the most critical and complex security environment that we have since World War II.

That puts it all in perspective. Our response as a nation, however, is still yet to be determined. In 2024, the national defence strategy removed the long-held assumption that we'd had for generations as a nation that we would have a 10-year warning period to respond to a threat.

That assumption has gone, and that assumption disappearing two years ago means, I think, urgency is now what I call a structural feature of our operating environment. It's not a temporary thing. It's not going away, and businesses operating in defence such as Aurizn need to reflect that shift.

The knock-on effect of the heightened threat environment is there, and it's essentially causing a pressure to increase defence spend. It's also extremely important to us as Australia if we're going to be a credible partner on the international scale in alliances such as AUKUS. New defence policy documents are actually coming out very soon.

We'll get an updated national defence strategy, an updated defence budget, and this is part of the government's commitment to update these documents every two years. That, to me, is an indication of the shortened decision- cycles and the urgency that we all need to respond to. I think that's the dilemma and the reality of defence as a sector, which had traditionally very long lead times versus our political cycle, which is every four years.

A bit conservative on the uptake of technology. We can't keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome, and that requires government, industry, all of the players in the broader defence ecosystem to be aligned around the need for pace and doing something differently. Strategy, for me, has to be flexible, particularly in a very complex, uncertain environment that we're in at the moment.

We need to review our strategy regularly and be prepared to adapt and course-correct, and I think what I'm hearing at the moment, most importantly, have a plan B.

[Mark Bryan] (11:44 - 12:03)

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, Rebecca. Thinking about the talent base of the business, obviously, defence national security is a highly skills-constrained arena, yet Aurizn's built a superb body of talent within the business. How do you think about sourcing and retaining that scarce talent at AURIZN?

[Rebecca Humble] (12:05 - 14:07)

Our business model here at Aurizn, Mark, is a people-based business model, so people are obviously very important to us, but defence and national security are skill-constrained sectors, as you've noted, particularly when it comes to getting security-cleared personnel and those smart engineers who are focused on advanced technologies. Here at AURIZN, we focus on offering meaningful, mission-driven work because talented people, in my experience, want to see the real-world impact of the work they're doing and what they're building and also feel as though they're contributing to something bigger than themselves. That's why I really like our purpose as a company, as a defence company, which is to push the limits to create a more secure future.

In my experience, people want a number of things. I think there are those people who are early on in their careers who want a variety of projects and opportunities to work on so that they can learn and have different experiences. People also want meaningful work, as we've talked about, and they want to work for leaders who coach and mentor them and give them opportunities to grow.

My own leadership style is you need to take people on the journey. They need to understand the vision, the strategy, the aspiration of the company and what you're striving for. That requires transparency and honesty.

I feel personally that that approach and style has enabled me to attract good talent and retain the good people on my team. I used to say I have personally three parameters that need to be met if I take on a new role. I need to work for someone who challenges me and I can learn from them, number one.

Number two, I want that good team of trusted people who are different from me and think differently so we can do great things together. I need to work in a business that is going through change because the handle turning business as usual doesn't quite float my boat.

[Mark Bryan] (14:07 - 14:13)

You can see it just walking around the office. You can see the team is very engaged and happy. The culture of the business feels really strong.

[Rebecca Humble] (14:14 - 14:14)

Good.

[Mark Bryan] (14:15 - 14:27)

Thinking about the private capital side, how do you think about planning and executing a buy and build strategy and defence while also obviously managing integration, risk, culture and the IP protection of the business?

[Rebecca Humble] (14:27 - 16:13)

So buy and build is exactly what is needed here in the Australian defence industrial base. So I'm very comfortable with that approach because we need consolidation. Here in Australia, having worked in the US and the UK, we're a bit of an anomaly.

If you look at our industrial base, we have the very large primes at one end of the spectrum. We have a plethora of defence SMEs doing really smart stuff around tech, but we don't have much in the middle. If you look at the US and the UK, they do.

They have a healthy representation across that industrial spectrum. We don't. So we've got a gap.

And what that means is the bulk of the work goes to the primes. Now I've worked for the primes for many years. They're great organizations and they do really good work.

But what we need in Australia is to get the ability for SMEs to grow and scale and have a healthy representation because it gives the customer more choice and it enables that innovation to get pulled through at a different pace and fill capability gaps that we currently have. That's what attracted me to the CEO role in Aurizn because we do have that private equity backing. We've invested also more than $2 million in building out our sovereign mission capability.

And unlike many SMEs, we have that optionality. So a lot of SMEs, as you know, Mark, struggle with having that optionality around capital to reinvest, to support a growth and scale strategy. We've got that because of the private equity backing.

So we can do that. But I feel very strongly it can't be scale for scale's sake. It has to be strategic, aligned to the strategy and deliver the defence capability that the customer actually wants and needs.

And it has to be now.

[Mark Bryan] (16:13 - 16:37)

Yeah, makes complete sense. So continuing around the leadership theme and going back to the transition, really in terms of you coming on board as the CEO following a founder-led phase. From your perspective, what are the most challenging aspects of that transition and what should boards, investors and leadership teams better understand about making that transition successful?

[Rebecca Humble] (16:38 - 18:51)

Look, there's no doubt that the transition can certainly be a challenging one. But as long as the stakeholder groups that you have referred to, Mark, have clarity around the new roles and responsibilities and are aligned on that and how it's going to work, then I think that certainly sets it up for a better chance of success if it's not there. So as I said earlier, I'm a big believer in taking employees on the journey and the messaging behind transitioning from a founder-led organisation to a CEO-led organisation is actually an exciting one for employees because it means the founders have built out a successful business and taken it through that first phase of growth, but have recognised along with investors and the board that it's now ready to be led by a person who can take the business into that next phase of growth and scale and potentially bring a different level of expertise or a different level of knowledge to the table.

In the case of Verizon, our founders have transitioned to being directors on the board. So they're no longer working in the business day-to-day, but they continue to work on the business through a director governance lens as they have inherent value and corporate knowledge that they want to, and I want them to, to continue to add. They just do it around the board table.

So it is where I think in my experience, there's misalignment when problems occur because that just adds another degree of complexity that the CEO needs to work through, which can take up considerable time and it's a distraction for the business and what you're trying to achieve. So that's why I think just clarity, roles and responsibilities and alignment. I've had the benefit of seeing both sides of the spectrum, I guess.

A big global corporate, you know, typically has more mature systems, governance structures, you know, ability to allocate capital, whereas the smaller privately run firms, you know, are often more flexible, agile and can innovate faster. So I think you have to take the best of both worlds as you scale and that's the experience I can bring to the table.

[Mark Bryan] (18:51 - 19:15)

Yeah, brilliant. Let's talk about AI if we can. It feels that artificial intelligence has become the complete theme of 2026.

It feels there was a light bulb moment at the start of this year for many businesses. I know Aurizn though has been thinking about this for quite some time. Can you talk please about how Aurizn's leveraging AI today and what are the constraints or trade-offs when considering deployment in the defence sector?

[Rebecca Humble] (19:16 - 21:24)

I'll start with the second part of the question if I may, Mark. There's currently no regulatory or legal framework with regard to the adoption of AI for the defence sector in Australia. So the rate of adoption of AI for defence companies is somewhat different to that of commercial organisations and that's purely because of the nature of the work we do in defence and its criticality to our national security.

So AI-enabled tools in the defence space have to be trusted and certifiable because of the high-stake operational context that we're operating in. So for me, AI is not just about jumping on the bandwagon there in defence. It's about delivering assured augmentation that enhances our human judgment rather than replacing it because of that operational context.

So as defence industry, we pay really close attention to ensuring data sovereignty and that we comply with the security and frameworks that we are obligated to practice under like the defence industry security program or DISP and we need to comply with that as well as other things like export controls and the US ITAR system for example. So we have to provide the assurance of the work we do and for our partners in our supply chain are compliant to those frameworks because in industry, being a trusted partner in defence is critical and if we can't assure our defence customer of that, then we're not going to be able to operate. So at AURIZN, we're leveraging AI across our core capability set of modelling, simulation, decision support to enhance speed, accuracy, analytical depth but we are also very fully cognisant and aware that future regulation and policy changes could change our approach or indeed even invalidate existing systems.

So we're probably at the start of the journey, not as advanced as in the commercial sector but there are good reasons behind that and we need to do it in a very considerate way.

[Mark Bryan] (21:25 - 21:38)

So Rebecca, a question we love to ask all of our guests on View to the Summit is what are your two or three core values or principles that guide you as a leader? It could be in personal life, could be in business, interested in those values.

[Rebecca Humble] (21:39 - 24:12)

The number one value for me and I don't think it differs from many people is integrity. So I learned that very early on in my career. If you say you're going to do something, you do it because otherwise you don't have credibility and even more importantly the respect of your colleagues and teammates.

So it's also particularly critical especially in the sector that we operate in because credibility and trust are built over many, many years because of the long program lead times and the cycles lengthy and if you get it wrong it can be lost very quickly and be very impactful to the business that you're in. So I also believe transparency is key to building trusted teams. The more transparent you are with a team and open about the journey that the business is on, what's working well, areas that might need more attention but also the opportunity set really coalesces a team.

I think I've got one more if I may. I think increasingly courage is actually becoming really important particularly in the complex environment we're operating in as we need leaders that are prepared to lean in and make decisions in that sort of in conditions of uncertainty and without waiting for perfect information. So in defence operating environments where decisions carry significant operational and national consequences, sitting on the fence for me is not an option.

So they're my sort of work values or principles but I'm also a big believer in paying it forward. I had people who believed in me very early on in my career and gave me opportunities that were both career and life changing. I really like to do the same with people who work for me where I see potential and give them different opportunities or give them a role that they might not think that they were ready for and nurture them along the way because I had that experience and it's been invaluable.

So none of it's rocket science or new but they're the principles or values that have guided me. And then I think from a very personal perspective I would just say be kind. And that's what I tell my children is the most important thing in life.

It's not grades or sporting success or the role that you end up having or being CEO. It's about who you are as a person and the impact that you have on others because that is what people will remember.

[Mark Bryan] (24:13 - 24:47)

Yeah no I love that Rebecca. I think be kind it's so so important. Integrity, transparency, courage, three core values and the pay it forward one as well.

You talked about having that opportunity as a 28 year old. That's obviously been a key shaping of your career and it's great to hear you as you say paying it forward with lots of mentoring and building the culture. So thank you for that.

Thank you for being very open there. Finally Rebecca given your experience in leading complex systems and fast changing businesses and environments are there any books, tools, habits or tips and tricks that you think you'd like to share with the audience?

[Rebecca Humble] (24:48 - 24:52)

I really enjoy reading autobiographies.

[Mark Bryan] (24:52 - 24:52)

Yeah me too.

[Rebecca Humble] (24:53 - 24:59)

Strong women who have led through uncertainty and change and held true to their values.

[Mark Bryan] (24:59 - 24:59)

Okay.

[Rebecca Humble] (25:00 - 25:31)

That's sort of my vice in my spare time and it doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum or the role that they've had. I just find it really interesting to learn about different people, the learnings that they've gone through and see what I can take from that. I think, especially as a woman working in a male dominated industry, it's getting better, but it's good to get different female perspectives and you sort of feel that you're in it together.

Yeah. I recently finished actually Jacinda at Dan's book. I don't know whether you've read that.

[Mark Bryan] (25:31 - 25:31)

I haven't, but no.

[Rebecca Humble] (25:32 - 26:05)

Yeah. I really liked her ethos of proposing a different leadership style where empathy is at its core and that's okay. It just a different style of leadership and own it.

And I also think Hillary Clinton's latest book I read, which was Something Lost, Something Gained. And she actually wrote that before Trump had secured the presidency. And I think it's fascinating because what she predicted has basically all pretty much come true.

But also for me, it was her unwavering commitment to public service from an extremely young age.

[Mark Bryan] (26:05 - 26:05)

Definitely.

[Rebecca Humble] (26:06 - 26:28)

That was my takeaway. I'm also a bit of a military history buff and I still like reading about Russia and China, but yes. So in terms of a habit, I think for me it is, if you get offered an opportunity, take it.

Even if you're a bit scared by it, try it out. And I am a big believer in preparing thoroughly and diligently.

[Mark Bryan] (26:28 - 27:12)

Fantastic. No, that's great. Great suggestions on the books.

We will add both of those to the Pember library, which is growing by the week. So Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us today. That's just been a really great run through.

It's really interesting to find out about your career, your leading Aurizn with great success. So we thank you for that. Congratulate you on all your successes.

For our listeners, the themes around readiness, scaling, leadership transition, and the role of private capital, they'll be particularly valuable. Thank you, Rebecca. To our audience, thanks for tuning in to View to the Summit.

If you enjoyed today's episode, please follow the podcast and share it with someone who would find it useful. Pay it forward, as Rebecca would say. So until next time, keep climbing.

Thank you.