Growing Together: Avio Aero’s Fabiana Panni Is All About Nurturing Success

Growing up in Turin, Italy, Fabiana Panni wondered how planes flying high above the historic palaces and cathedrals of her city — and over the nearby Alps, where she loved to ski — could possibly manage to stay airborne. So she made it her mission to find out. 

Never mind that she was one of just three women in her 300-person undergraduate aerospace engineering program at the Polytechnic University of Turin. Or that there were few women engineers to serve as role models at the time. Panni graduated, and went on to earn her PhD, by approaching challenges then just as she does today — with curiosity, rigor, and a willingness to ask questions.

“I’ve always asked for help when I need it, and I’ve always found support from people around me, whether they’ve been professors or colleagues,” says Panni, who leads implementation of  FLIGHT DECK, GE Aerospace’s proprietary lean operating model, at Avio Aero, a GE Aerospace company. “I’ve been very, very lucky in that way.”

Now she makes paying it forward a priority. Her days are packed with activity; if she’s not coaching team members looking to hone their problem-solving skills, she might be discussing productivity targets with managers from one of Avio Aero’s five European plants. But Panni makes time to mentor young women engineers and strives to create a work environment that is supportive for anyone aiming to reach their full potential. 

“I love to help people grow, and I try to empower them as much as I can,” she says. “It’s always been my mantra: I’ve been lucky, and now it’s my turn to help others.”

Leaning Into FLIGHT DECK

Panni joined Avio Aero in 2007, after nearly a decade doing technical work, sales, and marketing for a Milan-based global telecommunications agency. Her return to aerospace happened somewhat by chance, after she’d moved back to Turin to care for her ailing father and noticed an Avio Aero position online. Panni’s dad, who owned a small company that manufactured parts and prototypes for aerospace clients, including Avio Aero, was thrilled. “He was so happy that I was finally getting what he saw as a ‘real job’” in the aerospace industry, she says, laughing. 

At Avio Aero, Panni moved through positions in project management, sourcing and procurement, sales and program management, and process improvement before taking on a senior leadership role two years ago. It’s a job that draws on all her skills and experiences and allows her to focus on something else she’s passionate about: finding new ways to streamline and improve operations.

“I am a real believer in continuous improvement, and not just because I have this job title,” Panni says. “It’s because I’ve seen the miracles that lean principles can create in daily life. And I am in love with the FLIGHT DECK model.”

FLIGHT DECK, which GE Aerospace launched in early 2024, provides a clear, unified approach to continuous improvement that Panni says is fostering safety, quality, delivery, and efficiency throughout the company. Lean principles have long guided everything they do, she explains, “but FLIGHT DECK is setting standards for the best way to find the real root cause of any problem that arises so we can work together, across functions and companies, to address them and monitor them going forward.”

Panni leads a team that developed and now implements an intensive problem-solving training program for employees at Avio Aero. Completed by more than 850 attendees so far, the program is credited with improving efficiency and accountability throughout the company, and its success has been recognized by leaders at GE Aerospace. For her efforts, Panni is receiving a “Nurturing World-Class Talent” award, one of the inaugural GE Aerospace Altitude Awards for outstanding employee achievements.

“I am surprised and honored,” she says, adding that nurturing growth is indeed the point of the program. “We are coaching people even after the training, so they can learn to apply these problem-solving skills in the real world.”

Panni credits the support of other senior leaders at Avio Aero, including Riccardo Procacci, president and CEO of Propulsion and Additive Technologies at GE Aerospace, for coaching her and helping her develop her own talent. “I’ve been lucky to be part of the senior leadership team thanks to my manager Riccardo Procacci and my HR leader Marilea Athanasopoulou and their belief in me,” she says. 

Support Comes Full Circle

In April, Panni will travel to GE Aerospace headquarters in Cincinnati for the first-ever Altitude Awards ceremony. Established earlier this year to recognize employees for exceptional achievements and lasting business impact, the Altitude Awards will celebrate the contributions of nearly 70 employees who are helping shape the future of the company. 

While on the campus, she plans to connect with another one of her important mentors — Chris Lorence, chief engineer and vice president of product safety and quality at GE Aerospace.

The two first crossed paths during an engineering staff meeting in 2017, when Panni was engineering operations leader at Avio Aero and Lorence was the general manager of engineering on the CFM LEAP and CFM56 engine programs* at GE Aerospace. Panni was impressed with Lorence’s comments and expertise that day, so a few weeks later she reached out. “I had a very small problem, and I thought, I can ask him,” she says. “I just set up a call. It was very easy, and he was fantastic.”   

She took another chance later that year, when they met in person on a continuous improvement project focused on reducing cost. 

“He held a very important position, and I did not,” she recalls. “But I said, ‘We’ve talked before, and it seems to me that we are aligned in our way of thinking. Can we begin a mentorship?’ That was seven years ago, and we’re still checking in every two to three weeks.”

The two have since discussed everything from technical engineering and design to leadership development. “I’ll ask about soft skills,” she says. “How to manage my role on the senior leadership team, or how to manage my relationship with the other functions. The calls have really helped me a lot.” 

It’s like Panni tells her 13-year-old daughter, along with the young women she meets through participation in the Avio Aero Women’s Network and every other young engineer who’s seeking her advice: Never be afraid to speak up and ask for what you need. 

“I want to share with others the courage of all women, as well as enthusiasm for being women in engineering,” she says. 

In Panni’s eyes, everyone deserves the support she’s been fortunate enough to encounter in her career. And with it, she believes, there’s a good chance they too can soar.

*CFM LEAP and CFM56 engines are products of CFM International, a 50-50 joint company between GE Aerospace and Safran Aircraft Engines.