Marshall Aerospace has announced the appointment of Chris Walton as Managing Director of Marshall Middle East, to lead the expansion of its business in the UAE and surrounding region.
Chris, who has been with Marshall for 14 years, most recently heading up its successful advanced concepts and venture building arm Marshall Futureworx, and before that as lead on its special missions aircraft modification programmes, will be based in Abu Dhabi supporting existing activity and working with strategic partners to develop new business lines for Marshall in the region.
“Prior to founding Marshall Futureworx, I led Marshall’s engagement in the region for aircraft modification programmes, and was very pleased to have led the original setup of our operations in Abu Dhabi in 2017, and engagement with stakeholders throughout the Middle East in the following years. I am excited to get back to working with our partners in the UAE, development those key relationships in the surrounding region, and living here full-time.” says Chris.
“The scale of the vision in the UAE and neighbouring countries in the region is phenomenal, and we are now at a point where we would like to bring a dedicated focus to our work in the region, and work with local partners to harness Marshall’s reputation for excellence in engineering, and develop relationships with key partners across the aerospace and defence sector to deliver cutting edge solutions for our partners here. I believe we have plenty to offer across multiple defence sectors in the air and land domain, including aircraft capability upgrades, advanced technologies to support autonomous drone operations, and land systems infrastructure for rapid deployability.
“I am particularly delighted that our group CEO Kathy Jenkins has been able to join us at IDEX to mark this very significant stage in the growth of Marshall in the Middle East.”
Passionate about aviation from an early age, Chris started his career as a Flight Test Engineer, responsible for integration engineering, testing and crewing flights on modified military aircraft, later progressing in his career at Marshall through roles including Program Director for aerospace integration projects, Business Development and Strategy Director, General Manager, and latterly as Founder and Managing Director of Marshall Futureworx. During that time he has been seconded to Cambridge University’s Engineering Department to work on R&D projects, and was further seconded to North America to work with Bombardier Aerospace. Chris holds an undergraduate degree in Aerospace Engineering, and a postgraduate MBA from Cambridge University. With extensive experience in engineering R&D and delivery, Chris brings a track record of building and growing ventures in the technology, aerospace and defence sectors across the UK, Europe and the Middle East.