Sally Bailey Kline

Engineering Specialist, Sr., BAE Systems — Reston, Virginia

Sally Kline was born in Pennsylvania, the youngest child and only daughter of George and Ada Bailey. When her oldest brother returned from WW II and received the GI Bill, the family moved to Morgantown to be within walking distance of West Virginia University. Kline attended the local grade school, junior high and high school. Since she did much better in math and chemistry than any other subject, she enrolled in the College of Engineering at WVU in 1956. She graduated in 1960 with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering.

Beginning in the second semester of her freshman year and continuing until graduation, Kline worked for the Department of Chemistry as a lab assistant for various classes from freshman inorganic to physical chemistry.

Her first job after college was with Gulf Oil where she was introduced to an IBM 704. She became fascinated with the then-new technology and began to pursue a career in software development/engineering. After he marriage to a naval officer in 1963, their travels allowed Kline to have a variety of careers -- with General Dynamics Astronautics, Shell Oil, the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (where she taught classes in FORTRAN and assembly language programming), Teledyne Ryan, Kentron Hawaii, Decision Science and Titan. Eighteen years ago, she returned to General Dynamics, data systems and has stayed with the organization as it changed hands over the years and is now part of BAE Systems. During this tenure, Kline has been successful as a technical leader, a software manager and an engineering section head.

Kline is the mother of three, Donna, Richard and Stephen, all of whom are doing well in their careers. She currently resides in Herndon, Virginia.