Rhea Antoine is a vice president of supplier quality for Collins Aerospace, where she provides leadership and strategic direction across supplier quality.
Collins Aerospace is a unit of Raytheon Technologies Corp, which is a leader in technologically advanced and intelligent solutions for the global aerospace and defense industry.
Rhea is responsible for driving supplier quality performance and standardizing quality practices within the supply base.
A dynamic and influential leader, Rhea is passionate about paying it forward and inspiring the next generation of leaders through mentoring, coaching, and providing access to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education in underserved communities.
She is an active member of the Collins Black Executive Council and a co-leader of the inaugural Black Talent Accelerator program designed to promote, enrich, and champion young Black leaders across the organization.
Previously, Rhea served as executive director of quality and achieving competitive excellence (ACE) for Collins’ Aerostructures business unit.
In this role, she was responsible for overseeing quality compliance, manufacturing quality, and supplier quality while providing leadership and strategic direction for all quality and ACE, the Collins Operating System, activities for Aerostructures.
During her tenure, she drove Aerostructures’ quality transformation journey to improve performance across its programs and sites, resulting in 60% reductions in both manufacturing escapes and AS9100 (Quality Management System) major non-conformances.
As a member of the Aerostructures Senior Leadership Team, Rhea also worked to develop key initiatives and metrics to support the organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
She was actively involved in the African American Forum (AAF) and worked with the AAF Board to develop strategic initiatives and activities while providing leadership coaching.
Prior to joining Collins Aerospace, Rhea worked at John Deere for over 15 years in roles of increasing responsibility spanning quality, operations, continuous improvement, and engineering.
She also led John Deere’s Black Employee Resource Group where she implemented a mentoring program and enhanced its community outreach programs.
A dedicated advocate of diverse young talent, Rhea formed a partnership with Tuskegee University to support on-campus activities and provide a talent pipeline via the hiring of quality leadership (QLEADs) and interns.
She also remains an active supporter and recruiter for the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE).
Rhea earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Tuskegee University and a master’s degree in management.
