Ms Sarah Pavillard is the founder and CEO of ADROITA, and an ex-Royal Australian Navy Weapons Engineer.

Sarah leads a fast-growing national firm delivering specialist maritime, weapons, and integration engineering and other professional services to Defence and Defence Primes, and advisory services to Australian and international firms that want to grow their defence business.

Since joining the Navy as a midshipman studying Electrical Engineering at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Sarah has gained more than 25 years of Defence experience not only as a Naval Officer but also as an award-winning consultant and business leader. Sarah has supported Defence, companies and academic institutions to develop, integrate, sustain and optimise some of the most complex materiel in service today across the maritime, C4ISREW, land and air domains. She has led Australian, American, British and New Zealand industry to mobilise into the defence sector, mobilising existing industrial capacity across sectors including heavy engineering, engineering design, artificial intelligence, complex electronics, and precision machining to strengthen Australia’s sovereign industrial capability.

As CEO of ADROITA, Sarah’s core purpose is to Engineer Success for Sovereign Capability and delivers this through partnering with employees, Defence, clients and other businesses. She continues to grow and develop a talented team of engineers, Defence and industry professionals, is investing in the research and development of artificial intelligence enabled decision support technology to deliver in-service maritime programs more bang for buck, and leads a number of industry consortiums.

Sarah was awarded 2021 Consultant of the Year in the Australian Defence Industry Awards, and was a finalist in the Engineer of the Year category of the Women in Defence Awards, with ADROITA being shortlisted for numerous industry awards. Sarah has written three White Papers, including the latest titled Micro-Partnerships in the Age of AUKUS which was launched in the US in April.

Sarah serves as a Director on the Board of the Australian Industry and Defence Network (AIDN), on the Steering Committee of the NSW Defence Innovation Network (DIN), and is a Member of the Executive Committee of the Submarine Institute of Australia (SIA).