Navigating new landscapes: Three executives to watch in 2022

This year has proved to be yet another challenging but fruitful year for airfreight operators. From COVID-19 outbreaks that further exacerbated supply chain disruptions to severe capacity constraints, 2021 has inspired industry stakeholders to reimagine day-to-day operations through new technologies, consolidation, network expansions and methods of operation to meet the soaring demand for airfreight. As yearend approaches, air cargo stakeholders have begun to prepare for challenges that lie ahead: new coronavirus variants that threaten to change travel and cargo restrictions as well as supply chain congestion and backlog at major global airports. The upcoming year calls for unprecedented innovation in the airfreight world, and industry leaders are prepared to take it on with a commitment for success. With help from our readers, Air Cargo World has selected three airfreight executives who we expect to continue to inspire, nurture and transform the industry landscape with innovative solutions. Kelly Blacker: The draw of ‘working on the world stage’ By Caryn Livingston Kelly Blacker began her career with Seattle-headquartered Expeditors in 1994 as a recent college graduate from the University of Puget Sound. Blacker and Expeditors share a hometown in Seattle, and while she was as eager to start her career as any new grad, logistics presented a special appeal. “I had visions of international travel, to see different things,” Blacker told Air Cargo World . “I’ve always been absolutely fascinated by the world in general so anything that was international was intriguing to me. And I think many companies are multinational now, they have international businesses, but logistics is immediately international, because you’re immediately working with somebody somewhere else, just to move a shipment.” Blacker began her tenure at Expeditors as a receptionist, where her potential as a leader was quickly spotted, leading to Blacker entering Expeditors’ Management Trainee program in 1996. “I’ve had a lot of great mentors that maybe recognized my potential before I did,” Blacker said. “I think over the course of time you gain confidence. And that took me a minute to figure out that I was capable on my own and to develop my own leadership style and not rely on others to pull me forward.” Her career so far at Expeditors has led her to recognize that success “comes back down to people, but it’s a collaborative effort. We’re not in this alone, taking on this role.” The need for collaboration has only increased since Blacker took the reins of Expeditors’ Global Air product in May 2020, when she was promoted to her current role of senior vice president, global air. Expeditors’ most recent earnings highlight the strong demand for airfreight, with a reported increase in airfreight tonnage of 28%, and a dramatic 94% year-over-year increase in operating income to $490 million for the third quarter. Global air and ocean capacity remain scarce, however, and President and CEO Jeffrey Musser noted in the company’s Q3 earnings report that the marketplace “remains severely impacted by labor and infrastructure constraints throughout the supply chain.” That has only made proactive leadership more important, according to Blacker, particularly as she has settled into her new role and relocated back to Seattle in August 2020 from her previous position in Atlanta. “In the middle of a pandemic, you’re dealing with taking on a new role in a virtual environment, a new team and a virtual environment, and then just the craziness of the market,” Blacker said. “I think coming into it, working with people that know more than I do, I have to be vulnerable, and recognize that I need to learn from them and make sure that we have those connections, even though it’s virtual. You do that with your regular team meetings, regular touch bases, and I’m learning from them, hopefully, just as much as they’re learning from me.” The learning process will continue into 2022, when industry leaders expect the challenges of the past two years to persist. “The supply imbalance we see, what’s happening on the coast with the ports and the backlog of ships, and the supply chain challenges that come with that and how airfreight supports that” awaits the industry in 2022, she said. “If you can’t get it by ocean, you’ve got to ship it by air. And there’s a supply imbalance there, with more demand than there is capacity. We have to continue to navigate that and understand what the demand is going to be based on consumer behavior, based on production and what our customers are telling us, and then working with our airline partners, and then our people — making sure we’ve got the training and the development that we need to support our people, to support the business.” Knowing the importance of collaboration in logistics, Expeditors is working hard to help develop the next generation of its leaders, including through its Opportunity Knocks internship program . “Expeditors is a great place to start,” Blacker noted. “It’s a great place to continue as well. We hire at every level, so certainly right out of school, and that’s potentially right out of high school as well as right out of college.” The same characteristics that drew Blacker to a career in logistics are drawing in future leaders, as well. “You’re working on the world stage, so to speak, straightaway,” she explained. “Learning how different things get put together from a logistics standpoint, whether things move by air, by ocean or by truck, and you’ve got customs and trade compliance, and so many different and unique things to learn.” Blacker’s own positive experience with mentors in her career shapes her current view of the responsibilities today’s leaders have to new entrants into the field. “I think we all have a responsibility to remind people of the opportunities that they have and to remind folks, also, to speak up and be willing to make change — that just because someone’s been doing it longer doesn’t mean they do it better,” she said. “I think the young younger generation is more vocal now, and [we want] to encourage that, but also, simultaneously, focus in on what makes a company great. And that’s our people and our culture.” Eric Martin-Neuville: ‘Guide as many people as possible’ By Regina Johnson The year 2021 has turned out to be a fortuitous one for logistics provider Geodis. Revenue rose to $4.9 billion, a 21% year-over-year increase thanks to e-commerce business in the United States and Europe. It would have been hard to predict such a turn of events last year when the world was gripped by the pandemic and logistic firms scrambled to keep goods flowing. Being a successful freight forwarder during such a perilous time required agile leadership and strategic thinking. Perhaps that’s why Geodis’ board of management chose Eric Martin-Neuville to lead the group’s global freight forwarding division: the team needed someone with his experience, knowledge and expertise. In 2018, Eric Martin-Neuville moved to France to serve as executive vice president of global freight forwarding at Geodis. He previously spent 12 years at the company’s Malaysia offices as managing director; in Singapore as regional director Southeast Asia; and in Hong Kong as regional director Greater China. He is also a member of Geodis’ management board. A desire to work abroad is how he stumbled into the logistics industry, starting with hands-on training in freight forwarding in the West African nation of Cameroon, where his job consisted of managing Geodis’ services to and from France. “It was a time where freight rates were based on commodity, so every quotation was an engineering exercise compared to today,” Martin-Neuville said. “It was also a time when you were doing sales work, you were walking on one side of the street and knocking on every door and asking people if they had an opportunity for freight coming from France, rather than fixing an appointment through a fancy CRM or obtaining leads from here.” A few things have changed since those early days in Cameroon. “The communication part and the visibility demand has changed tremendously,” Martin-Neuville said. “The demand of the shippers on service type and visibility, on frequency, and on transit time has also changed quite a bit. But I think what is most different of the two things is how we conducted business at the time compared to how we conduct business today more than how the shipment themselves took place. “To work in a management position in the freight forwarding world, you need to understand cultures,” he noted. “You need to understand markets. And you need to link those cultures and those markets together to make it work.” Having a mentor in the industry is important, Martin-Neuville said, and it’s why he is such a strong supporter of mentorship within logistics. He credits his own mentors with shaping him into the person he is today. “Who teaches you is critical,” Martin-Neuville said. “When you start your first real management position abroad, which was the case with me in Hong Kong, if you don’t have a strong mentor, you make even more mistakes. And there is an element of being able to rely on someone who is going to help you adapt and adjust to the new environment and to your new job. “There are a lot of people who deserve the support,” he added. “But it’s more important to guide as many people as possible through the process of growing into a new job and a new experience.” Before the pandemic, Martin-Neuville said that most people paid little attention to the industry until stories about supply chains, freighters and worker shortages began turning up on the nightly news. As he put it, we were “poorly known and underrated.” “As an industry we need to try to make it better known, improve the knowledge of what do we do and improve the image,” he said. “We need to give the opportunity to people to get a taste of the business. In Geodis, we had this very large internship initiative, which we’re trying. Because of COVID, young people had difficulty finding internships.” The goal of Geodis’ internship program is to give young people a glimpse of what working in the logistics environment is really like, Martin-Neuville said. “That’s very specific to the new generation, once we get young hires in the company, they need to be accompanied by a very specific structure,” he said. “The younger generation have a different approach to how they should interact with an employer. They need to change what they do, quite often, they need to be kept alert and motivated and interested. That’s how we get the next generation into the industry. As the new year approaches, Martin-Neuville says there are two areas of focus for his team: supporting efforts to limit aircraft emissions through Geodis’ sustainable aviation fuel initiative and to ensure the company’s own-controlled air network remains relevant in terms of service. “For 2022, we sincerely hope that the market will stabilize,” he said. “Our teams are exhausted after two years of intense work and our customers deserve a more predictable playground to resume working on supply chain optimization and reliance.” Jessica Tyler: ‘Results don’t matter’ … it’s all about the team By Kelly Stroh Texas-based combination carrier American Airlines has benefited from its quick crisis management response at the start of the pandemic when passenger travel collapsed. With more than 10,000 cargo-only flights and counting and digitalization efforts to increase supply chain visibility since the COVID-19 pandemic began, American Airlines’ strategy remains the same: utilize assets and stay flexible amidst an uncertain and volatile market. What stands at the root of this strategy? A strong leader. From high school math teacher to President of Cargo and Vice President of Operations, Innovation and Delivery at American Airlines, Jessica Tyler has always been a pillar of strength and direction for her team. Before working in airfreight logistics, Tyler earned her undergrad degree in mathematics at Vanderbilt University. From there, she began teaching math to high school students, and was a volleyball coach and assistant middle school principal before eventually pursuing an MBA and doctoral of Educational Leadership and Administration at Texas Christian University. “What really made a difference in the classroom was the relationships with the kids and helping kids reach their fullest potential,” Tyler told Air Cargo World . While her work environment today may look radically different, the sentiment remains the same at American Airlines. Tyler joined American Airlines in 2012 as organizational change manager and, since then, has not only worked her way up the company ladder, but has played a pivotal role in restructuring the carrier after the US Airways-American Airlines merger, bankruptcy, and most recently, navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. “My first job responsibility [at American Airlines] was to salvage as much as I could internally and build a small team that could keep taking that vision forward to the extent we could with the very limited resources and dollars,” Tyler said. Nearly 10 years later, she has continued to do just that and more. American Airlines recently had a historic quarter and will go on to have its second billion-dollar-plus year, Tyler said. Despite a year of incredible feats, modernization efforts and record-breaking revenue, she noted that “the results don’t matter as much to me as the way in which we did it. “I’m proud of our team in the way that they’ve taken care of each other and taken care of the customers,” Tyler said. “It amazes me every single day how they show up ready to help, ready to support, and ready to get incredible things done … and I hope that continues.” While American Airlines will continue its modernization efforts, and with an element of flexibility in mind, Tyler noted that the carrier can better utilize its current assets. A company that has traditionally focused on its widebody operation, the airline seized the opportunity to raise the utilization of its narrowbody aircraft. “To me, we need to focus on expanding what it is that we can do to make sure we get the most utilization out of those assets,” Tyler said. “So, I think you’ll continue to see us explore relationships and partnerships that may expand the way in which we serve the world supply chain.” In addition to exploring partnerships, Tyler noted that American Airlines continues to seek out ways to strengthen its customer relationships. “This industry is still very behind in the way that it interacts with customers [and] the way that we interact with all of the supporting things within the ecosystem within the supply chain,” Tyler said. “So, there’s still a tremendous amount of opportunity to look at those interactions across all the entities to make it happen every day.”

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