Aviation is a field where good decisions are made early, quietly, and under pressure. I have spent my career where that judgment is formed — in executive classrooms, in applied research, and in the boardrooms and training departments that have to put the teaching and the research to work.
On the shop floor at a Middle East engine overhaul facility
Consulting and advisory
My consulting practice spans airlines, airports, MROs, FBOs, and OEMs, domestically and internationally. That work has included, among other things, modernizing a widebody pilot training school from indoctrination through captain upgrade, improving throughput and cost in an engine overhaul line, and assessing the feasibility of a new aviation training academy.
Safety management and data governance work with the thirty largest airports in the United States is part of that same practice.
With the São Paulo cohort at the close of an airline strategy program
Coaching and executive programs
Certified as a coach, I work with executives and organizational leaders across every level of a business. Programs are designed and delivered from the ground up around what the organization actually needs, and have been brought by invitation to airline, airport, and MRO professionals in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
Coaching runs one to one and in small groups, and the goal is the same at every level of an organization: build high-performance teams and give people what they need to succeed.
Presenting airport data work at a major U.S. airline’s headquarters
Scholarship and authorship
The published record runs to sixteen peer-reviewed journal articles, many in top-quartile journals, and three peer-reviewed book chapters, and more than seventy presentations and invited talks. That work has been downloaded over eleven thousand times by readers at more than nine hundred institutions across a hundred and fifty countries. My research covers high reliability organizations, safety culture, evidence-based management, and machine learning applied to aviation incidents and crew planning.
Alongside the writing, I edit a peer-reviewed academic journal, have completed more than a hundred and twenty manuscript reviews, and have been recognized for editorial contribution three years running. My research has been cited in the Wall Street Journal and has taken best-presentation awards at international conferences.
With a university class in mainland China following a guest lecture
Academic leadership
At Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University I am an Associate Professor with tenure and Department Chair in the College of Business, now in my seventeenth year there. The role carries six degree programs, a faculty of more than a hundred and sixty, and roughly twelve hundred students — all taught through an aviation lens.
Over those years I have personally designed fifteen courses and taught more than eight hundred students across eighteen subjects.
What I speak, teach, and advise on
Conferences, airline and airport leadership teams, MRO and FBO operators, OEMs, university audiences. Every program is custom built for the client from a thorough needs assessment, then delivered with expertise, energy, and impact.
- Aviation business strategyRunning an aviation business under volatility and geopolitical risk
- Leadership through transitionSuccession, cultural continuity, and the first year in a new seat
- Executive program designDevelopment that produces measurable change back on the job
- Evidence-based managementBuilding decisions on evidence, and knowing how far the evidence reaches
- Aviation workforce developmentTraining pipelines, credentialing, and the supply question
- High reliability organizationsPerformance and business continuity built into one system
- Safety cultureHow it is built, measured, and sustained, including SMS and data governance
- Human factors and human performanceWhere procedures, technology, and people meet
Thirty years as a commercial pilot, and a Gold Seal flight instructor — a lifetime FAA designation — with over a thousand hours of instruction given. Multi-engine, instrument, and drone rated, an aircraft owner for more than fifteen years in both singles and twins, and an active pilot who still flies often for business and for pleasure.
A career measured in flights, classrooms, and boardrooms
My research appears in operations, management science, and aviation journals, including work on Bayesian inference in aviation incidents, airline crew and fleet planning under disruption, and bounded rationality in managerial decision-making.
Service and volunteer work
Advisory board director
One of five directors on the advisory board of a maintenance and overhaul business, meeting quarterly with fiduciary oversight of innovation, strategy, and compensation.
FAA Safety Team counselor
For twenty-one years I have taught pilots about safety trends and leadership, presenting accredited content across the Mid-Atlantic region and online.
Volunteer medical transport pilot
Since 1998 I have flown patients in financial need to distant medical treatment, including on-call transplant-style missions. It is the flying I am proudest of.
School trustee
Trustee and volunteer vice president of advancement at an independent school, focused on charitable giving, serving on the executive committee, and an active participant in a national head-of-school search.
Speaking, advisory, and executive program inquiries
I take a limited number of engagements each year. Tell me about the audience, the problem, and the date, and I will tell you honestly whether I am the right person for the job.