People of the Industry

Aaron Kreissler, Director of MRO Sales, Jet Aviation

How long have you been at your current organization?

I have been at Jet Aviation for 26 years.

What are your responsibilities within your organization?

I am responsible for MRO and Completion Sales, Marketing and Customer Care for Jet Aviation in St Louis, which includes a few different groups of people. We have a regional sales force working in the field that is the primary face of Jet Aviation to our customers. The Internal MRO Sales team is made up of highly technical individuals who produce our proposals and advise customers. These are the folks that answer the questions when a customer or industry partner is evaluating modifications to prospective aircraft, and they are also constantly educating me. The Completion Sales team handles project management for all completions and is the customer’s single point of contact throughout the process. Marketing has both a tactical and strategic role. Finally, our Customer Care team ensures that every customer who comes to St Louis feels like they are a member of the Jet Aviation family.

What do you love most about your job? What is a typical day like?

Every week, even every day, is a relay race. We’ll have a different person starting off and even a different anchor, but without the full team we would not win.

I love that no day is a baseline day. We have friends all over the globe, reaching out to us no matter what the hour, sometimes with projects we could not have dreamed up. I love when we work together to come up with an amazingly effective and unique solution.

Why did working in the Business Aviation industry interest you, and how did you get started?

I grew up in a small town and business jets were for the extremely elite, but I did not know much about them. Everything though was a Lear: a Gulfstream, a Challenger, a Jetstar; I thought they were all Learjets. When I began working with Sabreliner I started to learn about other business aircraft, but it was the career move to Midcoast where my eyes were opened to the breadth and benefits of business aviation.

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Ryan Shannon, Corporate Council, Jetcraft
Location: Minneapolis, MN, USA

How long have you been at Jetcraft?

Close to 5 years (since June, 2012).

What are your responsibilities within the global Jetcraft team?

I handle most of the day-to-day legal matters for Jetcraft, including internal corporate matters, vendor agreements, employment agreements, etc. I also work on aircraft acquisition and sale matters, with a primary focus on Jetcraft’s owned aircraft inventory and trade transactions.

Describe a typical day or week in your role.

I spend the majority of my time working on aircraft transactions. This entails drafting letters of intent, aircraft purchase agreements and ancillary documents, and negotiating the terms with buyers and sellers. I begin a typical day by reviewing emails and prioritizing my workload, and then drafting or revising various agreements related to our pending aircraft transactions. In the run-up to a closing, there is a lot of email and telephone correspondence with my colleagues and other parties as we get everything in place. I also spend a fair amount of time coordinating with Peter Antonenko (COO) and Chad Anderson (President) on deal matters and taking direction from them on which ones need focus.

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Karen Watkins, Jetcraft
Location: Minneapolis, MN, USA

How long have you been at Jetcraft?

I joined the Jetcraft family in September 2014 as an Administrative Assistant. My role is office administration in our Minneapolis office. I directly support the President, COO and transaction team.

Describe a typical day or week in your role.

Part of what I love about my job is that no two days are ever the same. My daily tasks vary each day depending on the needs of the company. I do everything from assisting with processing aircraft closing documents to answering calls to booking company travel.

What do you love most about your job?

The industry as a whole is so interesting and exciting that I find it difficult to pinpoint what I love most. There are so many things about my job that I truly love! One unexpected thing that this job has given me is the opportunity to see parts of the world I had only dreamt about before, which I am truly grateful for.

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Shariff Narayanin, former Jetcraft Sales Representative
Location: Jakarta, Indonesia

How long have you been at Jetcraft?

It was one year ago that I joined the Jetcraft family. After 20 years of working in flight operations (and close to 9,000 flight hours), I was lucky to be given a chance at learning the difficult world of aircraft sales.

What are your responsibilities within the global Jetcraft team?

I support the team by identifying and engaging new leads in South East Asia, mainly Indonesia (the country I call home). I work under the guidance of David Dixon whose experience and knowledge of the territory have been invaluable to me.

Describe a typical day or week in your role.

There is nothing typical about my week. I spend most of my time in Jakarta and around South East Asia chasing new prospects. A day could be made up of calling a potential lead in the morning, touching base with a contact at lunch time, then getting refreshed and ready to attend a long evening event to further an existing business relationship. I may spend several hours in traffic getting to an appointment, or experience a weekend in a remote forest, an island, or a Formula One track. I am always following that customer who never stops in one place.

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Gaspard Milazzo, CEO & Sales Broker, G-Yachts
[email protected]

How long have you been at your current organization?

I have been in the yachting industry since I was born, as my parents were pioneers in boat sales and charters in the early 70’s in the French Riviera. I created my company, G-Yachts (originally called Gaspard Yachts), in 1999.

What are your responsibilities within your organization?

I am the CEO of G-Yachts, so I supervise all operations within the company, but I also carry on working as a yacht broker as this is what I really enjoy.

Describe a typical day or week in your role.

I spend a lot of my time between Monaco and Cannes, as we have an office in both places. Regardless of where I am, like most of us, the first thing I do when I open my eyes is read my emails. Then I spend a lot of time at the office among my team talking about sales, charters and management, as I really believe that good communication is a key to success. I also travel quite a bit to meet clients and attend many events all over the world, which I really enjoy. My favorite part of the day is when I can come home to my family and 3 wonderful daughters.

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Johan Blitz, Global Head of Corporate Aircraft Finance, UBS

How long have you been at your current organization?

11 years

What are your responsibilities within your organization?

I am the Global Head of Corporate Aircraft Finance for UBS. I launched the aircraft-financing product within UBS 11 years ago and since then have been able to successfully implement this product with an ever-increasing portfolio and team. My responsibilities revolve around our multi-billion USD portfolio and managing client and asset risks, but also are linked to marketing and product awareness to our Wealth Management arm. UBS is now considered one of the top financiers in the UHNW segment for corporate aircraft.

Describe a typical day or week in your role.

I usually arrive in the office around 7am and immediately I start up my computer. Then I need a very strong coffee. And another one. Next I start to navigate through the jungle of emails. Depending on the content of the emails, the planning of the day starts (besides the scheduled internal and external meetings). I speak to my team and get an update on the business, internal projects and default cases. I also get an overview on payments received from our clients and depending on the status, may delegate some tasks to some colleagues. Due to the overall difficult market situation and deterioration of values, I speak on a daily basis to our internal stakeholders such as Risk, Legal and Compliance, and sometimes also with our Tax department. There are always ongoing internal projects that need to be discussed, prepared and presented. I’m often involved in complex cases, difficult discussions or strategic planning for new transactions.

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John Schwartz, Jetcraft
Location: Minneapolis, MN, USA

How long have you been at Jetcraft?

On October 9 I will have been here for 5 years.

What are your responsibilities within the global Jetcraft team?

I am responsible for internal oversight of Jetcraft’s owned inventory aircraft that are acquired either via an outright purchase or through a trade-in. I also provide Sales Engineer support for Chad Anderson (President) and Jahid Fazal-Karim (Owner and Chairman).

Describe a typical day or week in your role.

The only thing typical about my day is that it’s a-typical. Most days are spent responding to incoming requests from the sales team, and correspondence either related to Jetcraft’s owned inventory aircraft or with the Sales Engineer team. I work extensively with management and our technical advisors to ensure that we are up to date internally on the current status of each of the aircraft that we own and make sure that the entire Jetcraft team is updated.

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Alasdair Whyte, Editor and Co-founder, Corporate Jet Investor
[email protected]

How long have you been at your current organization?

Louisa Whyte (my wife) and I launched Corporate Jet Investor in 2010. We felt there was a need for an online magazine and conferences for the business jet market.

We spun out helicopters in 2012 and in 2016 launched a commercial aircraft version called Aircraft Investor. We also run a superyacht conference.

Although the business jet market was in a downturn in 2010, we were confident that we would be there for an upturn. We are still waiting.

What are your responsibilities within your organization?

I focus on the content (with Louisa managing pretty much everything else). This includes newsletters, longer articles and the agendas for different conferences. But we are a small business so we all get involved in lots of different things.

Describe a typical day or week in your role.

If I am not travelling, I usually drop our children off at school. Louisa and I then often have a meeting whilst walking our office dog. When I get to the office I look at all of the major news stories that day. We divide up who is writing what and I will typically write a short opinion piece before lunch.

After lunch I might discuss some of the biggest issues in the market for one of our conferences. Most days involve a number of phone calls and a lot of emails. Some of these can be very late if I am dealing with the US or very early if Asia or Australia.

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Christie Martin-Gray, former Brand Director, Jetcraft
Location: Raleigh, NC, USA

How long have you been at Jetcraft?

My sister Lucy Castle, Jetcraft’s Administrative Director, first introduced me to Jetcraft in 2006. I worked with Jetcraft on an as-needed basis until joining the team fulltime in April 2010 as Marketing Director.

What are your responsibilities within the global Jetcraft team?

My role changed this year to Brand Director, and my primary responsibility is to support the VP of Marketing with planning and executing our corporate branding and paid media strategies. This includes keeping a close eye on accuracy, consistency, clarity and relevance as it relates to our brand to ensure a strong connection with our customers.

Describe a typical day or week in your role.

Priorities can shift quickly, so I start and end each day with a few minutes of assessing priorities and planning. I spend most of my time developing and maintaining brand assets, brand advertising, and some of the sales tools and integrated retail campaigns. Ensuring we adhere to our high standards, deliver on our brand promise and align our brand assets closely with sales objectives involves a myriad of daily activities including strategizing and brainstorming, research, assessing internal documents, directing creative agencies, writing, negotiating media opportunities and so on.

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