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Sep
09
2024
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Posted 10 days ago ago by Admin
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It was bound to happen. As the American workforce and aerospace industry becomes more diverse, we now have two consecutive Executive Watch profiles, published last issue on Anthony Rios and this time on Ray Lamas, that feature second-generation Hispanic Americans who make positive contributions to the vertical-lift industry and show how healthy immigration fuels American economic growth and ingenuity. Lamas said, “Everyone is born somewhere and I was very fortunate to be born in the United States.”
More specifically, the life-long Steelers football fan was born and raised in Pittsburgh by his father (a doctor) and mother (a lawyer) who immigrated from Spain in 1972. “Many immigrant families have a high level of patriotism and deep appreciation for this country and I attended the U.S. Naval Academy as a way to pay back the United States for what it offered our family,” Lamas says, “and also because I’m a history buff with a great interest in Naval aviation and its role in defeating Japan in World War II.” That interest motivated him to earn a bachelor degree in history as a midshipman in Annapolis, Maryland, and his history appetite is still strong today. For example, he’s currently reading Eighteen Days in October: the Yom Kippur War and How it Created the Modern Middle East by Uri Kaufman. “I’m passionate about history and like to study how past events occurred and influence what is happening today,” he said.
After graduation from the academy, Lamas fulfilled his 11-year military commitment as a Naval Flight Officer flying the S-3 Viking, the F-14 Tomcat, and the F-18 Super Hornet. “It was an absolute honor to fly those machines and serve my country overseas in Operation Iraqi Freedom,” he said. He also served a stint as an aide to Admiral Chris Weaver (ret.) in Washington D.C.. Lamas acknowledges the flag officer as a key mentor, “He was an amazing and true gentleman and I witnessed how well he worked and balanced things at his high level. He also taught me about the challenges one needs to handle in an organization, such as time management and setting priorities to use your time—and other people’s time—wisely.”
After fulfilling his 11 years in the Navy, Lamas chose to undertake a civilian challenge by entering the business world. He began that quest by earning a prestigious MBA on scholarship from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. (His wife, Dana, also has an MBA. Their teen sons, Alex and David, don’t have masters degrees yet, but they have SCUBA diving certification like their parents.) “I learned a tremendous amount during my two years at Darden and really appreciated the culture of that school,” he said. Upon graduation, he took his valued degree in 2010 to the respected consulting firm Bain & Company and rose to Case Team Leader in their Dallas office. There, he was exposed to a wide range of industry clients that included airlines, tech, consumer products, chemicals, etc. “I was really blessed with all these opportunities, but missed leading a single organization in a hands-on way and missed being more directly involved,” Lamas said.
So to get directly involved in 2013, he took an opportunity to become director of strategy at Bell Helicopter to revitalize their commercial business under John Garrison. Lamas focused on Bell’s international training and created a business plan to revitalize global training. Lamas said, “As has happened to me several times throughout my career, I presented my plan and was told ‘Ray, that’s a great plan, now go do it.’” Thus began the next four years of Lamas’ career at Bell as general manager of Bell Global Customer Training, when he and his staff of 95 implemented the plan to support over $800 million in commercial helicopter sales by serving over 4,000 global Bell customers. Lamas considers that time “a great accomplishment,” but he is quick to share the credit. “I was surrounded by a great team and we did that together,” he said.
He explains this credit-sharing humbleness. “I don’t consider accomplishments as personal to me; they were always accomplished by a team. You can’t succeed on your own; you need a good team working with you and the support of your peers as well; no one is an island in any organization,” Lamas said. What if he was forced to name a personal accomplishment? Lamas answers, “I guess I could consider my transition from the military to a rewarding civilian career as personal, but I had some great mentors along the way.” One of those mentors was Chris Seymour, “a fantastic gentleman,” who mentored him at Bell. Lamas now volunteers as a career mentor at a non-profit, American Corporate Partners, to also help others transition from the military to civilian careers. Lamas likes to pass on the best career advice he says he ever received: “Listen, listen, listen! Really listen when someone is speaking to you and don’t be distracted by what you want to say back. Don’t talk unless you have something constructive to say; don’t speak to just hear yourself, but listen. Listening is very powerful.”
Stress Test
Lamas learned another powerful, but almost painful, lesson at the next company in his aerospace career when he left Bell to join Maxar Technologies in Denver, a satellite-launching company, as their senior director of strategy and corporate development. He had been at Maxar for six months when the company lost a satellite. That loss threatened the company financially and Lamas, his boss, and many others were laid off to cut expenses. “That was a stressful time,” he says, “but I learned the importance of maintaining a personal, professional network to find another great opportunity. That time reinforced the importance of resilience I learned in the military.”
That next “great opportunity” happened at the infrastructure consulting firm AECOM in 2019 when Lamas became their senior director for operations leadership and rose to become VP of Federal Ventures when he led proposal teams to win approx. $50 million in government contracts.
After that success, he returned to aerospace in 2022 to be president of Thrust Flight, a fixed-wing trainer in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metropolis. Lamas said, “What's amazing about aerospace is that it gets in your blood. You may try to go away to do something else, but you come back.” In his year leading Thrust Flight, Lamas and his team of over 100 employees grew revenue over 30%.
Back to Helis
This year, 2024, Lamas returned to rotorcraft when he joined the virtual-reality simulator training company, Loft Dynamics, as their vice president for North America. What called him back to helicopters? Lamas comprehensively answers, “Helicopters have an amazing diverse customer base: offshore transport, police, firefighting, air ambulance, utility work, and it goes on. What fascinates me about rotorcraft is the challenge around trying to develop and product-engineer them. It's one of the tougher engineering problems that exist out there if you think about it. Then, after design and manufacturing produces a safe and reliable aircraft, comes the question: How do you support their multitude of different customers who have different needs? Resources are limited and you cannot be everything to everybody, but how do you meet customers’ needs in ways that make them feel like they're properly supported? I just found these challenges with helicopters fascinating and really, really have enjoyed the challenges and industry.”
Servant Leader
As he now leads Loft Dynamics in North America, Lamas draws on the servant-leadership model he learned in the military. “The most important thing you do as a leader is take care of your people. You get them the tools they need for success, clear obstacles for that success, and make sure that they have the proper training and guidance to become the very best they can be in accomplishing the organization’s mission,” he says. “I think most people want to be successful, and want to be good at what they do. My job as a leader is to really enable that. I also want to make sure that people are noticed and that they feel their work is worthwhile. That recognition genuinely contributes to the overall success of the organization. Most importantly, the people I lead have a voice and should feel that their voice is heard. Those are the cornerstones of my leadership style, and I like to think it's been relatively successful.”
Lamas is calling upon that foundation for success to meet what he thinks is Loft Dynamics great challenge, which ironically derives from the company’s great asset: its new virtual- technology that makes helicopter training more realistic and cost-effective. “Getting customers to seriously consider our new technology is the main challenge. Aviation is generally and understandably conservative and reluctant to try new technology,” he says. “Virtual-reality (VR) technology is new and relatively unknown to flight simulation. Getting customers into our simulators is crucial to their understanding of how good our technology is for enhancing training, especially for closed-in-and-tight flight environments that are not well duplicated by traditional simulators. This is precisely why we opened our first demo center this year at Santa Monica Municipal Airport—it’s truly a see-it-to-believe it experience.”
Yet, Lamas thinks that Loft Dynamics will rise to this challenge because of the intense industry focus on flight safety. He said, “The rotorcraft industry is highly focused on safety and we have technology that can bring high-quality and affordable training to more people throughout the industry. With our technology, recurrent training can become more effective, more affordable and more frequent, which was key when I flew in the Navy and is key to keeping rotorcraft pilots trained up today. Safety increases when we pilots default to good, realistic and frequent training.”
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