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May
12
2025
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Posted 2 days ago ago by Admin
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READ ARTICLE IN THE MAR/APR ISSUE
We catch Gretchen Johnson in a rare hour of relatively free time. She was in Orlando, having headed south from her metro-Atlanta home, when she said in a cultured, soft Southern accent that would make Scarlett O’Hara sit up and take notice, “Thank you so much for choosing to spend an hour with me; I’m flattered. Hopefully, something I say will be worth repeating. It’s wonderful being down here in Florida because now Miss Georgia can’t decide whether she’s winter or spring.”
Make up your cotton-pickin’ mind, Miss Georgia!
It would be wrong to base an assumption on Johnson’s accent and Southern manners that she’s some antebellum belle. The CEO and founder of DaVinciSKY was in Orlando for a “Women in Power” symposium—and that could be a clever pun because Johnson’s flagship company and its subsidiaries feature helicopters in power-line construction, inspection, and maintenance.
It’s no pun; Dr. Johnson, with her earned PhD in education, has a resume of powerful accomplishments. Here are a few peachy appetizers to whet your appetite for this profile: In her 20s, she became the youngest school administrator in Georgia. She chose to leave her education career—more about that later—but as a Georgia Tech electrical engineer and MBA who was “a helluva an engineer” (as GT’s fight song says), she worked at Southern Company, an electric-utility behemoth. She consulted for top utilities and service providers throughout the U.S. and was the principal engineer who restored electricity after Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy and other natural disasters. Suppose that doesn’t humble you as much as it does me. In that case, she is also a member of VAI/HAI. She serves on the Board and Committee, respectively, of the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). OK, now on to our Southern soul-food main course…
Family and ‘Flying’
Johnson was born and raised in Cumming, Georgia, as the oldest of three children. She and her two brothers had the advantage of parents who were not only devoted to them but also devoted to each other. “My dad was very entrepreneurial and a natural-born leader, but my mom liked her safety and security as a state public health employee. Yet, she was very supportive of my dad’s efforts; I remember her helping Dad into his coat and patting him on the back, saying, ‘Go get ‘em, honey.” Grandparents—and even great-grandparents—lived nearby. Her grandfather, director of Georgia Power’s regional office, exposed Johnson to the power-line industry in her childhood.
Upon graduating from college, Johnson delayed starting her career by traveling alone in Europe with only her cocker spaniel as a companion. “That’s when I learned to fly, not in a helicopter sense, but to take risks, be adventurous, and not be fearful. I don’t know if I would be doing what I do today if I had not done that as a young woman. It helped me grow a lot.”
Principled Principal
Johnson never wanted to be a business executive despite her father being a businessman and her grandfather being a respected power industry manager. She took what she thought would be a smoother path and began her career teaching in a Georgia public school classroom. It was a little too calm. “I learned about myself that I needed to get out of that classroom’s four walls and break up the routine of having every day be the same like (the movie) Groundhog Day.” So, the restless teacher went into school administration and quickly became an up-and-comer as the youngest school administrator in the state. Things were going great…until Johnson questioned The Peach State’s religion.
More specifically, she complained to a reporter that the board of education allocated no money for math books at her school, but fully funded new football uniforms elsewhere. “I got called to the superintendent’s office at 28 and was told I needed to learn to play the game. I asked, ‘What game?’ She replied, ‘The political game.’ I listened politely and went home without saying a word. I decided that night, I wouldn’t spend my career playing education politics.” The young assistant principal resigned the next day, not knowing what she would do next.
You Never Know
With no income, Johnson lived off her savings (“I was always good about saving money”) until she landed a sales job at Southern Company in 2004. She says, “Looking back, that early sales experience prepared me to co-found DaVinciSKY by helping me to understand how I can fit our services into a utility company’s budget.” It also taught her another lesson she still shares with her employees: You never know who you’re meeting with knows. Here’s her instructive story:
“My very first in-person sales meeting was with a small business prospect. It was a small account, but I treated her like a multi-million-dollar client and taught her how to save money on her natural-gas costs. She went home to her husband and showed him the savings I’d mapped out for her. He was the director of operations for Home Depot (headquartered in Atlanta). Her husband called me the next day—my second day on the job—and gave me business from every Home Depot in Georgia and opened the door nationally.”
Asking for it
As she had done in her education career, Johnson quickly launched her sales career, but then something unexpected happened amid her success: She saw a helicopter flying very close to a power transmission line. With her electrical engineering education, the intrigued saleswoman was fascinated and talked to the transmission-line guy, who explained how his department used rotorcraft to inspect and maintain power lines. Johnson was hooked and ready for action. “I want to transfer to your department,” she said. The man explained that people didn’t just come over without qualifications. Johnson was ready for his rebuff: “I then told him I’d done a Georgia Tech extension course on power-line design, earned my engineering add-on, and was ready to start.” He exclaimed, “Really?!” So, Johnson got her transfer to a more active, in-the-field job. She explains her direct approach, “My philosophy is: Don’t get stopped by fear. If you want to make a change, ask for it. If you get turned down, ask again or find out what you must do to get a yes.”
Best Practices
Johnson worked on Southern Company’s lines for three years, learning from field experience how much more efficient helicopters were in power-line work. She explained that it can take a lineman 45 minutes to climb into position to do his job and then another 45 minutes to climb down (the direction in which most injuries happen). The helicopter eliminates all that risky climbing and exertion. Johnson says, “It’s much faster—and safer—to use helicopters, so it was a no-brainer for me to gravitate to them.”
She eventually left Southern Company to work for utility rotorcraft operator Haverfield Aviation. There, Johnson tried to show them through her own statistical analysis (she says, “People lie; numbers don’t.”) how they could reduce accidents. When she felt Haverfield wasn’t listening, she left in 2015. Perhaps they should have paid attention. CEO Johnson says that she and her COO partner, Mike Woolsey, of DaVinciSKY, are one of the few—if not the only—MD500 groups that have no accidents or incidents.
Hiring Helps
After leaving Haverfield, Johnson built her own independent consulting business for utilities. Power Secure, a Southern Company subsidiary, invited her to Puerto Rico to consult on their engineering efforts that utilized aerial support as they repaired and rebuilt the island’s severely storm-damaged power grid. Johnson was given authority to manage her part of Power Secure’s project and authority to manage their employees. This experience opened her mind. “For some reason, I’d developed a mental block against hiring employees, fearing they would drag me down; I operated as a one-woman consultant, with just me and my assistant, but I found in Puerto Rico that having teams directly reporting to me freed me up and allowed me to serve others more,” Johnson says. “That realization inspired me to hire employees and start DaVinciSKY.”
So far, Johnson has hired 57 employees for her utility helicopter operation, with a third of those hires being women. She looks for team players. “Generally, women want to be part of a team. When it comes to women, I like to hire sports enthusiasts who have played a team sport because they know what it’s like to be on a team,” she says. Her criteria for men differ somewhat. “With men, I want to hire men who value good communication. Many men are quiet by nature, and in our business, I need them to talk and communicate to let me and others know the status of things and what’s happening. It’s about having situational awareness and building a sense of community,” she said.
When it comes to managing all these employees, Johnson draws on her deep family roots. “My leadership style comes from my parents. I knew they loved me, but they weren’t afraid to correct me if I did wrong. I had a healthy fear, or respect, for them, and that’s what I want our employees to have for me. I try to lead them with a servant’s heart.” (That comes from her devout Christian faith; she rises most mornings at 4:30 for personal devotion.) Johnson reminisces about her late entrepreneurial father, with understandable love almost choking back her words, “My dad passed away, and there are so many days when I have a problem, I ask myself: What would Dad do? He taught me, by example, that it’s better to try and fail than never try. He wasn’t afraid to take a risk and try something new.”
Like father, like daughter.
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