Executive Watch - Greg Edmonds - CEO of Salus Aviation

Posted 7 hours ago ago by Admin

Greg Edmonds is Kiwi to the core. The CEO of Salus Aviation, which has four locations in New Zealand, and operations in Boulder City, Nevada, and Pretoria, South Africa, proudly proclaims himself a “Kiwi” in the first few seconds of our interview in his native New Zealand accent. And why shouldn’t he? After all, he grew up in his nation’s capital city of Wellington, resides in its largest city, Auckland, and has a passion for its national sport of rugby, which he played in the past and still participates in on both amateur and professional levels.

All Blacks

Edmonds is chairman of the board of Ponsonby Rugby, which he says is “probably the most successful rugby club in the country. We’ve produced 48 All Blacks and they’re some of the great names in the sport.” What’s an “All Black?” Relax. The All Blacks are New Zealand’s winning national rugby team, known for their World Cup titles, all-black uniforms, and pre-game haka.

Salus Aviation

Edmonds may well be proud of his Ponsonby club producing champions because the man has produced throughout his whole career and is now winning at Salus Aviation. They lease aircraft and provide needed parts and MRO services around the world. The company currently has a total 38 aircraft leased out all over, with even four in Antarctica flying over penguins. The majority of their leases are twin-engine, mid-size helicopters.

Leasing generates 40% of Salus’ revenue, with another 40% coming from its MRO operations, which is challenged by global supply issues. “I’d be surprised if any executive in aviation didn’t say that the supply chain is their biggest challenge. It’s still very fragile, in my view, and slow. The increasing costs of materials and inventory and very slow delivery times is a continuing and stressful challenge for us,” Edmonds said. This is particularly irritating because, Edmonds says, “We pride ourselves on making sure our aircraft have 96-98% availability on our contracts.” The remaining 20% slice of Salus Aviation’s revenue pie is generated from the company’s design work and manufacturing.

Working Man

You might assume It takes a seasoned aviation CEO to oversee an aviation company with different revenue streams and services spread over locations from Oceania paradise to Nevada desert to South African storms. Well, it is a surprise that Edmonds career was not focused on aviation, nor did he begin in business. No, Edmonds started out as a blue-collar electrician, following his parents who employed their skills in tradework: his father laid carpet and later opened a repair garage; his mom sewed dresses. When Edmonds left high school, he took an electrical-engineering (electrician) apprenticeship, at Wellington’s power company. Upon completing his apprenticeship, in the early 1980s, Edmond recalls, “I got advice from a couple of older blokes to get out of here [the power company] before they institutionalize you and you wind up staying 40 years.”

Edmonds took their advice and took a job with Chubb Electronics installing security systems, cameras, and such. “It was a very interesting job, actually,” he says. “I installed the first ever total access, closed-circuit TV systems in the Parliament building and in museums. That’s standard now, but back then it was new technology.”

Suited for Sales

Then, Edmonds made a life-changing decision that started with a simple question; his manager asked him if he would give sales a try. “It was a difficult decision,” Edmonds recalls. “I’d been working for years with tools in my hands. Did I want to put a suit and tie on and sell stuff?” Edmonds cut a deal—he’d work two days a week with his tools and three days a week in sales. “If I didn’t like sales, my manager said I could go back to being an engineer [electrician] full time.” Edmonds didn’t part with his tools easily; he’s still got those same pliers, wire-strippers and circuit testers from over 40 years ago. (“I don’t use them as much as I used to,” he concedes.) Edmonds liked selling enough to put down his tools to pursue sales full time. He excelled and was promoted to Chubbs regional manager, which he said “was fantastic.”

In 1992, the driven man decided to go in a new direction; he entered the transport industry at Freightways International and moved to Auckland to keep their freight moving. He advanced to national manager, and while working there, he wanted to earn an MBA.

Twisted Triumph

Edmonds' desire for this degree leads to one of the more satisfying twists we’ve profiled in Executive Watch. While an MBA is a normal graduate degree for managers, Freightways International said no to this ambition; they would not subsidize Edmonds education. He remembers his disappointment, “They said they didn’t approve the education expense because they didn’t think the degree was needed in our industry and they had their own training program.” Then, the determined man with a young and growing family did something that likely surprised his employer—he quit to pursue that degree, and he started a consulting company to support his family and him while he studied. Are you ready to smile? Freightways signed on as Edmonds’ first client! “They paid me more as a consultant than they paid me as a salaried employee and I was on their consulting payroll even before I began my studies. It was ironic; one week they told me they wouldn’t support me as an employee, then the next week they hired me as a consultant after I left.” Still, Edmonds has absolutely no resentment toward his former employer. He said, “Freightways was a fantastic company and experience for me. Most of my executive grounding and management skills were acquired with them.”

Education Boosts Career

Edmonds started that MBA in 1995 from an Ernst & Young executive program taught by the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business in New Zealand, and counts one of his professors then, Alec Horniman as one his best mentors. Since then, Edmonds has consistently furthered his academic education by completing executive and leadership degrees and programs from: University of Auckland (1996-98); Australian Institute of Company Directors (2002); New Zealand Institute for Strategic Leadership (2006), and the University of Oxford Said Business School (2015).

That hard-won MBA opened up broader opportunities for Edmonds than he’d had when starting with his trade apprenticeship. He joined GE Capital in Auckland as a general manager and after that, in this century, Edmonds worked, consecutively, as a manager and/or executive in the transport industry for New Zealand Post (comparable to United Parcel Service), Air New Zealand (his first venture into the aviation industry where he was their international airports manager), Auckland Transport (his first C-suite position), SRG Global (as executive general manager for New Zealand), and then left SRG in 2020 to lead Salus Aviation Group based in Auckland, as its current CEO.

Edmonds muses on his varied career. He doesn’t see himself as leapfrogging from one place to the next. He said, “I was able to do more things than if I’d just stayed in the same job or company my whole career.”

Withdraws, But…

In another twist, his current position at Salus Aviation is one he did not pursue. In fact, he withdrew his application for a lower position on the company’s organizational chart because he didn’t see himself as fully qualified. After interviewing to be Salus Aviation’s head of operations, Edmonds withdrew his application, to the dismay of Salus’ leadership that had invited him to interview. After the interview, “I told my wife I could run the operations: manpower, planning, etc., and turn a profit, but I thought their CEO needed to hire a licensed engineer, someone with a decade or two of hardcore technical aviation and maintenance experience, someone who could look into a turbine and know what it needed.”

Six weeks after withdrawing, Edmonds' phone rang—Salus’ CEO had surprisingly resigned the day before and Salus Aviation needed a leader right now. Edmonds said, “The person who phoned me said, ‘We always thought you were going to be the eventual CEO, but we couldn’t get you in the door to join the team.’ A week later, I signed on as CEO and have never looked back; it’s been a great run.”

COVID Challenge

That run didn’t start out so great; Edmonds had to lead his new team through one huge challenge: COVID hit just after he became CEO. He said, “New Zealand was severely impacted with border lockdowns and our business really struggled. A lot of our business then was leasing about 25 aircraft to flying schools and those schools just returned the aircraft to us because no pilots were able to enter the country for training. That was a really bad situation for our company, but thankfully the shareholders supported us through that.”

One way Edmonds led his company through that trying time was by bringing people into the decision-making process. “In my early years, I think I thought I probably knew everything. Through time, you realize you don’t, and just because you’re the boss, or an executive, that doesn’t mean you have to know everything. You just have to work out how to find the answers,” he says. “I’m more consultative and collaborative today. In particular, executive teams need to share the challenges of the business or organization and have a say in how to solve challenges at an operational and strategic-direction level. The best decisions are made by organizations when team members are involved.”

Made A Difference

Edmonds matured in his career from a young know-it-all tradesman to a seasoned executive CEO. What a varied career it’s been! He muses, “I’ve worked on projects, such as transporting organs, and even building power stations in my early days, that have made a long-term difference in people’s lives…I’m most proud of raising a family with kids who are well-grounded in life, but I’m also pretty proud of my career and I think I’ve done pretty well for a little ol’ electrician from Wellington.”

A Kiwi would agree, “For sure.”

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Executive Watch - Greg Edmonds - CEO of Salus Aviation