Flight Path

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Flight Path
LAWA Executive Director Gina Marie Lindsey credits Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa with convincing her to take the position.

Gina Marie Lindsey has led a life marked by dramatic highs and lows. The 56-year-old former Alaskan trained for a career in broadcast journalism but rejected offers from local television stations in favor of more lucrative pursuits, eventually landing a planning job at Alaska’s Department of Transportation. It was there she got an assignment that would change her life: putting together a capital improvement program for Anchorage International Airport. As the director of aviation, she oversaw the airport’s transition from a passenger refueling stop to an international cargo hub. That success eventually led to her appointment as managing director of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where she spent more than a decade completing a $3.2 billion makeover. Today, a building at the airport – the Gina Marie Lindsey Arrivals Hall – bears her name. But it was also while serving in Seattle that Lindsey’s only child, Jeremy, an 18-year-old freshman at Tulane University in New Orleans, disappeared after leaving a party. Two months later, his body was found washed up on the banks of the Mississippi River, apparently drowned. The tragedy took a deep toll on Lindsey, who vowed to leave airport management forever. She moved to Washington, D.C., and became an aviation consultant. But that’s when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa unexpectedly called and convinced her to take her current job as executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, the agency that owns and operates the city’s airports. Lindsey and her husband, Thomas, sold their home and moved into apartments on separate coasts, but are looking forward to their retirement together. The Business Journal caught up with the aviation maven at her office overlooking LAX.

Question: How does someone end up doing what you do; did you love airplanes as a kid?

Answer: No, though that would make it a much better story. The truth is I went to school for communications media, with a minor in business. After graduating I was offered jobs as a reporter by two of the three TV stations that then existed in Alaska, but for not very much money. I hadn’t done my homework. I liked Barbara Walters’ salary, but had failed to figure out that you have to start in the local markets where they don’t pay you anything. So I went to work for $100 more per month as an administrative assistant at an engineering firm.

Is that what got you into transportation planning?

Actually, it was complete serendipity. My dad had been a transportation engineer who made asphalt and concrete mixes for permafrost. For me it was just an opportunity; I went into a three-year course at the Alaska Department of Transportation where they were training people to become transportation planners. The rest is history; I worked for the DOT for 14 years.

How did you get involved in airports?

I fell into it because one day they said they needed someone to put together a capital improvement plan for Anchorage International Airport, and I said OK. It was supposed to be paid for out of a separate enterprise fund, so I asked how much was in the fund and nobody knew. It turned out that none of the fees for the airport had been changed since statehood, which was in 1958. So I ended up negotiating the first airline operating agreement the state of Alaska ever had.

What was it like growing up in Alaska?

It was absolutely terrific. I was born in California but my dad left the state with us in 1963 because he thought there were too many people here. Alaska was tremendous because it helped you learn who you were early on. It’s a state of rugged individualism, or it used to be anyway. It was a place where people learned how to take care of themselves. It was also a big state with a very small population, so you could really make a difference. My high school graduating class was 13, so I was able to be a generalist. In a small high school you can be in the band and play piano for the choir and be in all the plays and play basketball and run track; you don’t have to specialize. My drama coach, Donnie Rigby, and her husband were wonderful human being with whom I am still close. The flip side of that, of course, is that I’m probably not very good at any one thing but know how to do a little bit of a lot of stuff.

Is that a good quality in an airport director?

I think it helped me when I got to Seattle-Tacoma. One of my proudest days there was when we opened Concourse A, the arrivals hall that the commission ended up putting my name on. The weekend before we had a community and airport families day and every one of those workers – from the construction crew to the planning crew to the finance crew – brought their families in and told their kids, “This is what we did.” It gives me goose bumps thinking about it even today because it was such a great thing.

How does it feel having a building named after you?

It’s embarrassing. There were a lot of people who made that happen, and the fact that my name is on it makes me feel a little chagrined because I was just the very fortunate person who got to lead all those people in doing great things.

Tell us about your son.

Jeremy was 11 days shy of his 19th birthday when he went to a party, left by himself and was never seen again. We don’t know whether somebody killed him or whether it was an accident. All we know is that two months later his body was found in the Mississippi River and he’d been dead since the night of that party.

That must have been devastating.

It was – and still is – an amazing experience that totally changed my point of view on many things. It made me understand that there are things outside your control that you can’t fix and just have to find a way to navigate through. I discovered that you have to choose to live again. I could easily have tipped over and decided my life was done, that this had ripped out the entirety of who I was and what I was about. I don’t think you ever love anything the way you love a child. Part of the D.C. move was about changing everything; I changed towns, changed houses, changed my hairstyle, changed my profession. I decided I was done with airports.

What changed your mind?

I was driving home on 16th Street to my little house in Adams Morgan when I got a call on my cell phone. A voice said, “This is Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, do you have a moment to talk to me?” I already knew that the job was open and that I was never doing another airport. But he’s a persuasive guy; he talked me into it.

Even to the extent of leaving your husband on the East Coast and taking a cut in pay?

Yes, the only reason it was worthwhile for me to leave the money I was making there and leave my husband – who I love dearly – in D.C. was a strong sense of mission, which I cannot divorce from the reality of losing my son. He was a very bright kid who was going to do great things. He’s not here, but I am. I don’t have as many talents as he had and I certainly don’t have the running room ahead of me that he would have had, so there’s a responsibility that goes with that. I needed to give back.

Was your fist day on the job overwhelming?

No, I pretty much knew what I had gotten into because LAX had been legendary in the airport industry for years. It had been going through a lot of political vicissitudes, there was this direction and that and a lot of money had been spent yet the place was still looking tawdry. That’s why my coming here was an intellectually indefensible decision. I did it because I thought I was in a unique position to make a difference; not because I’m so smart, but because I’ve had lots of experience with airports and this is an airport that hasn’t had lots of leadership. This place should be an icon and the political stars were aligned to make something happen.

What is the mission here?

My major goals are to rebuild the facilities at LAX, put the organization on a responsible business footing so that we’re running it like an enterprise instead of a general-purpose government and instill a sense of customer service in our employee base.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently described LAX as an airport “that once thought of itself as modern but has had one too many face-lifts and simply can’t hide the wrinkles anymore.” Do you think what you’re doing is enough to turn the place around?

I fundamentally believe that LAX has the potential of being a great airport. We need to build the facilities so that we can compete with the other airports of the world that have spent billions making sure that they stay one step ahead of the very sophisticated travel market. We need to get lean, mean, efficient and focused on customer service. And we need to have a business structure that is responsible in the world of airports and generates the kind of money that’s necessary to plow back into LAX to pay for its debt service and operating costs. That’s what we’re about.

Are you making any progress?

It will take many years, but I think we will be well on our way within three. It’s taking longer than I thought because I guess one of my many failings is an overly ambitious sense of what can be done in what kind of time frame. But while I will admit to that failing, I will accompany it with a parallel realization that you probably have to be a pusher to get anything done. Having said that, I do think we’re on our way. We are going to open the new Bradley West Terminal in December 2012. We are going to finish the central utility plant in 2013. In the meantime, we will remake the entire concessions program for the airport, put some rehabilitation on these other tired terminals in a phased sort of way and construct a business relationship with the airlines that’s sustainable.

How would you describe your management style?

I expect a lot of myself and I expect a lot from others. I am very open, potentially blunt to a fault. One of my struggles in moving into this position has been that our staff is large and there’s a very precise view of what people will and won’t do. I really think people deliver their best product when they are an active part of something bigger than themselves. That’s not as comfortable for people here as I think they’ve historically been. So, yeah, I think I’ve ruffled some feathers by suggesting that we don’t exist to provide jobs but to provide a service to the traveling public. We exist to put a product on the street every day, so let’s look critically at ourselves to figure out whether we’re doing that or not.

What’s your typical day like?

This morning I got here at 6:40 a.m. and had a 7 a.m. meeting with the folks putting together the concessions presentation for the board. Then I had a 9 a.m. call with a consultant and a 30-minute meeting with an engineer. Later, I drove to Van Nuys for a town hall meeting with the employees there, and then to Ontario to meet with the people there. At 5 p.m. I have a meeting with an international airlines consultant and at 6 p.m. dinner with a Japanese Airlines guy. Most nights I’m out at a business dinner. Then I go home, have some soup and get on the laptop to catch up on all the e-mails I haven’t gotten to during the day.

Where is home?

It’s a small one-bedroom apartment on the north side of the runway near the border of Westchester and Playa del Rey. It’s five minutes from the airport. This is my life when I’m in L.A.

Speaking of L.A., what do you think of it?

I like it more than I thought I would. I love the weather; I’m a sun baby, probably from 50 years of deprivation. I love the lifestyle here when I can get out in it, which isn’t very often. I like the sense of everybody being healthy and active; it’s a vibrant place to live. I like the can-do spirit. I do think, though, as Southern Californians and people in Los Angeles, we need to lean more into taking responsibility for making things better. I’m not an entitlement kind of person, and there’s a fair mount of entitlement around. It’s an issue for us as a country, as a civilization and as an economy. We’re really losing our competitive edge.

How do you handle the stress of this job?

I don’t perceive stress a lot, but my masseuse tells me that I have it. I don’t actually get a massage very often, but when I do they always tell me I store stress in my muscles. Exercise helps a lot. I used to run, but I don’t as much anymore, so I bike. I’m a musician, but I can’t do that here in the apartment. I play the piano and the flute up in Northern California; the wild deer and pigs don’t mind it so much.

Is that where you see your husband?

Yes, about every two or three weeks. We have 65 acres in the hills outside Ukiah where we usually meet. He was here last weekend and we went to Ojai for an olive tree pruning seminar. My husband runs Carnival Cruises’ government affairs office in Washington, D.C., and lives in an apartment on Dupont Circle, so I guess you could say that we’re crazy. We’ve put about 100 olive trees on the ranch up in Ukiah, and that’s where we plan to retire.

Any sense of when that might happen?

Well, the mayor has a shelf life and it’s very clear – it expires in June of 2013. I expect to open the Bradley West Terminal, and then I expect there will be a new mayor who, I’m sure, will want his own regime. That’s when I’ll be up in Northern California pruning those olives.

Gina Marie Lindsey

TITLE: Executive Director

ORGANIZATION: Los Angeles World Airports

BORN: Berkeley; 1954

EDUCATION: B.A., communications, Walla Walla College

CAREER TURNING POINT: Being put in charge of a capital improvement program at Anchorage International Airport

MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE: Parents and high school drama coach Donnie Rigby

PERSONAL: Lives alone in small apartment near LAX; owns a 65-acre ranch in the Northern California community of Ukiah, where she regularly spends time with her husband, Thomas, who lives in Washington, D.C.

ACTIVITIES: Biking, running, playing piano and flute, gardening and pruning olive trees

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