Why the Founder to CEO Shift Is Really a Communication Shift with Christina Cassotis, CEO of Pittsburgh International Airport

Leadership isn't just changing. It's evolving in ways we're only just beginning to imagine. And women, we're not playing this game anymore. We're the ones reshaping the entire field, building models, movements, and businesses that serve more than just a few. On the She Leads Podcast, you'll hear real conversations with women who've broken through all kinds of barriers, revenue, identity, orders, and expectations.

There's no sugarcoating here, just the truth told by those who are living it. I'm Adrienne Garland, entrepreneur, strategist, educator, and creator of live experiences, gathering women leaders together for over a decade. And this is the She Leads Podcast.

Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the She Leads Podcast. I'd like to kick off today's episode with a request. If you haven't done so already, before you listen into this episode, please pause and take just two minutes to go over and give the show a five star rating and review. It's so important to share the journeys, wisdom, and lessons of the women entrepreneurs and leaders that we feature here on the She Leads Podcast. And the best way to do that is to rate, review, and share this show with anyone that you think is interested in seeing more leaders in this world.

And we certainly need more women leaders in this world. Thank you so much for helping to share our incredible show with more people. Now, my next guest turned a struggling hub airport into one of the most celebrated airports in the world. And she did it by asking an unexpected question. What does this place mean to the people who live here?

Christina Cassotis is the CEO of the Allegheny County Airport Authority, overseeing Pittsburgh International and Allegheny County Airport. Under her leadership, Pitt became the first airport in The US built from the ground up post pandemic, the first major airport in the world powered entirely by a microgrid and one of Fast Company's most innovative companies in the world. Air Transport World named it Airport of the Year and then inducted it into their inaugural hall of fame. The daughter of a pilot, Christina, came up through Boston Logan and Global Aviation Consulting before landing in Pittsburgh, where she's been rewriting what an airport can be ever since. Christina, welcome to the She Leads Podcast.

Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here and to talk to you. I I love listening to your interviews with guests, and I'm excited to be one. Thank you.

Well, I cannot wait to speak with you. You truly have an extraordinary and unique role. We don't talk to many women in the aviation industry here on the She Leads Podcast. And so before we sort of get into everything, why don't you take us back and let us know, you know, how you came into this world and actually how you, you know, have risen to the heights of of success here.

Thank you. Gosh. So I I'm from New England. My my parents were married very young. My mom was 19.

My dad was 22. And my father actually quit MIT. He had gotten a four year all expense paid scholarship to MIT, which was the only way that he could have afforded to go. His dad had died when he was 15. His mother made light bulbs in the Sylvania light bulb factory on the midnight shift.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. And my father got this scholarship to MIT, and he quit in his sophomore year. He joined the Marine Corps and became an a four fighter pilot, off an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean during the Vietnam War and then was recruited by Pan American in the, mid sixties. So my mom who had not necessarily traveled a lot in those days, travel was very expensive.

So my mother and my father and me, we moved to Hong Kong when I was two and a half. And my father flew R and R missions into and out of Saigon with Pan Am when they were bringing soldiers out for R and R weekends in Hong Kong. We lived there for a few years and then settled in sleepy New Hampshire as a suburb of Boston. I went to UNH and flunked out on purpose. On purpose.

On purpose. I hated or I didn't want to be there. These were the days before, you know, everybody was taking you on college tours. It was sort of like you're going to college and you're going here. Yeah.

That was with a bunch of that was every it seemed like everybody from my high school was there. And I just thought, I don't wanna do this. So I got seven Fs and a B plus because I loved my Spanish phonetics class, and I wouldn't stop. I moved to Boston, I waitressed and bartended for six, seven years, and then I went back to school to get a degree in English, at UMass Boston. Got a job in government, actually, in PR with an energy office and went to communities and development and then got recruited to Massport, to the Massachusetts Port Authority, which oversees Boston Logan International Airport, and had the question that I think a lot of people still ask today, which is I didn't know airports had people working there.

I thought they were just run by the airlines. I got into PR there, got recruited by a global aviation consultancy, and eventually worked my way up to run the global airport practice, which was working with airports around the world in areas of competitiveness. I was based in Boston, but we had a team in New York, London, and Beijing. So I spent seventeen years traveling the world, leading teams, working with everything from infrastructure investors who are buying and selling airports in Europe, doing their due diligence, teams to due diligence, to working with US airports on areas of not the operational side, but the business side. And then in 2015, got a call from a headhunter about Pittsburgh and said, Absolutely not.

Yeah. No way. Why would anybody go to Pittsburgh to run at the airport? Because ten years earlier, US Airways had dehubbed it. We were all pretty horrified in the industry, like, how can they do that?

So ten years later, they were recruiting for a CEO. And basically as a favor to the headhunter, said, Sure, I'll go down for the interview. I'm sure you need to put the female candidate in front of them. Right? I always say to people, Always help a headhunter, always.

You never know when you're gonna need them. So I actually said after the second interview, the person who appoints the board had me meet with four or five CEOs in the community, like BNY Mellon, the company that sold to Alcoa, RTI. They did all the composite metal manufacturing for aircraft. And I was like, I had no idea about this community. And they know what they lost, and I can help them rebuild it.

And I said to my husband, it's three years. Don't worry. So that's why I got here. That's my story.

What year was that?

2015. I started in January 2015. Wow.

Yeah. And I mean, Pittsburgh is a vibrant, amazing city. It's got a bad rap. Or maybe not so anymore, or used to have a bad rap, but it's beautiful.

It is. I just think that it I think that, you know, it it didn't know for just such a long time. Steel collapsed in the eighties and nineties. US Airways left in '4. It felt like I remember, remember, first of it's such an underdog.

And I think that it really did a job on people here failing like, Oh, well, hold on, you know, we don't know what will happen. So I would say that it started to tell its story differently over the last few years. Certainly, it was one of my jobs in talking to airlines globally was, wait a minute, wait a minute. I mean, remember the first time I went to visit airlines in Europe, and one of their CEOs was like, what are you doing in Pittsburgh? I'm like, hold on, you have to understand.

So I was a great evangelist. And and I think that the the city and the region has been undervalued for a long time, but is now starting to understand. They are. Wait a minute. Yeah.

And also that we're not gonna go back. Like, it's okay. We can move forward. There's a lot here. I mean, it's yeah.

We love it. We love it.

Gosh. A lot of a lot of very interesting, almost life lessons in in what you're talking about here. And, you know, one of the things is first of all, you're a a very confident, bold person to say, I don't like this, but yet I don't know exactly what it is that I do like. Let me take some time and just just be almost. Right?

Like, as you know, we go to college and we're babies. And they expect us to figure out the rest of our lives when we're 17 years old. And it is just absolutely ridiculous. One of the the things that I love is that you don't have to have your whole entire life planned out for your life to turn out really great. So I hope that everybody listening into that into this hears that, especially my students who think that they need to have everything, you know, buttoned up or else they're gonna be failures sleeping in the gutter.

Well, first of we don't believe you if you say you do. Right. I don't believe any 23 year old unless you know, like, my brother knew when he was six years old, he was gonna be a dog doctor.

Aw.

And he is And he's a veterinary ophthalmologist, like weird specialty, but he's great. Yeah. But for a lot of us, you know, we have to discover it, and we have to allow ourselves to see where we really belong. And I actually think there's a lot of value in that.

I do too.

And I also am a huge believer that college is not for everybody. Yeah. It really and I think that, you know, I work with eight trade unions here at the airport, and good luck running a civilized society without plumbers, electricians, HVAC, you know, carpenter. Like, you need we need people. Yes.

That is that is a super skill. It's like being a musician. I mean, the way some people's brains work, we need all of that. So, you know, I'm somebody said to me, and when I got to the consulting company, the woman who hired me, was fierce. And she said to somebody, you should really talk to Christina.

And somebody said, Oh, she had all those lost years. And I thought, Oh, that's so funny that you think that for like, I had a blast. I used to say to my remember saying to my parents, I'm avoiding a midlife crisis. I did everything I wanted to do, man. I love that.

I love that. Yeah. That doesn't sound like any lost years to me. That that sounds like figuring it out. Yeah.

That's incredible. And, yeah, I think I think we do push people into roles that end up really not, you know, fitting who we are. And you're 100% right. I'm sure that that, you know, that at least in some way it avoided something. We know how life goes.

But I also find it very curious that you ended up back in the industry that your dad was in, And it just seems serendipitous. Like, did you think that you even wanted to? Yeah.

Now I knew. So in the old, old days, for any of your listeners who grew up with parents who worked with airlines, in the old, old days, like this ended forty years ago, they would give all of, all of the non rep all of the, parents, children, of the pilot or flight attendant, we had a it looked like a credit card. Remember with the raised letters? Remember those? Yes.

And I would go down to Federal Street in Boston where Pan Am had a ticket office. And I would say, can I have three tickets? And they would run it off. And I would go to the airport and fill in where I wanted to Way. And I would have to call a special 800 number.

It was a non rev line. And you would list yourself as a non revenue passenger. And if there were seats open, you would get on the plane according to seniority. Like, I wasn't gonna get on before, you know, the wife of a seven forty seven cab. Sure.

Right? I'm right. So but here's the thing, I didn't realize that that only lasted as long as I was a dependent or in college. So when I flunked out, I lost it. I know.

Oh,

how amazing would that have been to, you know

How how I used. Okay. No. I used

You did.

Yeah. My last yeah. No. My last trip, I was gonna go to Rio because a girlfriend of mine who I had waitressed with had fallen in love with the busboy and moved to Rio. Of Okay.

Of course.

She's really cool. And I I wrote my ticket, Boston, New York, New York Rio, because you had to look things up in the in the official airline guide in those days. And when I got to New York, the flight was canceled at Kennedy. And they don't take care of non revs. They're not putting you in a hotel.

And I had money. So because my parents, once I quit school, they were like, you are on your own. We have three other kids. This was your shot. Which best thing ever.

Right? So I wrote myself a ticket because I could go two places at 08:00 at night, back to Boston or to London. So I flew to London.

Of course, as one does.

One does. Parents were happy to be there. I talked my way into their hotel room. I took a shower. I left my mother.

I'd read the color purple on the way over. I left it with a note, flew back to New York, flew to Rio. My when I got home, my father called me. He said, damn it, young lady. You cannot leave this country without telling me.

And I'm like, whatever. It was my last trip.

My gosh. Okay.

I knew I wanted to fly, but I didn't wanna be a pilot. I didn't want to be a flight attendant. So I sort of felt like, well, what else can you do? And, you know, I look at kids today. My son graduated last year.

I just think of all the awareness they have. I mean, you're a professor, you know, you're talking to kids that have seen more and have more awareness of the world than I did at that age. I just didn't know what was possible. And I'm not sure I would have known what to do it if it even if I had, I just needed to figure out what I could do. So I got a job in PR, sort of in PR at an airport.

And I just remember thinking like, this is the coolest place ever. Everything is about possibility. And somebody's on their way to something important or on their way back. And I'm fascinated at how I'm a big underdog fan. So how most people don't really understand the role of airports.

And by the way, that's in the industry itself. Airlines, manufacturers, where I call it, where the unsexy leg of the story that supports industry. And, you know, my job or my interest is in changing that and getting more interested in a career in airports and having more people understand what we do because it really matters. It matters a lot.

Well, want to dive into that and I want to understand it. And I also, I think it's fascinating because when you speak to CEOs, the the path isn't often, you know, from marketing and PR to CEO. Right? It's it's often either, you know, the financial path or the operations path. So I'm so inspired that you have this incredible background.

And clearly, communication is one of your top skills. I'm I'm sure you have all the other skills now that you have acquired over all of the years. And I think that that's also something that women, we excel in this area of communication. And it's been a skill that has been, I I think, overlooked. But I think an amazing path to being a CEO that really truly needs to understand every single component of a business and how it all works together.

So can you talk about how you how all of your skills I mean, I would even say from waitressing and making sure that you're serving the customer, you're truly in the hospitality industry even now. So can you just talk a little bit about that? Because you're serving people. Right? You're getting people from place to place.

I want to, like, thank you so much for recognizing this. First of all, how's it working out for all those CFOs when they become CEOs? If you can't communicate the value of what you do to the people who work for you, and they don't feel like they're part of something meaningful, then I don't care how great the organization is. Nobody below a certain level gets up in the morning thinking, can't wait to increase shareholder value. It's not what motivates people.

And this is where the disconnect. So I feel really strongly that communication is the skill that you listen, you got to have you've got to have the aptitude to learn operations and finance and IT and human resources and everything that makes an organization sustainable in the long run. I'm a, I call it legacy first leadership. Like, am all about where we what when I leave here, what's gonna be left behind and how can it continue? So in in service of a mission, you have to communicate constantly, sort of, you've got to hold that tension between what are we doing today and why does it matter not only for our stakeholders, but actually, that's not true.

Why does it matter for our stakeholders, and you're the most important group we've got to get to first? In other words, if your team doesn't understand what you're doing and why, I don't understand how no strategy is worth anything if it doesn't get it. Right? So I think that there's a huge opportunity for the communication path as long as you understand what you're communicating and you understand the, you know, the content that you're sort of you're the filter. Right?

And I and I really do believe that in especially when we saw this in time at COVID in COVID, we I understood how few leaders were not saying anything to their teams. I mean, in really big organizations. And the reason I know this is because when COVID, three days before COVID, we had just been in China on a work trip earlier. We knew something was coming. And so we dusted off our pandemic readiness plan.

And you had a pandemic readiness plan.

We all have to. As airports, we are all the stuff that we have to have, we are ready for anything. Wow. Anything. I mean, we live in constant crisis readiness and prep because anything can happen any day of the week, even what's happening with fuel prices today.

That will affect us at some point. I can talk about that later. But anyway, so during COVID, we got together and I remember I pulled my senior team together. And in eight hours, we set out the policies for how we were going to run. My head of HR, who's brilliant, said, Listen, the way we really need to do it is we need to split all teams up into two teams.

Frontline workers have to be here. So we have to adjust the way they work so that they are not in contact with others. But as management teams, somebody said, Well, who's essential? And I'm like, Woah, woah, woah, woah.

All of us. Yeah. Who's not?

You know, who's not? I don't wanna talk we're not we can say essential on-site and essential remote. So we labeled it. That matters. And then we every two weeks I didn't see my CFO for eighteen months in person because every two weeks we rotate it.

And so we said, okay. Team one is the first to the fifteenth of the month. They're in the office. And team two, 16 to end of the month. And I said, I'm on team two.

Somebody said, why? I said, because everybody will think team one is the best. Think about that. Then we decided I just I we I held a call every Wednesday, first shift, second shift, third shift, 11:30AM, 03:30PM. No.

What was it? 10:10 thirty am, 03:30PM, and 11PM for fourteen months. Every Wednesday. Every Wednesday, I got on the phone and I said, here's what we're doing. Here's why.

Because I knew the front lines would feel like, oh, great, you're taking care of yourselves and not us. And so I would say, let me ask you something. How essential do you think finances? What happens if you don't get paid? What happens if the whole finance department goes down because one person comes in and affects like, we we explained it in ways where we would talk and people would say, how long do you think this lasts?

And I said, I don't know that. But here's what I do know. Air travel always comes back. So I that to me was and the reason I know this is because people would have their spouses listening in because nobody was talking to them. And so the communication, I mean, we didn't lose anybody fortunately.

And we actually used that time. Held food drives for the food pantry because we saw the lines on the highways. We said, we've got empty parking lots. Do it here. Our teams volunteered.

We ran pet food drives. We parked 100 aircraft for American Airlines on our center taxiway center runway, excuse me, got the FAA to sign off on that. Like, we we did things because we knew we had to keep this place open for all of the essential workers, health care workers who were going back and forth because air travel needs to keep and when all of the PPE came in, our field maintenance team, the people who plow the snow, cut the grass, you know, the mechanics, they figured out a chute that would go from the top level of an aircraft down so the packages could land for Cathay Pacific. Like, we just think, like everybody understood we are essential. We as a team have to be ready when we reopen.

To me, that's about communicating, we got your back. You got to show it. You got to line up your words and your kids have to line up. That's the part people get wrong. And we have to communicate that we're going to get through this.

And I think that that is every leader's job. And I don't think, you know, we have a comms department, but to me, that's about distributing a message. It's not about necessary or refining it, but it's not about necessarily always creating it. I actually don't understand leaders who outsource their communication because the communication is not just what you see, it's what you say, it's what you Those things have to line up. And I think for really strategic thinkers, you know, and I see this a lot, is people can see that's where the distrust happens is there's something's not lining And up all of that is a communication.

Right? All of it is a communication. So that's to me, I think it's I don't believe in soft skills. Believe in core skills.

Yeah. And I think that communication was classified as a soft skill. And yes, I'm all for the rebrand to a core skill.

Yeah. And I'm I'm really I'm big on it for everybody. Because if if people can't repeat why why what they're doing is important, then they're then it's just a job. And I will tell you that airports, you know, we badge, I don't know, 6,000 people. 6,000 people work at the airport, not necessarily for us, but between the airlines and the ground handlers and the, you know, concessionaires.

Every one of those people has to go through a background check. Right? And the reason that we have to do a background check for the Chick fil A worker as well as the ground handler is because just think of what you have access to. Yes. Everything beyond security is like the cockpit.

Okay? So if people aren't okay, if they're not doing well, if they don't feel valued and respected and included, they can get cranky. Right? We see that. So how we take care of people, how we communicate that has a lot to do about what we tell them, when, why, how.

And that to me, is the difference between what we've been able to do and what I wish other airports would do.

And even companies in general, because there is a lot of information that is held back because there's not certainty around the message. And what you said about being able to say, you know, what I do not know, but what I know is this. Those two pieces must be communicated because you can't just, you know, dismiss that you you don't know. It's, you know, it's an uncertain situation, and every single leader faces uncertainty at one time or another.

I just find it fascinating that people are waiting for it. I mean, welcome to the world. What is certain? Nothing. And and exactly.

But it never was. No. You know? And so and, and I, you know, we just we attract people who are, who are adrenaline junkies, and people who really like change. I think that's, you know, work in aviation, you're working in a globally connected, highly interdependent industry, where something that happens halfway across the world that you have nothing to do with will affect you and your team.

Every time there is an aircraft incident, we feel it. Yeah. Because everything we're feeling is, god. You know, we know what it feels we know because we drill over and over again. We we feel for the first responders.

We feel for the families that we have to protect so the press can't get to them. We feel for the airline CEO who has to get on, you know, and say something and then manage his team. And it's such a big deal. And we are always looking at, you know, how are the people doing? And people for us are our staff, they're the passengers, they're the meters and greeters, they're the partners, they're the people who may not even think they depend on the airport, but believe me, they do.

We are a huge transplant center, organ transplant center here in Pittsburgh. Oh, wow. So, we can't afford to close ever because if planes can't land, organs can't come in, transplant teams can't get in. So when we built our microgrid, which was five years ago, by the way, and we're the only ones in the world with it, we are the only energy independent site hardened infrastructure as an airport in the world. We did it because we just thought we had seen a couple of airports go through some energy crises, you know, where they'd have to close for a day, and the ripple effect on the system is massive.

So we didn't ever want it. We were in the point of sort of rebranding and rebuilding our reputation. I thought that is not anything I ever want to do. So with a private sector partner, we're able to, we generate all of our energy on-site and the grid is our backup. And when we talk to people, we talk about the fact that, you know, 500 organs come through our two airports or general aviation and our commercial airport every year.

That's more than one a day. Wow. So

Yeah. You can't afford

to shut down.

No. And it's not fair. We can't afford to shut down in a snowstorm. Which is why we we spend so much time, you know, training our snowplow teams and why our snow and ice control team is literally got awarded as the best in the country last year. Like, we are really focused on what we can control and how we talk about that and how we how we talk about the importance of that and what it means to the industry as well as to the people in our region.

I'm blown away. How are you also teaching other airports how to implement some of these things? Because if you are the only airport with micro grid, I'm sure others are looking to you as the the, you know, best in class, and they want to implement that too. So, I mean, that's another part of the job that I can't even imagine, right? Because you got to focus at the job at hand.

And then you're also leading the way for other airports.

Right. But as goes the industry, so goes us. In other words, we need the industry to do better. So one of the so I here first of all, I would say it's not teaching, it's sharing. And and and I mean that because there's a lot we learned from other airports as well.

And and I think that US airports have always been incredibly safe and secure. We have always been operationally excellent. But we haven't always been the best at passenger service, amenity, etcetera. If you take a look at European and Asian airports, you tend to see a different experience. So, we are, you know, as airport executives, we don't compete on anything that has to do with safety, security, passenger experience.

Actually all talk to each other. And, you know, we happen to sit on top of the largest natural gas deposit in The US, the Marcellus Shale. So we extract gas on-site. We have a third that does that. Not everybody does, but that doesn't mean that's the only way to build a microgrid.

So we do a lot do a lot with the industry. We've written case studies. We've hosted airlines and airports who want to understand what we did and how. Whether it's our Pit to Work program, which was a was really about getting more people interested in the building trades and then working on our terminal modernization program or our suite of sensory rooms that we built years ago at the suggestion of one of our snowflower drivers or it's, you know, the advanced manufacturing campus that we've built on 195 acres. Like, we're just always looking at how can our footprint solve problems for the industry and for the region?

And how can we get more people excited about careers at airports?

Wow. Yes. Well, this is the first step in doing that. And I have an idea for you.

Why

not? Also, if you have, you know, a campus and for people to come, why not have an incubator program?

We have one.

There we go. See?

We do. We have it. It's called the X Bridge. We do. And we're, you know, we're 500 people on my staff, and that's running everything.

So, you know, we're lean, but we are really focused on impact, and we're really focused on improving it in the industry and in the region. So yeah, it's a passion project of mine and many people on the team. We're really I'm excited. One of the things I measured when I got here, I said to the head of HR, I said, How many applicants do we get per position? It was two.

Now Oh, until 11 ago, this place was you know, it

was really quiet.

It it was quiet, but it was also people were really they were just so beaten up. They had lost so much at the airport itself. You know, you go from not being able to cross a taxiway because there were so many aircraft to just empty gates, empty terminals. And so there's a huge opportunity to get more people interested. But at the time, people wouldn't have said, Oh my god, I can't wait to go work there.

Now we get hundreds of applicants per position. I'm able to attract leaders from other industries. And I think that that that's really exciting because there's always you know, look, we we're still a business. We still have the need, actually the mandate to be self sufficient. None of us rely on taxpayer dollars, local or state.

So we are always having to kind of create the revenue that we can use for investment. And

Well, I would love to dive into that just so that people can understand sort of the business of the airport. You touched on all the different, you know, functions. But I would love to really understand. So, you know, where does the revenue sort of come from in an airport? And obviously, we know what the expenses are.

But how how does an airport increase and diversify revenue?

That's a brilliant question. I love you're a great interviewer. So I mean, really, truly. So first of all, there are two governance structures in The United States around airports, and this is actually really important. So the way that airports used to be well, airports are either a department of a city, state or county.

So there's the education department, the roads and sewers department, they write, and the aviation department. And then you report to a mayor or a governor or a county executive, and you don't have a contract. And when the mayor or the county executive or the governor leaves, they say, oh, I want somebody new in that position. So how easy do you think it is to drive change into an organization like that? Because here's what TikTok how long are you staying?

I'm not doing that. I get to protect. Then there's the authority model. And the authority model is that the governing body appoints a board of directors, volunteer in The US. Okay?

So, we're a county executive system. Twenty five years ago, in Allegheny County, because that's where the physical land sits, it doesn't sit in the city. The county said, We're going to change our form of government to a county executive, and we want to professionalize the airport. We want to not have it be subject to politics. So I report to a nine member board made up of business people.

And I think there's one elected official on the board who represents our district at state level. And I want to be really clear, governance is one piece of it, but then it's the people. I have seen beautifully run really fantastic city airports, and I have seen poorly run authorities. So it's really about who's doing what and what kind of accountability and possibility there is. So we are all mandated in The United States.

We are government or quasi government institutions. And we have a mandate from the FAA that says we must be self sufficient. We must and here's why. And then there's another rule that says nothing, no revenue generated at an airport can be taken off an airport. So I can't so when people we were building this new terminal and roadway system and parking structure, people said, we could do so much downtown.

It's like, You don't take made here downtown. And the reason is the FAA, through a tax that comes from your tickets, funds our runway pavement rehabs. And, you know, if we have to completely, resurface a runway, that's hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. So we 90% matches airport by airport that we apply for. So if they're giving us money, they're like, no, no, you don't get to take the money and then go take it off the airport.

You've got to invest it back into the airport. Right? So the way we make money is through parking. It's basically- Wow. So it's- Well, hold on.

But it's based and we have an obligation to be competitive in our pricing.

Sure.

Again, we can't I can't people are like, parking's expensive. I'm like, I'm benchmarking it to downtown and other airports. And if I give it away for a dollar, I am actually there's an opportunity cost. There's an opportunity cost to not making the money that I could make if I were benchmarking the pricing. Of course.

It's parking. It's the percentage of revenue from McDonald's, Chick fil A, Okay. Shake Right. So they pay to lease space in our terminal and then the percentage of revenue, it's every time a taxi, an Uber, Lyft picks up or drops off, we take a fee. Oh, because our roadway systems get pretty beaten up.

We sit on a very large land footprint. So every hangar that's leased, there's a cost to, you know, basically, we're a user fee generated facility. Okay. So our expenses are pretty fixed because we, you know, you don't sort of turn on and off parts of an airport. So we have a, you know, an annual O and M budget or operating and maintenance budget, and we have debt service.

And then here's how it works. We have an agreement with the airlines. All the airlines sign one agreement. In other parts of the world, if they're privately held, sometimes airlines and airports have different agreements depending on who the airline is. We don't do that in The US.

So in The US, airport, all the airlines get together, they have a committee, we negotiate with them every whatever, so many years. And we stipulate what revenue we'll put into the maintenance and operating of the airport. And anything that's left over, they pay for according to a formula based on passengers. Okay?

So

in other words, now there are airports and authorities that are grandfathered, New York, Boston, Seattle. So money generated at JFK can go pay for things that the New York New Jersey Port Authority runs outside of the airports. Same thing in Boston, but they are grandfathered. We're not.

You're not.

So all the revenue that's generated here, including the percentage, get a royalty from the gas drilling, all that goes into the pot according to an agreement with the airlines. And then we figure out what's the delta between what it costs and the revenue we've earned. And there's almost no airport where it's equal. In other words Yeah. It's very expensive to run this infrastructure.

Yeah. Yeah. 247365, and you need us to. Like, I would say to people, you need us open all the time. Yes.

This this is important. We're national critical transportation infrastructure. We have two military bases on the airport. Oh. Yeah.

An air refueling wing for the National Guard and the Pennsylvania I'm sorry, an air refueling wing for the US Air Force and, the Pennsylvania Air National Guard. So we're a really like, we're a city.

Yeah. Exactly. That's such a great way to put it.

Yeah. We're a city. And we run twenty fourseven, three sixty five. We are always open. And some airports have noise curfews, we don't.

And we are always looking at how to diversify our revenue. So we're very dependent on passengers, but we're always looking for ways that aren't passenger dependent. So the advertising in an airport. That's roughly based on how many passengers, but we actually just entered into a brand new. We're the first in the country to partner with a company called Legends, which is owned by George Steinbrenner and Jerry Jones.

Oh my gosh. And they do all of the sponsorships and stadiums, and we're the first airport they've ever worked with.

Wonderful. So,

we're actually, we've got this whole different model, and we're 9X what we used to make in ad spend. Wow. And it's all local. So we're constantly looking at how can we push raising revenue that's not necessarily passenger dependent, but also, you know, efficiency and cost reduction that doesn't threaten our primary mission, which is to run a safe and secure operation

Of course.

And take care of people. Right? Like, I'm never going to have AI bots for customer service agents.

Never. Yeah.

People don't I mean, maybe there'll be something, but there will always be a person because people don't just want information. They want assurance. They need comfort. They need

They wanna be seen. Yeah.

They want And heard. Yeah. And especially if if something goes wrong, and something goes wrong a lot in aviation. Of course. So I'm so yes, we are all pro technology.

But my first question is who benefits?

Yeah. We talk about the the balance of AI and hospitality in our classes all the time. And, you know, we're always like, what's the line where, you know, you can leverage and maximize the technology and retain the humanity? And, you know, the answer is always like, it depends. Right?

Anything that's to me, anything that's passenger facing is it's a person. Because it doesn't filter. Look, AI is great for and even AgenTik AI. All AgenTik AI is is a to do list with a bunch of processes behind it. Let's be really clear.

Yeah.

Okay? So I still need you can tell me. Here here's here's all the things it can do. I'm like, great. Who's gonna check to make sure it did the right thing?

Yeah. Exactly. Who's gonna filter which one of these things we should do? And I'm just it's we have too much at stake every day. We are looking at, you know, what part of a task, what part of a of a role can can AI and and but we've been looking at this forever.

Like

Yeah. Technology What can technology do to help us be more efficient?

Yeah. Yeah.

And effective. But, you know, at the end

of the day, travel hospitality is about taking care of people. So to your point, my waitressing and bartending days, I learned more doing I know. When you're living on tips, the success of your work is not decided by you. Yeah. It's decided by your customer.

And to me, that is the way I work. Our success is gonna be based on a whole lot of people who we don't get to say, But trust me, we did such a great job. You have to show it, and you have to show it in ways that they understand. So, yeah, I think that I think everybody should work in hospitality, candidly.

I think so, too, especially entrepreneurs that need to truly understand who their customer is and not just try to push their brilliant ideas down people's throats. And we don't even want some of this stuff. Like we need to understand people. And I don't think that we do a very good job. We're outsourcing our understanding to something that's not human.

Well, that's real. You. I mean, And I see this consultants come out in all the time in the early days, I would take all these meetings and I would say, and then somebody would give me a pitch deck and say, so we'd really like to understand, you know, how you're saying things. I'm like, there's a lot of interviews out there. If you didn't do your homework, I can't help So here's the thing.

Everybody's got an What I want to know is how does it relate to us? How does it relate to the problem we might be solving for? How does it relate to something we may not be seeing? And how are you going to

get So it

I really believe that it's not the idea, it's the ability to get it executed and the ability for the customer to feel like, Oh, you're doing this for me.

Right. The deep understanding of what the customer experience is. And it's not just the passenger, the customer is everybody else that you named, including the people that are cutting the grass and plowing runway. Yeah.

We need them. We have a wildlife.

Oh my gosh.

We have acres. And so you can't have deer running on runways. You can't have birds nesting. We have an apiary program. Wow.

Because when I got here, they were struggling with bee swarms and a bee swarm if a bee swarms an airplane wing, the plane can't So, take we brought in a beekeeper. Okay. And so we brought in a beekeeper. He's not on staff. He's a he's a contractor.

And he's set up now we have 250 apiaries because we don't use chemicals on our property. So we actually helped repopulate the queen bee population in Pennsylvania at one point.

Beautiful. I mean, that benefits humanity truly. Because when when the bees are no longer here, they can't Thing. They can't do their thing that feeds us. Right?

I'm struggling with the word. But they can't do the thing that feeds us. And if we're not fed, we're dead. Gotcha.

There you go. That's that's your book title. You're if we're not Yes.

If you're not fed, you're dead. Well, I mean, Christina, you need to write a book if you haven't already. And if you have, please tell us the title.

Okay. Well, but I I but I but, you know, it's it's funny getting you know this, and I think this is very much a a female thing. We all think, Oh, I have to have proven myself. So I got eleven years under my belt. We opened the terminal.

You know, we changed the business model. We transformed the culture. We transformed the infrastructure. I love what I do. I mean, I really love what I do.

And I want more people to want to do it and be part of it.

Well, how can they do that? How can you know, I hope that people listen into this interview and they feel your passion because I feel your passion coming right through the computer through Riverside. And I'm sure that people are gonna say, hey, I wanna get involved. And even entrepreneurs like, hey, this isn't an area that I thought about. How can I help to solve some of the challenges because it's a really, really interesting area?

So what can people do?

I love how you have the second part of it. Well, first of all, you know, listen, every airport has a website with jobs that are open. So look and see. I mean, and the nice thing about airports is wherever you enter, if you're really good, you can find your way to any other place in the organization, right? I mean, I have a lot of people, and by the way, number of union people who have come out and gone into management.

So there's lots of opportunities to get in in almost anything that is needed anywhere in the world. We have environmental specialists. Have, you know, we have a finance department, an IT department, a legal department. Like, we are A city. We're running everything.

First. But for the entrepreneurs, so our Xbridge, what we did, and this is about five or six years ago, is we actually brought in somebody from the accelerator community. And he went into the entrepreneur community and didn't say, hey, for those of you who can work at airports, airlines, he said, For those of you who have technology, see if there's an application in aviation. And we actually have a team that says, Yeah, let's see what that can do. So there are a number of airports that actually have either accelerators or pitch competitions or whatever.

But we're only because aviation moves, you know, that airplane has taken off and it feels like it's fast. But the innovation in the industry to me is it could use some help. Yeah. So I think we've tested 30 or 40 different companies over the last five years. And there are a lot of airports that do that.

And we're not asking you to tell us what it can do. It's more like, do you think there's any The question we're always looking for is what can your technology do in this space that we haven't thought of yet? Yeah. So we've actually helped launch a number of companies and products that have tested here. And we also partner with airports and airlines around the world because there's a huge robotics community in Pittsburgh, like This big, is where Uber was doing all its driverless car testing because CMU is a leader in all of that stuff.

So there's a really huge robotics community here, and we're constantly looking at what can that do in an airport setting. It still works with how we have to operate our safety guidelines, our security guidelines, etc. And there's a lot. So yeah, there's lots of opportunity.

There definitely is an an in my NYU class because the the students are, you know, in hospitality and travel and tourism and everything. They often come up with really interesting ideas. It's it's, you know, it oftentimes is passenger based and, you know, how can somebody sort of be have a level of comfort and be able to rejuvenate. There have been some really great ideas that have come out. So now that I know you Yeah.

And I'm going to introduce you to some students, and you might wanna hear some of their really, really amazing ideas.

And, you know, we're all a passenger And at some we all have unmet needs. And that's I'm always looking for how can we do better. There are some things we can do, some things that aren't in our control, facilitate. So, yeah, I think that at the end of the day, great business solves problems, right? It takes away people's pain.

It makes things easier. And we're always open to those ideas.

So that's

what I'd say is not to be asked, it can be any airport, but I would

Well, we like you. And we like Pittsburgh. We'll join your accelerator. So Christina, I really have just enjoyed this conversation so so much. Sometimes, you know, you might think that the aviation industry might feel a little boring, but uh-uh.

It is dynamic, and it is exciting. And I hope everybody can hear all of that come through. And I just wanna thank you so much. If people do wanna connect with you personally, how can they do so?

I'm on LinkedIn. That's actually the the best way to do it is I'm on LinkedIn. Please say you heard it here. And, yeah, I mean, that's the easiest way to do it. It's on LinkedIn.

Christina Cassotis.

Well, we would I know that my students I don't know if I could actually arrange anything like this. But, know, we would love to come for a visit and a tour.

Just give me you gotta give me notice. But yes. Of course. I will say

You don't want me coming down later today?

Well, because we have to get you badged and there's a passage. But you know, when we were building our new terminal roadway system garage, etcetera, for your construction project while we operated, we gave, I think, over 200 tours. I said to our construction manager, I said, so Rob, he built, like, you know, one of our contractors, great guy from PJ Dick Hunt. And I said, how many tours do you usually do? He's like, I've never seen this.

I've never seen this. Brought everything from school kids to YPO to the chambers of because we wanted people to understand what we were doing and why. Yeah. We wanted the kids. When people were like, why are, you know, why are we spending all this money?

We actually created we've we've we've suspended it. So that's why I need to know. But we were telling we were taking people through an active construction site. And I hired we hired a former guy who used to be in our comms department who would he had left and I called him. I said, you're the only person I can think of that would actually do this.

And he actually got the nickname of the tour lord. I mean, he was See, and it was really it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun.

And, you know, I think that's something that maybe another CEO wouldn't have necessarily even thought of. But having your PR background, you know, you need to take people through the process. You need to weave the story, craft the story, tell them why. And just I love it all. I have taken away so much knowledge and information, and I'm so excited.

And I'm gonna do even more of a deep dive. Maybe I'll plan a trip where I come through Pittsburgh.

Thanks. Okay. Please. Yeah. Yeah.

Please. There's a lot of great stuff here that you probably don't even know about. Yes. So you know. You know, there's a Warhol museum.

There's a there's a what?

A Warhol museum.

Yes. Yes. Well, I did visit with my son University of Pittsburgh when he was looking at colleges, and I really wanted him to go there. And we do actually do have a friend whose son just graduated from there. So yeah, I love it.

My son didn't want to go because there wasn't a hockey team.

Fair enough. Yeah, fair enough. Okay. Well, this was great. And thank you so much for this opportunity.

I'm really flattered and I'm thrilled and I love talking to you. So thank you.

Well, I do too. So thank you so much. Have a beautiful rest of the week. And we really appreciate you sharing all of your knowledge here on the She Leads Podcast.

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