WHEELS UP

There are few industries as compelling or complex as the airline industry. Tens of millions of customers are shuttling through the sky above us bound for destinations as diverse as Albany, Amarillo, and Aruba, 24/7/365. This ceaseless ballet of technology and logistics is hard to fathom until you slow down to think about it.

It takes a certain type of person to thrive amid the chaos and competition of the business—someone who can see through all the contrails and find the silver linings. Enter Colleen Spector. Born in Libertyville, educated at Purdue, and now living with her family in Highland Park, Spector was recently elevated to a Senior Leader role at Southwest Airlines, supporting the company’s East Coast sales team of 17 members. It’s Spector’s fourth promotion in five years. Clearly, she found her place at what is now the largest U.S. airline, serving the most air travelers domestically.

An earlier role in the hotel business opened Spector’s eyes to the power of corporate hospitality and illuminated her path to the airline world.

“I just found it so interesting that these major companies—the Googles, Amazons, and McDonald’s of the world—were spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year on airplanes, hotels, food, and meetings to drive their business,” Spector says. “Business travel supports every industry globally. What an underline on the power of this. Taking care of these business travelers to keep economies and businesses going.”

Spector credits her ability to successfully manage different roles and hit critical revenue targets to her belief in the power of “And.” To achieve success, Spector believes that it is important to remove the self-imposed barriers we sometimes place on ourselves. It’s possible to be young and lead a team with perspective. Or to be a dedicated mom and fully committed corporate leader. When the invisible boundaries disappear, it becomes possible to succeed at things that seem to intrinsically oppose one another. It was a lesson she learned in her first job out of school, running food and beverage for a private management company in Ohio.

“This power of ‘And’ really came into play,” she recalls, “because I was a 22-year-old leading people who were 20-plus years older than me. That experience taught me if you’re willing to be humble and listen and do the hard work alongside everybody else, you can earn respect. That’s where I learned I can be young and be influential. I can be new in my career and still have a bit of wisdom about what we need to improve the process. I started understanding there’s this duality that exists here.”

On the topic of duality, Spector is specifically responsible for growing Southwest’s business travel, which exists alongside its well-known footprint in leisure travel. While the airline that strives to bring “heart” to travelers may not immediately suggest briefcases and laptops, its commitment to the corporate segment has not waivered and is climbing back to pre-pandemic levels. According to Spector, the same things that leisure travelers love about Southwest are what the airline brings to the business sector.

“Being on the road can be stressful. And you have a lot of choices,” she says. “So, the way you feel on the road can impact not only your health and happiness as a business traveler, but that also translates into how you show up for your group, which affects your profitability and how successful you are.”

A recent white paper by independent research group Festive Road commissioned by Southwest found that 91 percent of business travelers believe that airline and airport experiences have a significant impact on their readiness to perform for work. Spector says Southwest has long recognized this importance, and that’s why they emphasize laughter and fun as part of the air travel journey.

“You have to experience the product because it’s really difficult to understand an intangible like hospitality or the feel of our gate area when agents are making it fun and saying, ‘thank you,’” she explains. “Those things are not a part of a contract. It’s part of the heart of who we are. And that’s always been the case going back to the ‘70s.”

Customer service became a linchpin of the company not long after it was founded by Herb Kelleher and Rollin King as an intrastate Texas airline in 1971. Kelleher, the company’s late CEO, was famous for his no-bull witticisms, including many on the topic of service. “The essential difference in service,” he once said, “is not machines or ‘things.’ The essential difference is minds, hearts, spirits, and souls.”

Spector lights up when she talks about the culture of the airline, now nearly 75,000 employees strong, because she believes the values of the founders still course through the company. (Including those of Southwest President Emerita Colleen Barrett, a pioneer in airline customer service known as the “Queen of Hearts”). Spector says Southwest places a strong emphasis on the happiness of its workers, and when employees are happy and supported, they perform better. It’s a point of view that meshes well with her training in hospitality at Purdue and her upbringing in general.

“I am very much a stereotypical oldest child. I am a people pleaser,” she says. “I have a high level of responsibility. I want to make sure everybody’s cohesive. I also really have a respect for service. I think that was part of my Catholic school upbringing [she attended high school at Carmel] . . . it was service work, volunteering at nursing homes, Girl Scout troops, all of those things.”

Witnessing Spector’s fast ascent within the Southwest culture, it feels natural to ask where Spector sees herself going next.

“I’m proud of where I’ve gotten and of my success. I want to be a role model for my kids and have them know that I’m choosing this because it makes me feel proud of myself and the work we are doing. I want to have an impact,” Spector says. “I feel whole at the end of my day. I fall asleep overflowing.”