Our unique series, hosted by cargo.one Founder & Co-CEO Moritz Claussen, brings you rare, intimate chats with visionaries from the logistics world, uncovering their personal insights and formative experiences. Subscribe today!
The cargo.one:one series continues with hard-earned, personal reflections from one of the most well-known and straight-talking voices in the industry. In Episode 3, Moritz is joined by tour de force Kirsten de Bruijn, Executive Vice President of Cargo at WestJet.
Kirsten started her career in hotel management, but after being headhunted into a procurement role at Martinair, was soon bitten by the air logistics bug: “What I love about it is that none of the days are the same”.
She recalls her extensive journey within air cargo organizations across many diverse cultures including the East Asia, Latin America and the Middle East: “What I've learned throughout moving in continents is that I have to adapt my management style sometimes too…And I think I've grown a lot in that in the last 15 years, for sure.”
As a well known, female senior leader in the industry, Kirsten has been front and center of the industry’s work to secure more diverse talent. She advises, “I have a mantra – we hire who's best for the job. It doesn't matter what gender you have, but I do like an equal balance of male and females in my management team, because everybody has a different side and it just makes each other better in general.” She admits that success is all about the team performance, “I'm only Kirsten, but I wouldn't be me without my entire team.”
Enjoy the full length episode, here:
Stability in good times and bad
Kirsten shares great wisdom about how to stay the course in all weathers of the air cargo market: “When we are down, are down and when we are up, we are up…You need to be able to manage both sides and stay stable…because we're so cyclical.” Kirsten admits that her journey in air freight has been trial and error, but today has made her “very agile as a person”, aiding her palette of management styles, and how to motivate her staff.
Kirsten has the unique perspective of building a new cargo airline from scratch. She moved from leadership roles within the established, highly developed air cargo airlines of AFKLM, Emirates Cargo and Qatar Airways Cargo, to most recently build a brand new operation for WestJet: “Coming from big airlines, which was a great study. What I've learned is to be humble, again, roll up my sleeves…Starting a cargo airline from the ground is easier than integrating a cargo airline in a passenger airline that has existed for 27 years...So you become humble, but you also learn the nitty gritty.”
A hunger for progress
Kirsten is renowned for her energy and hunger for continuous improvement in the air freight industry. She concedes, “We are such a slow organ in moving along. if you compare us with passenger…I think the organs behind our industry also need to ramp up and modernize a little bit and say, let's go people. Like let's move!" (clicks her fingers).
“We just rely so much on consensus the whole time. Somebody has to make a decision, fail and fail fast so you can retry it again. And I think that is what I would like this industry to do – that we try a bit faster, so we can fail faster and retry based on a new insight”
Kirsten de Bruijn
The priority to attract new talent into air logistics is a recurring topic on the cargo.one:one podcast. Kirsten shares her passion and practical advice for this: “Immigrating people that come from the outside that have the right character, skillset, that are octopuses, that can do logistics and love the hectic of logistics, importing them into the system is something that we should continue to do. And that's what I did at WestJet as well.”
And what does Kirsten hope her legacy will be in the industry? Tune into Episode 3 now to find out! 🤩
cargo.one:one features many more exciting guests in the series. If you enjoyed this episode, stay tuned to our blog or subscribe using your favorite podcast platform including Spotify, Apple podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Castbox and more.
