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In this popular series, cargo.one Founder & Co-CEO Moritz Claussen hosts rare and revealing chats with visionaries from the logistics world, uncovering their best, hard-earned insights and personal experiences. Subscribe today!
cargo.one:one continues with straight talking advice courtesy of a highly popular and respected figure from the North American air cargo scene. In Episode 6, cargo.one Founder & Co-CEO, Moritz Claussen, is joined by Stephanie Abeler of Lufthansa Cargo.
After relocating a number of times growing up, Stephanie developed a nomadic spirit and a life-long affinity for travel and aviation. Having set her sights initially on a Lufthansa cabin crew position, fate combined to lead Stephanie into numerous roles within the carrier’s quality management, lean product management and process optimization teams. A love for agile problem solving, and her “blunt and straight forward” communication style (she jokes), meant that Stephanie was a perfect fit for a move into the air cargo division.
Enjoy the full length episode, here:
Optimization relies upon open communication
Lufthansa Cargo has always aimed to be "at the forefront of digitalization in air cargo” and Stephanie’s background in IT has certainly helped the airline to implement a number of digital cargo projects. She admits: “It was very important to me to be able to bridge the IT perspective with the consumer perspective…where mostly companies struggle is when the colleague from IT talks to the colleague from whatever functional department, they talk on different levels and then there's misunderstandings that make it a lot harder.”
She shares valuable tips on how to unlock better processes and avoid the common pitfall of “optimizing in silos”. Stephanie has learnt hands-on that, “Listening and trust and transparency is one major factor that helps you to implement any process optimization and understand the process optimization”. Much of her optimization success has relied upon ensuring that teams always “keep the end-to-end process in mind and focus on the customer”.
“Keeping this end-to-end perspective is extremely important to not optimize on the front-end and then cause issues on the back-end and frustration...If you lose focus on what you actually want to achieve, then you get stuck in your own problems.”
Stephanie Abeler
While Stephanie pays respect to the vital role of industry regulations, she is also mindful that “every party involved in our industry has a different regulation set up” which leads to enormous complexity on a global scale. The ability to increase overall industry efficiency and resilience rests on continually reviewing and optimizing the huge amount of legacy regulations worldwide: “We have to find creative ways in managing this complexity…partnership and technology is a great way to handle that for sure”.
Transparency in leadership
Stephanie points to the realities of a career in air cargo – a “fast pace” and the continual need for “resilience and commitment” from all participants. As an in-house lean management consultant, Stephanie was involved in designing a management model even before becoming a leader herself: “When we introduced lean management at that time, we also discussed the question of what kind of culture and leadership is necessary to support continuous improvement”.
She admits that adhering to its principles has served her well with her own teams. For example, giving colleagues the facility to briefly “vent” about any issues is key to managing energy levels, motivating people to turn a corner, and discover better solutions together. Additionally, transparency within daily business is essential to performance: “It's very important to understand what is bothering the employee because otherwise we won't be able to find a good way to handle the situation and also understand the different interests.”
“To me, there is no value in keeping things from each other because that just causes misunderstandings and bad communication is the root cause of so many things. And also that topic of listening…I have to remind myself very often, right? Shut up and listen.”
Stephanie Abeler
Stephanie is struck by the talent and dedication she encounters in the community every day: “It’s in the real world problems, those tiny things that in this second need a decision or someone to take care of it and then committed colleagues that pick up the phone or find some work-around to handle that situation. I think that everyone has a little superpower”.
As we often hear on cargo.one:one, even the most accomplished like Stephanie can still feel “like the newbie” relative to huge knowledge at play in the industry: “I think like, my gosh, that was amazing, amazingly handled.” As 2025 gains speed, Stephanie shares her excitement and ambition for the future as a co-architect of the air logistics industry of tomorrow – always mindful that: “this industry is key to so many aspects of everyone's life, quite literally.”
How has living in the US changed Stephanie for the better? Tune into Episode 6 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.
