It’s day eight at the Ottawa International Airport Authority for Susan Margles, who joined the organization as its new president and CEO earlier this month.
It’s day eight at the Ottawa International Airport Authority for Susan Margles, who joined the organization as its new president and CEO earlier this month.
During her first few days on the job, the former Canada Post chief people and safety officer says she met her team, introduced herself to staff, and toured facilities from the terminal to the tarmac.
While it’s too soon to be sharing any grand plans for the future, Margles spoke with OBJ about what brought her to the airport, how her time at Canada Post will influence her leadership strategy, and the project she is most excited to work on.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Let’s start from the beginning. Tell me about yourself and walk me through your career.
Susan Margles: It feels like a job interview! That’s easy to do because I’ve been doing town halls with all the employees and this is where I start. I was born in Montreal, lived a few years there, then moved with my family to Ottawa. I actually did high school here at Nepean High School. I moved back to Montreal to do my university education at McGill, but have spent really all of my adult life here in Ottawa.
I started my career in the federal government, working in a number of different departments: finance, transport, industry, really great opportunities on a lot of public-private files. I worked on the CN privatization. Never really did too much on the aviation files, which is actually surprising. A lot of my training was in economics and I did an MBA, so a lot of transactional-, financial-related stuff.
I moved to Canada Post in 2005 and that was really an opportunity to take the experience I had in the federal government and bring it to a federal Crown corporation that was commercially oriented. I didn’t really think I would be there 19 years at the time. But I had a great career and lots of opportunities that led me to this role.
What made you take the jump to the airport?
SM: The company had gone through a number of different changes and, I think for me, I was just at the point in my career where if I was going to do something else big, it was likely that I was going to have to move out of Canada Post. This, to me, was such a great opportunity to exercise my leadership at the top of an organization like Canada Post, which is not just financially motivated, but really motivated around economic opportunity and growth for the community. I love the fact of the airport being in such a dynamic sector, as well as the partnerships that we have with the community here in Ottawa, helping generate growth and betterment for the people in the region.
What are three things you learned at Canada Post that you can bring to the airport?
SM: The first is – I lived through a number of transformational changes at Canada Post, going from a mainly letter delivery company to now mainly a parcel delivery company. I learned a lot about the need to be flexible and creative when you’re going through change. Given where the airport is today, post-COVID – shifting from business travel to leisure, the investment from Porter Airlines, and moving to more of a hub airport than just an origin destination – I think I can apply that kind of approach to transformation and support the team in being flexible and creative in our thinking.
The second thing, and this applies to the change agenda as well, is just how important it is to be very transparent in our communications and collaborations with the many stakeholders who have an interest in the airport and its success. Whether that’s our commercial partners, whether that’s the union that represents our employees, the governments who set the regulatory framework. All of the local stakeholders in the tourism, trade and aviation sectors are really imperative to creating success for an organization like this. So building strong relationships, making sure we’re listening to their input, and some of the time they may have criticism, and integrating that into our plans every day.
The third thing, which is a lot of what I’ve been talking with our people about in my first couple of weeks here, is how important it is to any organization, but especially one with operations at the centre of it, to put people at the centre of everything that we do. One of the things I loved doing at Canada Post, even though I mostly had an office job, was when I was out in the field, doing delivery routes with letter carriers and being in our processing centres on all different shifts, and seeing how people did their work, hear from people directly, and integrate that sort of strategic thinking as we continue to change. It’s something I’ve told some of the guys here who drive the snow plows. I'd love to have the opportunity to spend a shift with them, to stand next to them, not quite in their shoes, but to really understand, what are the things that make their jobs great? What are the things we could think about supporting them as we go forward?
Since the pandemic, the airport has been on the upswing, with service extensions from airlines, many Porter investments, and the LRT station opening. What’s it like coming into this role on a high note and how do you keep the good news coming?
SM: That’s the challenge, right? It would be much easier to be starting from a low bar. But no, it’s true. I give a lot of credit to (outgoing president and CEO Mark Laroche) and the team for what they’ve put in place.
Both privately and publicly, we’re on a bit of a high note, with a number of things having been announced or come to fruition. But I think there is a lot more opportunity here, whether in terms of how we serve the community directly, really working with our airlines to make sure the passenger experience is everything it can and should be. We do have big opportunities in terms of figuring out where we need to change traffic patterns or expand the terminal to make the experience better. Again, I give the team a lot of credit, but sometimes someone coming in with some different experience from a different sector can turn things a little bit on their side, look through different peepholes and discover new opportunities.
In your first 60 days, what are your priorities?
SM: The first thing is meeting with every employee here on campus that works as part of the authority. Taking the time to meet them and obviously taking the time to sit with my team and learn about the business. It’s quite complex and it is a new sector for me. Although, some things are familiar. I went on a tour of the baggage belts last week and it looks an awful lot like a Canada Post processing centre, just with bigger bins. It’s nice to find something familiar, but I’ve still got a lot to learn.
I’m also taking the opportunity to plug into some of the other (Canadian airport) CEOs and taking the opportunity to meet with some of our counterparts in the industry. The other thing is meeting with key stakeholders. I was lucky enough to already connect with the mayor, and I’ve reached out to Ottawa Tourism, the Ottawa Board of Trade, Invest Ottawa, all of the key local people, trying to build a portfolio of people I can meet with.
In your first few days on the job, what upcoming project have you heard about that’s made you most excited?
SM: I lived in Ottawa when this terminal was built and when the last expansion happened and, as a traveller, I love making my way through this airport. But there’s no doubt, with everything that’s happened over the last period, that we are facing some capacity issues. So we are studying what the next phase of expansion needs to be in order to continue to meet the needs of our partners and the travelling public. And I think that’s really exciting. I think it’s an opportunity to build on a great foundation that we have here and a great reputation and really continue to reflect the needs of the travellers of Ottawa who are going to be coming through that expanded terminal. I find that really exciting and I hope Ottawans will find it exciting, too. 
