18 Aviation forWomen;May/June 2015
America, Alaska, JetBlue, and Southwest in the pantheon of
top 10 carriers, adding the Condé Nast accolade to 30 similar
travel and civic awards.
“I didn’t come to Cape Air vying for CEO,” Linda said. “I
just shared Dan’s philosophy and our visions were aligned.
That is very helpful when it comes to strategic planning. I
had a background in strategic plan-
ning and I brought that to the com-
pany at a time when the organiza-
tion needed more formal plans and
goals on how to approach the issues
we had. It was really taking the
best practices at Cape Air and com-
bining it with best practices in HR
from other industries in which I’d
worked, including health care and
high tech companies. This was a
pivotal time for the regional airline
industry and change was needed.”
Linda is interesting because she
and her husband had decided to
leave their high-powered corpo-
rate careers in suburban Boston af-
ter their first child was born, opt-
ing instead for a simpler life close to
the ocean on Cape Cod. A native of
Western Massachusetts, she gradu-
ated from Holyoke Community Col-
lege in 1983 with a degree in business and retail management.
Also a Certified Facilitative Leader, Linda is also a good illus-
tration of that old saying “the cream always rises to the top.”
The employee stock option program (ESOP) is a critical part
of the equation and, by the end of 2016 every employee will
be an owner. “Our front line employees are empowered—an
extremely important word at Cape Air—to make decisions on
behalf of the passengers and they are supported in those de-
cisions,” Linda said. “That is why we developed the ESOP, we
wanted them to think like owners and they do. They are team
members and our most important assets. That was Dan Wolf’s
philosophy and it remains so to this day. While safety and
customer service are our two priorities, the philosophy that
we have developed—team first—is key to contributing to the
success of those priorities. We may have people who strate-
gically lead the company but our collaborative process is ex-
tremely important. We don’t have titles on the doors and our
doors are always open. Our greatest strength is in listening to
the team and that has paid off tremendously at Cape Air. It is
counterproductive to be caught up in a hierarchy.”
Cape Air prides itself on being gender blind. In fact, more
than 50 percent of management are women, a continuing tes-
tament to the example set by both Dan and Dave Bushy, both
of whom valued what each employee can bring to their po-
sitions. In fact, Dan was cited for his efforts to hire and pro-
mote women in 2004 by the Massachusetts Women’s Political
Caucus who gave him their prestigious
“Good Guy” award.
“We have a very diverse company,”
said Linda, who was instrumental in
hammering out the first pilot contract
when the pilots organized. “Twelve per-
cent of our pilots are women, three times
the average of the industry. We are very
mission focused and we don’t care who comes up with an
idea as long as the outcome is the right outcome.”
Linda revealed a key component of success when she an-
swered a question about her greatest challenges in rising
through the Cape Air ranks. “I tend to look at challenges in a
different way,” she explained. “I see them as opportunities. If
a roadblock came up, I saw it as an opportunity and tried to
look for ways to turn things around. I tried to focus on how
I could contribute to turning things around. And that’s what
I tell people. It’s not a challenge. It’s an opportunity to figure
out a way to get the best outcome you can get.”
She pointed to one of the greatest challenges facing the re-
Today, three issues face up-and-coming pilots—the high
cost of their education coupled with the low remuneration
at regionals and the need to build an unprecedented 1,500
hours to gain the right seat of a regional aircraft.
Linda credits the
company’s ‘team
first’ approach
for Cape Air’s
successes in safety
and customer
service.
