EXECUTIVE WATCH Aleks Banas


CEO of Air Maestro and Spidertracks By Rick Weatherford


“My promotion to the CEO role at Air Maestro came at a unique time – I was six months pregnant with my son, with no prior CEO experience,” Aleks Banas says to begin this profile of a working mother who has risen to CEO of not one, but two aviation technology companies: Air Maestro and Spidertracks. The Polish-born Australian gives voice to what has become the unofficial anthem of her current country — the song performed by the folk group named The Seekers: “I am Australian.” The late Judith Durham sang its third verse and chorus in crystal soprano:


I’m the daughter of a digger Who sought the mother lode The girl became a woman On the long and dusty road I’m a child of the Depression I saw the good times come I’m a bushie, I’m a battler I am Australian.


We are one But we are many


And from all the lands on earth we come We’ll share a dream And sing with one voice “I am, you are, we are Australian.”


While every word is not literally true of Banas (she’s way too young to be “a child of the Depression”), those words capture the spirit of her humble, but proud, family’s battling history. Her working father suffered a disabling injury in his 30s and it fell upon her mother, toiling as a cleaner, to put food on the family table for their only child. “She still works,” says Banas. “I come very much from a working-class family.”


12


Mar/Apr 2024


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