Student Consultant
That exemplary work ethic served young Aleks well, who by the time she was in high school excelled in subjects such as (deep breath): languages, mathematics, drama, English, and science. In fact, the only thing that she really struggled with was narrowing down her many interests. “I had no idea what career path I was going to go down. I thought I was going to either be a lawyer or a forensic psychologist.” Then, a forensic psychologist scared her away from that field with a few horror stories, so Banas now confines her psych interests to reading child-psychology books to aid her and husband, Simon, in parenting their 7-year- old son. Eventually Banas narrowed her academic pursuits to two undergraduate degrees: one in computer science and the other one in arts with majors in psychology and multimedia.
In 2003 during her final year at university, Banas began working for a small consulting firm specializing in technical writing, website
development, opportunity to and collaborate with Banas works with the Sri Lankan development team. process
improvement, which led to her first career job. “Over the course of four years, I had the
diverse clients, ranging from financial institutions to software development firms and government organizations. This role proved to be an ideal fit for me, allowing me to apply the knowledge I had acquired at
university and dive straight into the
business world,” she explains. Dive she did, with eyes and ears wide open. “I’m a good listener, and consulting allowed me to listen to and learn from many clients, by asking lots of questions. I’m also a good organizer, and I would listen and come up with organizational tech tools to make my clients’ lives a lot easier. I met a ton of people and experienced many different business cultures. When I walked into a new client’s workplace, I could feel their culture from the start.”
Air Maestro Takeoff
In 2007, she was experiencing the culture of
her consulting client Air Maestro (a
subsidiary of Avinet), which was then a new developer of web-based aviation software that focused on safety and operational applications. Air Maestro’s CEO was impressed with her and pulled Banas aside with an offer to bring the confident outside consultant into his company.
Family trip to the Nitmiluk National Park in the Northern Territory in Australia.
Banas seized the opportunity and began serving her new employer as a customer support and quality manager when Air Maestro had just sold to its third customer. “I came in very early in their history and grew the business alongside Air Maestro’s managing director. During the next eight years, we significantly expanded the customer base and I was involved with all facets of the business from sales, quality management to training. I had the privilege of working closely with many of our first 100 customers during their onboarding process.” Today, Air Maestro has customers in over 50 countries, and Banas still likes to hear from them. “I’m very open to feedback, whether positive or negative. We’re not the aviators, so we need to listen to our customers to know what they want to make their lives easier.”
Bold Leap
Her broad, but intensive, work history throughout the company prepared Banas to rise when Air Maestro’s CEO retired. “I thought I was already doing a lot of what the CEO job called for, so I put my hand up to become a candidate.” The board of directors agreed and promoted her to CEO in 2016.
As mentioned, that promotion occurred when Banas was six months pregnant. “With no prior CEO experience, I deeply appreciated the trust and support of my directors who took a bold leap in promoting me. Their belief in my abilities meant everything,” she says, but first she had a baby to deliver. “The CEO stayed on until I had my son and I spent much of my maternity leave figuring out organizational systems I wanted to implement. One area I lacked experience in was finance, and that’s the first area I wanted to tackle (the financial reports were too slow coming in) so I don’t shy away from hard challenges, but it was demanding trying to figure that area out,” she says. Banas was intimately familiar with other areas of Air Maestro and she says those came together much easier.
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