don’t use them as much as I used to,” he concedes.) Edmonds liked selling enough to put down his tools to pick up sales full time. He excelled and was promoted to Chubbs regional manager, which he said “was fantastic.”
In 1992, the driven man decided to go in a new direction; he entered the transport industry at Freightways International and moved to Auckland to keep their freight moving. He advanced to national manager, and while working there, he wanted to earn an MBA.
TWISTED TRIUMPH
Edmonds’ desire for this degree leads to one of the more satisfying twists we’ve profiled in Executive Watch. While an MBA is a normal graduate degree for managers, Freightways International said no to this ambition; they would not subsidize Edmonds’ education. He remembers his disappointment, “They said they didn’t approve the education expense because they didn’t think the degree was needed in our industry and they had their own training program.” Then, the determined man with a young and growing family did something that likely surprised his employer—he quit to pursue that degree, and he started a consulting company to support his family and him while he studied. Are you ready to smile? Freightways signed on as Edmonds’ first client! “They paid me more as a consultant than they paid me as a salaried employee and I was on their consulting payroll even before I began my studies. It was ironic; one week they told me they wouldn’t support me as an employee, then the next week they hired me as a consultant after I left.” Still, Edmonds has absolutely no resentment toward his former employer. He said, “Freightways was a fantastic company and experience for me. Most of my executive grounding and management skills were acquired with them.”
EDUCATION BOOSTS CAREER
Edmonds started that MBA in 1995 from an Ernst & Young executive program taught by the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business in New Zealand, and counts one of his professors then, Alec Horniman, as one his best mentors. Since then, Edmonds has consistently furthered his academic education by completing
16 May/June 2026
executive and leadership degrees and programs from: University of Auckland (1996-98); Australian Institute of Company Directors (2002); New Zealand Institute for Strategic Leadership (2006), and the University of Oxford Saïd Business School (2015).
That hard-won MBA opened up broader opportunities for Edmonds than he’d had when starting with his trade apprenticeship. He joined GE Capital in Auckland as a general manager and
after that, in this
century, Edmonds worked, consecutively, as a manager and/or executive in the transport industry for New Zealand Post (comparable to United Parcel Service), Air New Zealand (his first venture into the aviation industry where he was their international airports manager), Auckland Transport (his first C-suite position), SRG Global (as executive general manager for New Zealand), and then left SRG in 2020 to lead Salus Aviation Group based in Auckland, as its current CEO.
Edmonds muses on his varied career. He doesn’t see himself as leapfrogging from one place to the next. He said, “I was able to do more things than if I’d just stayed in the same job or company my whole career.”
WITHDRAWS, BUT…
In another twist, his current position at Salus Aviation is one he did not pursue. In fact, he withdrew his application for a lower position on the company’s organizational chart because he didn’t see himself as fully qualified. After interviewing to be Salus Aviation’s head of operations, Edmonds withdrew his application, to the dismay of Salus’ leadership that had invited him to interview. After the interview, “I told my wife I could run the operations: manpower, planning, etc., and turn a profit, but I thought their CEO needed to hire a licensed engineer, someone with a decade or two of hardcore technical aviation and maintenance experience, someone who could look into a turbine and know what it needed.”
Six weeks after withdrawing, Edmonds’ phone rang—Salus’ CEO had surprisingly resigned the day before and Salus Aviation needed a leader right now! Edmonds said, “The person who phoned me said, ‘We
always thought you were going to be the eventual CEO, but we couldn’t get you in the door to join the team.’ A week later, I signed on as CEO and have never looked back; it’s been a great run.”
COVID CHALLENGE
That run didn’t start out so great; Edmonds had to lead his new team through one huge challenge: COVID hit just after he became CEO. He said, “New Zealand was severely impacted with border lockdowns and our business really struggled. A lot of our business then was leasing about 25 aircraft to flying schools and those schools just returned the aircraft to us because no pilots were able to enter the country for training. That was a really bad situation for our company, but thankfully the shareholders supported us through that.”
One way Edmonds led his company through that trying time was by bringing people into the decision-making process. “In my early years, I thought I probably knew everything. Through time, you realize you don’t, and just because you’re the boss, or an executive, that doesn’t mean you have to know everything. You just have to work out how to find the answers,” he says. “I’m more consultative and collaborative today. In particular, executive teams need to share the challenges of the business or organization and have a say in how to solve challenges at an operational and strategic-direction level. The best decisions are made by organizations when team members are involved.”
MADE A DIFFERENCE
Edmonds matured in his career from a young know-it-all tradesman to a seasoned executive CEO. What a varied career it’s been! He muses, “I’ve worked on projects, such as transporting organs, and even building power stations in my early days, that have made a long-term difference in people’s lives. I’m most proud of raising a family with kids who are well-grounded in life, but I’m also pretty proud of my career and I think I’ve done pretty well for a little ol’ electrician from Wellington.”
As a Kiwi would say, “For sure.”
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