EXECUTIVE WATCH Michael Leslie President & Chief Executive Officer-NAASCO By Rick Weatherford Michael Leslie is
proving Thomas Wolfe’s “You Can’t Go Home Again” wrong. After years of personal and professional
growth,
the president and CEO of
the longtime aircraft
component engineering/ manufacturing and overhaul company, NAASCO, returned home to his New York family’s business. He is not only maintaining the legacy his father cofounded in 1984, but also expanding it. “When recruiting new team members, I let them know they have the opportunity to part of
become a 37-year-old
startup,” Leslie says. “What
NAASCO of
I mean is, the today will
be completely reshaped over the upcoming years. Our goal is to become the most dominant force within the areas of our expertise in engineering, manufacturing, overhaul, and distribution.”
Leslie has a strong frame to build on. For over 35 years NAASCO has served as an FAA- and EASA-approved
repair station that offers engineered parts and solutions to
overcome
obsolescence, including the original 1992 offering on which NAASCO built its reputation: its starter generator with an ETR (electrographitic treated resins) “Long-Life” brush. The company then introduced its patented and FAA-approved ETR- 25 “Mercury Mod” cooling modification for certain 150- and 200-amp starter generators, and made additional improvements for those with 300-amp and 400-amp capacity. “Although NAASCO is involved in other aviation sectors, our success was anchored on our work in helicopter starter generators,” Leslie says. He should know. “In my 20s, I would go out into the field with my dad and Uncle Jimmy to field test our enhanced starter
generators with
customers everywhere. Without helicopters and our lifelong friendships with the professionals who run them, NAASCO would not be in business today,” he says.
First Employee
Leslie not only worked through his 20s and beyond for his family’s business, but even back in his teens he became the first official employee of NAASCO based then in Hangar One at Long Island MacArthur Airport. (The company is currently headquartered at Brookhaven Calabro Airport in Shirley, New York.) “My father, John, was in aviation component maintenance, and my grandfather was an engineer for Republic
Aviation (the legacy aircraft manufacturer). They both half-jokingly told me not to get into aviation, but young men don’t listen.” So, the “deaf” teen jumped into his job overhauling various components during the day, and at night or on the weekend he was turning wrenches on a Bell 206 and other aircraft for the U.S. Customs director of maintenance. The hard worker also assembled a small team and started an aircraft detailing business in the hangar.
14
Nov/Dec 2021
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