Jetrader - Spring 2015 - 43

ISTAT foundation

Outgoing Chairman Shares

Foundation
Highlights
By Todd M. Freeman,
GE Capital Aviation
Services
ISTAT Foundation
Chairman
In 2015, I am looking at the close of my
term as foundation chairman. I went into
it with some trepidation, but it has been
a great overall experience. Leading the
Foundation has allowed me to work on some
worthy projects and initiatives with existing friends and industry colleagues. It has
also given me the opportunity to forge new
relationships and friendships with dedicated volunteers who I didn't know so well
prior to this role.
During my term, I wanted to build on
our recent progress and ensure that the
foundation was well positioned for more
growth in the form of increased funding
and new programs. That required that we
first focus on governance and processes.
Through the governance committee led
by Mike Platt, we updated our by-laws,
sharpened our committee charters and connected our election process more directly
to the ISTAT Big Board. And thanks to the
significant contributions of my predecessor
Warren Willits, we introduced the use of
more technology to smooth and standardize our processes. This has also helped us
increase application volumes while decreasing committee member workloads.
We also needed to get more global to
better reflect our membership and the

trends are positive. Our committees are now
increasingly diverse in their composition
and our giving and grants are allocated to
an increasing number of recipients across
the globe.
I think our programs are firing on all
cylinders. One area I hope we can do better at this year is making the ISTAT community more aware of the work we do at
the foundation. There are various ways
to accomplish this but one small step is
creating a Twitter account. Please follow
us at @ISTATCares and look for regular
updates on our programs and partners.
In the meantime, here are a few program
highlights:
* Our extensive scholarships program continues to expand. Awards were up 40%
over 2013 and international scholarship
awards increased 80 percent. Longtime
Chair Dana Lockhart handed the reins to
Peter Huijbers who continues to drive
growth with the help of dedicated committee members like Murrae Ross Eskell.
We also took a more significant step into
emerging markets with the launch of the
African scholarship program which GECAS
is proud to sponsor. Our first year for
this program was 2014 and six scholarships were awarded to university students in three African countries (Tunisia,
South Africa, Egypt).
* Education and internships have had an
exciting period of growth under Damon
D'Agostino's stewardship. Damon and
Robert Gates have put a lot of sweat
equity into the 2015 launch of our new

ISTAT U program, in collaboration with
Embry Riddle. This program will help
prepare college grads to understand our
industry better and improve their prospects for permanent employment with
ISTAT member companies. Eventually,
we expect that ISTAT U will be portable
to allow use by other educational institutions and member companies. ISTAT
summer internships are on the rise and
our target is 20 students in 2015.
* Our reconstituted grants committee,
led by Mark Dunnachie, stepped up
its international focus and allocated
11 grants to diverse organizations in
the United States, UK, Netherlands,
Singapore and Kenya. Most of these aviation-related organizations focus their
charitable efforts on developmental and
educational youth programs.
* The humanitarian committee continued
its excellent work identifying and supporting worthy charities that have a
connection to aviation and whose missions revolve around disaster relief and
alleviating human suffering. Chair Julian
Balaam and his committee allocated six
grants to very diverse organizations in
five countries. One of these grants was
to Airlink, Inc, an organization born
and incubated within ISTAT. In 2013,
we essentially kicked Airlink out of the
ISTAT nest and it is now flying high.
Under Bob Brown's continued leadership, Airlink is out doing great work, such
as its Ebola Air Bridge program. They
are gaining international recognition
Jetrader * Spring 2015 43

Jetrader - Spring 2015

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