Shelby Scales, executive director of the Airport Minority Advisory Council (AMAC), immediately broke several records when she stepped into her leadership role last August.
In the council’s 30 years, she is the first African-American female executive director – and one of the youngest – in the organization’s history. She is also the first executive director to emerge from an airport’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Program Office. She was previously a small business program officer at the Raleigh-Durham (RDU) International Airport.
The AMAC’s mission is to create success for minorities and women in the airport industry, and Scales intends to continue expanding its paradigm.
At 44, Scales brings a wealth of industry experience, management skills, leadership acumen and enthusiasm for increasing participation by minorities and women in the aviation industry.
“The number of young, energetic and tech-savvy AMAC members is growing,” Scales said. “I fully expect to tap into their skills and experiences to further develop our value proposition and membership.”
After assuming her role in August 2011, she immediately focused coordinating special events, including outreach events and national conferences. And one of her main passions is mentoring future minority professionals through the AMAC Educational Scholarship Program (AMACESP).
An industry veteran and an AMAC member since 2003, Scales chaired the Professional Development and Aviation Committee since 2006. She significantly expanded the Educational Scholarship Program by doubling the number of annual scholarships from four to eight and raising more than $25,000 in five years.
With regard to AMAC’s influence on federal legislation, Scales maintains a strong national voice.
“The single most important issue is to provide continuous testimonies to Congress about the business practices and continued discrimination within our industry. A sound DBE program is critical to our membership and the industry’s well being if we are to grow and mature in our efforts,” she explained.
According to AMAC Board Chair Don O’Bannon, “Shelby has shown tremendous leadership in all of the positions she has held, both with AMAC and also in her community.”
And AMAC is exactly where Scales wants to be, she said.
She decided years ago to explore a career in trade association management, and she enrolled in the Women’s Executive Education Leadership (WEELS) leadership program sponsored by the North Carolina Institute of Minority Economic Development at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), an institution renowned for its work with Fortune 500 C-level executives.
CCL assessed Scales’ leadership strengths, assigned a mentor, assembled a team of top corporate executives to support her, provided ongoing training, and guided her completion of a 12-month professional development plan. She interviewed association presidents, asking how they climbed their career ladders, and the necessary skill sets and leadership training that helped them land their top-level management jobs.
“The experience with CCL helped me decide that I wanted to move out of the space of being a DBE Liaison Officer and into an opportunity to impact policy and program administration on the national level,” she said. “Having been so intimately involved with AMAC, I was interested in any position that might become available.”
As Small Business Program Officer at RDU, she excelled in business development, fundraising, government contracting, and supplier diversity.
In a true entrepreneurial spirit, Scales inaugurated outreach through mega-churches; developed the Small Emerging Business Assistant Loan Program for concessionaires, which guarantees $1.5 million in bank loans for concessions development projects; and implemented RDU’s Historically Underutilized Business (HUB) Program.
Partially as a result of these programs, the percentage of minority- and women-owned businesses participating in the airport’s 2009 Terminal 2 construction project reached a record 16 percent HUB participation.
Scales has already contributed in myriad ways to the organization, including serving one term as the AMAC Southeast Regional Director. Over the years, she has contributed as speaker, panel presenter, and moderator on a broad range of topics, everything from “Marketing and Outreach,” “Doing Business in Airports,” and “How to Increase DBE Participation” to “Certification Training and “Contract Monitoring and Compliance.”
Scales received the 2011 Chairman’s Award for leadership and dedication.
“I am excited to help develop the next generation of minority and women professionals, to work with congressional leaders as new regulations are developed, to refine the many valued programs offered by AMAC, and to develop new programs to meet the emerging needs of the DBE community,” Scales said.
