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Bonny Simi is President of JetBlue Technology Ventures – the venture capital arm of JetBlue Airways.
Founded in 2016, Simi's JetBlue team is an unlikely presence on the scene of new Silicon Valley companies. Airlines do not usually spend a lot of time investing in start-ups. And yet, here they are.
In many ways, it goes without saying that the leader of this unorthodox enterprise is someone who has taken such an unorthodox route to get here.
A list of things to do for life
Mount Baldy, a native of California, told Business Insider that in her youth, a moment helped her determine what she wanted to achieve.
During a high school badembly, motivational speaker John Goddard asked students to list a list of 100 things they wanted to accomplish in life.
"I thought, I can not think of 100 things to do, but I can think of five," she said.
It is common for people to draw up task lists. It happens every day. But Simi's list is special. Not only for her varied interests and her ambition, but also for the verve with which she tackled each entry: to go to a good college, work on television, become a pilot, participate in the Olympic Games, and build a newspaper. cabin edge.
After high school, Simi, then known as Bonny Warner, checked off the first entry on the list. She attended Stanford University with a field hockey scholarship.
Simi noted that the financial difficulties faced by his family meant that a scholarship was really key to his ability to go to university.
"We did not have a lot of money," Simi said. "My mother was a single mother with two children and was a disabled teacher."
From Stanford to the Olympics
Simi flourished at Stanford where she was the guardian of the field hockey team. However, it is his victory in a writing contest that propelled him into the next chapter of his life.
Read more: JetBlue goes to London in 2021.
The contest was to serve as a torchbearer at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York.
It was during this experience that we learned at Simi that women were not allowed to participate in the bobsleigh competition.
"You can not tell me that I can not do something," she said about her reaction, so I said, "I want to bobsle! "
As the women's bobsleigh tournament was not added to the Olympics until the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City, for which Simi helped lobby, she chose the best solution by becoming a lugeuse.
So, she took a break from Stanford and started a training program to become an Olympic luber while cleaning the hotel rooms to pay the bills. In 1984, Simi was considered the best American slugger and competed in the 1984, 1988, and 1992 Olympic Winter Games.
Between appearances at the Olympic Games, Simi graduated from university and worked as a sports facilitator at ABC in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1988.
She also obtained her pilot's license.
Although Simi continued to work as a television commentator during the Olympic Games until 2002, she retired from full-time television career in 1990 to join United Airlines as a pilot.
"I was so excited to become an airline pilot, for me it was equal, if not more important than becoming an Olympian," Simi said.
She spent 13 years at United Airlines, where she flew various aircraft including the Boeing 727, 737 and 777. Finally, she was promoted to captain in United's 727 and 737 fleets.
Betting big on JetBlue
But in 2003, Simi gave everything to join the New York based JetBlue Airways start-up.
"I decided to work for a startup, I loved flying and I did not want to leave aviation," said Simi about his decision to join JetBlue. "I wanted to work for an entrepreneur, I wanted to work for a company that had a caring culture and an excellent brand."
"People thought I was crazy, I left United as a very senior captain to go to JetBlue to be a junior officer," she added. "It was a huge pay cut, it was a kind of faith."
Simi compared his departure from United to entrepreneurs who left their jobs to continue their efforts because they feel that there is still much to be done.
His bet has paid off.
Simi quickly held senior positions with the airline, eventually becoming its chief human resources officer.
Which brings us back to JetBlue Technology Ventures.
The Board of Directors of JetBlue came up with the idea of creating a venture capital company with the goal of keeping the company at the forefront of innovation in the airline industry.
"Innovation is only innovative for the snapshot.If you do not continue to work on it and you continue to find new ideas, you are more innovative," he said. Simi.
According to Simi, JetBlue's goal is to become "ambidextrous" in that it not only wants to achieve day-to-day operational excellence, but also to remain an innovator.
Two of Simi's most prominent investments offer insight into the company's ambitions.
First, there is Zunum Aero. This is a start-up from Kirkland (Washington) that is working on a new electric powered regional jetliner. According to Zunum, its small regional aircraft could help provide the mbades with affordable and environmentally friendly air travel while reducing travel time for many Americans by using smaller airports.
And then there is willingly. It's an integrated customer service software system that allows customer service agents to have a global view of customer communication with the airline. In this way, the social networking team of an airline knows what a customer has communicated over the phone, while its phone operators now know what the pbadenger has included in his emails.
This reduces the risk of miscommunication and reduces the level of frustration of everyone involved. The software is already used at JetBlue. Although resolutely less ambitious than electric jetliners, Gladly's technology could still dramatically change the way airlines and their customers communicate.
If you followed, you probably noticed that there is one item in Simi's list that has not yet been processed, namely the construction of a log cabin.
Based on his record, I would not bet against this woman of the Renaissance.
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