Airport Operations Manager/ Airport Security Coordinator
Tweed New Haven Airport
Not everyone is cut out for the variety of Ops. Alicia thrives on it. From security planning and responses, to airport firefighting, she manages it all. One thing that struck me during our interview is how sexism can show up even when you work with good people, even at AvPORTS, through off-the-cuff remarks. Importantly, though, good people can empower and words of encouragement can make a big difference, like they did with Alicia.
Meet Alicia Seremt
Andrew King: For those of us who might have seen your name around, but aren’t really sure what you do, would you please tell us what you do at AvPORTS?
Alicia Seremet: Sure. I am the Airside Operations Manager at HVN and also an alternate Airport Security Coordinator.
So, the day-to-day in OPS I just try to maintain oversight of it. We currently do have the largest department here with seven people in it. A lot of our employees and OPS are younger and have just graduated with not too much experience, so constantly checking in with them is important.
Also, I have good tenant relationships with the SVL Airline TSA flight school maintenance, so I try to catch up with them every few days as well. The year before, I got involved with the airport security part of it and was asked to be an alternate ASC, airport security coordinator, and from then we were updating our security system.
For a while, I was the primary ASC. When Brian joined our team, me and Brian became alternates. Last summer, Jeremy and myself spent a lot of time rewriting the whole airport security plan in order to be updated and implemented by November of last year when it was due. So once or twice a week, I help out with security stuff. But for the most part, I’m back in OPS, oversight on trainings, whether at the ARFF or 139 related planning projects on the airfields or the other day we had a national guard exercise here. I planned that out.
Andrew: That’s cool.
Alicia: Yeah, it was cool.
Andrew: How did you start at Tweed?
Alicia: Well, not going to school for anything in aviation, I didn’t even know what airport operations was. I had family who had been in aviation, so they kind of gave me a heads up as to kind of what OPS was. So, I did a couple of day visits to Tweed when I was in college. Then when I graduated, I did an internship.
It was just very interesting to me how in OPS there’s not… If you were to go into some other kinds of jobs, you’re doing the same stuff every day – staring at a computer. Whereas in OPS, you don’t know what you’re going to be doing every day. Today, for example, as soon as I arrived at work, all of a sudden there’s a security incident; everything stops, and all the focus goes to that. But just a few days ago, we were doing ARFF training outside, which lasted several hours.
So, I like how it changes up all the time. You don’t really have a specific thing that you’re working on at all times. And then I was hired as a supervisor. We didn’t really have any coordinators, that was your entry level position. So we were on shifts by ourselves. A lot of times it was there are 12 hour shifts when I had first started so you kind of got thrown into everything right away.
Andrew: Oh, I see. Personally, I love getting thrown into things right away. How was that for you?
Alicia: That’s how I learned. Right now, for example, we have a supervisor pretty much always on with somebody else. So you always have one or two people to go to, but for me it was you figured it out on your own. When a situation comes up, you relax, you think about it, you take a second, you pause and you respond to it. And I think that’s the best way to get into something is to just kind of there you go, here’s the basic tools, go ahead.
Andrew: Was there an ah-ha moment for you?
Alicia: I would just say the first alert that I had responded to with an aircraft. It kind of just gave me the confidence like, oh I can do this. It was a few months after I had started, I think it was in the summertime, and it was something simple like someone was running out of fuel. But nonetheless, when they ring that tone alarm you run to the track and that was the first time I was like, “Oh, I can do this. This is great.”
Andrew: That’s so cool. So you started out as a supervisor. How did you get from supervisor to manager?
Alicia: We didn’t really have an OPS manager position prior to me getting hired in it, it was always a lead supervisor. When they posted the position, I was even a little hesitant. Can I do this? Definitely not there 100% with my confidence. It was the previous lead supervisor, it was the airport manager at the time who was Diane Jackson, who kind of pushed me to gain that confidence to apply. I did get the position. I was super excited. My first year or so, Felipe, I’ll shout out to him, he definitely helped me with a lot especially hiring, interviewing, disciplinary stuff. But I feel like I’ve grown a lot since. Then comes June 2016. So about four years.
Andrew: Tell me about Diane pushing you. What was that like?
Alicia: To be honest, when I was going to apply, one of the guys in OPS told me I couldn’t do the job because I was a girl and I wouldn’t be able to do the ARFF stuff. Diane was like, “You absolutely can do it.”
It was nice to have a female in a leadership role. Someone to kind of mentor and look up to and seeing how far she had gone with AvPORTS. I think that any time as far as training, as far as resources, there’s never been any issues whatsoever with having the appropriate resources available, but I do think Diane… it was nice to have a female in a management role.
Andrew: When you look back at that moment where one of the guys in OPS told you that you couldn’t do the job because you’re a female, I’m wondering how that made you feel at the time and then how do you view that incident looking back?
Alicia: At the time I feel like I was just kind of let down. I’m an intern here, I was hoping for a job, but you kind of question yourself. You question if you can. This person is saying I can’t do it, but then when I applied I got the job. It just gave me all that more initiative and I can do this motivation to get through training, to get on shift, to be ARFF qualified. Think that’s a big motivator.
Andrew: Was the training hard?
Alicia: It was harder. We had gone to a full day class in Salt Lake for my first ARFF training and it was harder than I thought. We were doing interior fires, exterior. I’d only been in the position for about four or five weeks so for me it was challenging, but that’s the exciting part of the job.
Andrew: Thinking of the future, what are your goals?
Alicia: For the immediate future, I definitely see myself at Tweed with AvPORTS. I think that we have a really good management team right now. Definitely a lot different than the past, but I think we are growing. Down the road, I would like to see myself in more of a managerial position, assistant manager somewhere just to kind of keep growing, getting my CM, getting my ACE in security.
And at some point in my life, I would like to take a few flying lessons. I don’t have the pilot background like a lot of OPS folks do, so I would like to do that. The only other thing that really interests me right now is either airport planning as well as the security side, airport intelligence, and all that whole aspect of it.
So there’s definitely goals for the future.
Andrew: What would you tell someone, or your younger self, what would you say to encourage that person if they have doubts about being able to do a job or advance their career?
Alicia: I would just say to go for it. Put your all into it. If the passion is there for aviation and everything, then it’ll show through.