Tears at Work

So it’s Monday afternoon and I’m sitting here tearing up at work. As we continue with our Haiti relief efforts, we always keep our senior management team in the loop. What so moved me this afternoon is that, once again, within minutes of sending out our latest update we received notes of encouraging support from our officers. As their responses came in, once again – almost immediately, tears of appreciation just welled up and filled my eyes.

I’ve got 20 years with FedEx this week. While I’ve always appreciated our senior officers for their approachability and genuine servant leadership style, I gained a new and deeper appreciation for their sincerity after joining the Global Citizenship group about 10 years ago. Working on multiple citizenship initiatives with the support of our senior officers has given me the privilege of working with many of them, seeing their compassion up close.

Even with the immense responsibility they have on a day-to-day basis, these men and women on our leadership team simply amaze me. Last week I walked into the building with Matthew Thornton, one of our senior vice presents. After asking me about my family he stopped walking, looked directly at me, and told me to let him know if I needed any help with anything. This was before the Haiti crisis. Since the earthquake, this senior officer has been front and center with many of our relief efforts.

Over the weekend Dave Bronczek, CEO of FedEx Express, made sure we had his personal cell phone number in case we needed his help with any of our relief efforts.

I participated on one of our operations calls this morning and got to listen in as our team of experts in our charters department updated us on the many non-revenue charitable flights we have in the works that are headed to Haiti and/or the Dominican Republic in support of organizations including World Vision and the Red Cross. It was enthralling to listen-in as they managed all of the moving parts, approvals, crew scheduling, aircraft types, load capacities, on the ground support requirements, consignee issues, etc.

The whole process is breathtaking.

So, as I wipe my tears dry, I’m finishing this quick post, then will be firing off some emails to our friends at Salvation Army and Red Cross, then off to another conference call.

To follow the FedEx relief efforts in Haiti, go to twitter.com/fedexrelief