Economic Development

Employee of the Year Awards: Trudy Carson

Director of Air Service Development, Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority trudy_carson@nashintl.com

     
Dec 7, 2017, 2:46pm

Trudy Carson is the director of air service development at the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority. Carson works to recruit airlines to add routes or to have new airlines start flying out of Nashville International Airport.

How did you find/land your current job? Prior to coming to Nashville International Airport, I worked at Tampa International Airport doing the same job.

What are your top three ingredients for a great leader/boss? High integrity, honesty and great communicator.

What Nashville spot has the best coffee, and what do you order? I love Crema and order a cappuccino.

Tell us about your favorite or most unusual desk item. I was gifted a Southwest airplane model of the Tennessee One, and it is signed by Herb Kelleher, Colleen Barrett and Gary Kelly — Southwest past and present CEOs.

Give one specific example illustrating why you won in your category. This community is a dream job for an air service person because the community works so well together. It was most evident in recruiting British Airways to fly from BNA to London Heathrow. Government entities, tourism, economic development, private business — everyone worked as one entity to make a persuasive case to British Airways, and now we are all working together to make the flights a success.

Do you check email when you’re away from the office? Why or why not? Yes. I travel quite a bit, and answering emails from remote locations is second nature to me.