From Geology to Aviation Business – William Walles Crafts a Career with United Airlines
William Walles, a 2019 alumnus of the College of Aviation, is living proof that switching majors is not a step that could be in the wrong direction for a student.
He came to the Western Michigan campus in Kalamazoo as a geology major until frank chats with peers enrolled in the university's aviation program gave him a different perspective about a career path.
The Texas native has quickly learned that young folks bitten by the travel bug could do worse in making a career choice than taking a look at what the aviation industry has to offer.
His degree in aviation management and operations, along with such character traits as confidence and boldness, has -- over the last half decade -- taken him to Miami, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, and New York City. Walles' passport can tell stories about experiences and adventures in Amsterdam, Ireland, London, Paris, and the Canary Islands.
Walles grew up in The Woodlands, a community of about 114,000 located 28 miles north of Houston, which meant that he was not exactly a prime recruiting prospect for °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍøÖ±²¥ far to the north. However, there were a few factors to take into account in choosing a higher-education campus.
"My parents' families were both from the Midwest," he says. "Specifically, there were also family ties in Michigan, and I wanted to go to college out of state. °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍøÖ±²¥ caught my eye with its big -- but not too big -- feel, the beautiful campus and a wide range of degrees to major in." So how did he transition from studying what was way down below him underground to what was way up there?
A typical college experience played a role -- interacting with students who had all kinds of hopes and dreams. Making an impression on Walles were those majoring in aviation flight science who also talked about the college's program in aviation management and operations. After only one semester into his career as a geologist, Walles pivoted.
"I made the decision because aviation just excited me and I wanted to learn about it," he says. "I had always loved to travel and go to airports when the family went on trips as I was growing up. I switched majors and have never looked back."
It was "back home" where he got his first real-world experience in his newly chosen profession -- an internship at a fixed-base operator based at the 23 miles from Houston -- thanks to some personal gumption.
"I got the job by contacting all the airports in the area," Walles says. " hadn't had an intern for a few years. I believe they started up again just because I asked if I could intern for them, which was very cool of them."
Those summer lessons were of great value. He learned "how smaller airports work, how they make money, how to present myself as a professional, and how networking" can advance a career.
Next on Walles' resume came in his last two years at Western working in the office of the dean of the College of Aviation under the "respectful and kind" tutelage of the office's "Top Gun," Capt. Dave Powell, and his two key aides, Tracy Kauppila and Renee Hatton. It was kind of a graduate class in how a major airport operates. He was exposed to the financial basics and gained an appreciation of the value of tracking data and appropriate logistics.
"Working in the dean's office and constantly being at the " he says, gave him the advantage of taking part in many of the college's events, particularly when prospective employers came to scout out job candidates. Such was the case when ., which provides aviation services to commercial and government customers, stopped by in search of aviation mechanics.
"I asked if they had any internship programs for majors in aviation management and operations," Walles said. "Not too long later, I was driving to Chicago to interview for an internship." Another example of when gumption pays off.
His AAR duties involved contacting repair shops and suppliers of aviation parts to collect pricing data that could be incorporated into proposals for government contracts. A clearer picture of the global aerospace industry was taking shape in his head, and the focus was clear enough that the internship turned into a full-time gig at AAR. While none of this was rocket science, what was just as important as that was Walles' awareness that data and their management were keys to the future,
"I fell in love with data analysis, visualization and database management," says Walles, who quickly realized that his skills in these sectors were not at the top of his game. That was rectified by a certificate in data science and visualization earned from Northwestern University.
Headhunters also came calling and hired him as a logistics analyst in the trucking unit of its cargo division. United's trucking network serves as an extension of its fleet of "widebodies," and managing it is not an easy task. For example, he says, United can fly a load of cargo from Frankfurt, Germany, to the airport in Newark, N.J., but the inventory then has to be trucked on the last leg of its journey -- say to Boston's Logan International or some other destination -- because United doesn't have "widebody aircraft" servicing that airport.
"Because our team was new," he says, "and some reorganization was involved, there was a lot of opportunity to leverage basic data visualization and analytics to improve our trucking network and reduce costs." Walles designed a system "from the ground up" to "drive our costs down in markets where we were paying too much."
United Cargo liked what he did, promoting Walles to its "Continuous Improvement and Operations Execution" team where he "manages various data streams that measure performance for United Cargo's partners. Like all my jobs before, this has continued to push me to learn more and expand my knowledge of the aviation industry by better leveraging data to effect meaningful change and support operations." He is pursuing a master's in data science at the University of Colorado to help accomplish those objectives.
Walles' duties have taken him to such United hubs as , , in Houston, , and the ports serving Los Angeles and San Francisco. He's learned the operations at United Cargo's warehouses around the country because, for him, there is nothing better than seeing them firsthand.
Reflecting on his Western days, Walles celebrates the courses he took from instructor Jessica Birnbaum who "had a way of making class more fun. I could tell she really wanted to share her experiences to help all students figure out what they really wanted to do. She encouraged me to get involved in Western's chapter of the American Association of Airport Executives (AAAE). She was right and I helped in recruitment. By the time I left, the chapter was twice as big as when I joined." AAAE fed his travel menu as well, allowing him to attend the group's national conference in Boston while a Western student.
"During my studies at Western," Walles said, "I knew I wasn't interested in working on the ramp/operation of an airport. My career has been interesting so far because I've been able to take pieces of every job, discover what I liked about each, and move forward. That direction has been to data analytics so far. °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍøÖ±²¥'s aviation program is superb, but there is potential to develop other opportunities within the industry, such as the huge parts-distribution and parts-repair sectors."
That's among the messages he intends to deliver to current and future Bronco aviators. "I think it's important for alumni to share our experiences with students to help them find their way. I could not have gotten to where I am without the help and encouragement from professionals in the industry." And from mentors such as Powell, Kauppila, Hatton and Birnbaum at the College of Aviation.