Stuart B. Swanson – CAM Fellow

Stu Swanson, CAM, is currently the Chief Pilot for S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., of Racine, WI, with a sixteen-member team committed to safely operating Falcon 7x and 8x aircraft globally. Prior to assuming the Chief Pilot role, he served as the S-76B Helicopter Operations Supervisor and Falcon 900B Captain for five years. He currently serves as the Chairman of the Chief Pilots Roundtable and Vice-chairman of the NBAA CAM Governing Board.

Swanson holds a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Professional Aeronautics and Leadership, respectively. He has completed several leadership-based certificates from Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business focused on leadership agility, change management, performance, and strategy, and the University of Viginia’s Darden Business School, with a focus on corporate aviation management.

Swanson retired as a Chief Warrant Officer Four (CW4) from the United States Army Reserve in 2009, after 20 years of service flying both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft. He held the positions of Standardization Instructor (Chief Pilot), Instrument Flight Examiner, and Maintenance Test Pilot, with multiple deployments completed in support of Operation Bright Star (Egypt-1993 and 1994), Operation Joint Guard (Bosnia-Herzegovina – 1997), Operation Southern Watch/Desert Spring (Kuwait – 2000/2001), and Operation Iraqi Freedom (Chief Pilot) (Iraq – 2006 and 2008).

His aviation and leadership experience spans thirty-five years in Part 91, 135, 121, and military flight operations, flying the Beechcraft 1900D, Dornier 328Jet, MD-80, B-717, Astra SPX/G100, S-76B, Falcon 900B, Falcon 7x/8x, UH-1H Huey, and multiple C-12 (King Air 200) variants.

The following quote by Samuel C. Johnson Jr. represents the central theme in Swanson’s personal and professional journey,, “We should not worry about whether we have lived up to the expectations of our fathers, but whether we, as fathers, have lived up to the expectations of our children.”