Effective immediately, Shelby Scales is the new executive director of the Airport Minority Advisory Council. She replaces Gene Roth, who joined the Office of Civil Rights at the Federal Aviation Administration.
Before joining AMAC, Scales was the Small Business Program Officer at Raleigh-Durham International (RDU). She is the first executive director to come from an airport’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program Office, the group’s first African-American female executive director and one of its youngest.
“Shelby has shown tremendous leadership in all of the positions she has held, both with AMAC and also in her community,” says AMAC Chair Don O’Bannon. “The board of directors and our members look forward to working with Shelby in her new role at the helm of AMAC.”
While at RDU, Scales developed the Small Emerging Business Assistant Loan Program for concessionaires, a program that guarantees $1.5M in bank loans. She also began the airport’s Historically Underutilized Business Program. The percentage of minority- and women-owned businesses participating on the airport’s Terminal 2 construction project in 2009 hit a record 16% HUB participation, partially as a result of the programs she instituted.
She has held various volunteer leadership positions within AMAC, where she served one term as the Southeast regional director; since 2006, has been chairwoman of the AMAC Professional Development and Aviation Committee, during which time she guided development of the AMAC Educational Scholarship Program, which began the practice of bringing scholarship recipients to the annual AMAC conferences, while doubling the number of annual awards from four to eight.
Scales also helped structure AMAC’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Liaison Officer Training Program and has served as its administrator since the program’s inception in 2007, and she is a frequent speaker and moderator at AMAC national conferences.
“I have appreciated great mentors within AMAC,” Scales says. “Now, I am excited about helping develop the next generation of minorities and women in the aviation industry, further develop the AMAC brand of programs and provide administrative assistance to members as specific needs develop.”
