2021 Airport Business Top 40 Under 40: Natalie Schraner, Sr. HR Partner, Learning and Development, Indianapolis Airport Authority
Natalie Schraner went from the newsroom to the sky, transitioning from an intern at a local Indianapolis news station to a Flight Attendant to start her aviation career.
“I started my career with Republic Airways as a flight attendant and then I grew into managing their training department. I love travel and I thought I would fly around and find what news market I liked, but fell in love with travel, aviation and all the things that come with it.” said Schraner.
Schraner is now the Sr. HR Partner, Learning and Development for the Indianapolis Airport Authority, which oversees the award-winning Indianapolis International Airport (IND).
“I manage all the organization's learning and development needs, from professional growth, soft skills, online course library to policy development and annual compliance training that we do from the human resources side of things. I also lead our efforts in pursuing higher education opportunities with different institutions. We try to focus our efforts primarily in Indiana and stay local to support our community,” she said.
In addition to annual training classes, Natalie leads the organization’s tuition assistance and tuition discount program, mentoring program, and employee and leadership development programs – which all support the airport’s strategic efforts in workforce development and building a diverse talent pipeline.
Schraner launched an internal mentoring program connecting up-and-coming talent with executive leadership through monthly mentoring moments. She then expanded the program to include mentoring opportunities with community leaders providing a greater breadth of learning and development for employees and strengthening their connection to the local community.
“I like seeing people grow and in my role, I get to be seen as a resource and help them do that. Employees come to me for a variety of needs as easy as, ‘I need help with building soft skills or can you help me find resources to learn new project management techniques’ all the way to helping someone go back to college and obtain a degree. I love how versatile the airport is in offering tuition help and providing different programs internally that are free of charge to our employees to help them grow in their careers and get the skills they either want or need,” Schraner said.
In 2018, Schraner launched two leadership programs, “Accelerate” for executive leaders and “Agile Leader” for high-performing experienced leaders. Both tracks provided classroom learning, mentorship, and coaching, to equip participants with the tools needed to become more effective leaders. Coursework helped participants unlock their potential as current leaders to maximize personal performance.
