Michael Swiatek, MBA’91, describes himself as “a business executive who happens to be blind/low vision.” Swiatek has spent much of his career in strategy roles at airlines, including United Airlines, Qatar Airways, and Air New Zealand. Today he is the chief strategy officer at the Abra Group, which owns several Latin American airlines. Swiatek is also Abra’s chief accessibility officer—and, he believes, the airline industry’s only chief accessibility officer. Working on accessibility issues is a new direction for Swiatek, but it’s a challenge he relishes. “Optimizing is in my blood,” he says. “I just love to make things better.” This interview has been edited and condensed.

Did you always imagine you’d work in air travel?

I was obsessed with planes, but no, I did not know it would be my career. My father was a customer service agent for United Airlines, so that was my introduction. In those days, very few children flew on planes, but we had access to one flight a year as part of his employee benefits. So I can’t even remember my first flight, because it happened so early in my life.

When I was at the University of Chicago, I thought I would be an investment banker or a consultant or something. But I realized I didn’t like investment banking and I didn’t like consulting. I liked airlines. I didn’t know that finance strategy jobs existed in airlines until I attended some recruiting lunches and dinners with airlines while I was at Booth.

Not too many people from Booth go into the airline industry. People were like, “The pay is low. The fundamentals of the business are terrible. Why would you ever do something like that?” And my answer went back to the old quote, “If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life.” I just felt like I’d be a lot more competitive working in something I cared about.

What are some favorite memories from your time at Booth?

I still read the book The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement (North River Press, 1986) that was recommended in our operations class, which I find to be helpful as I think about solving problems even 35 years later. I remember being in Merton Miller’s class when he won the Nobel Prize, and he told the media he wouldn’t talk to them until he taught his class. That was amazing.

And I probably should mention that I met my wife [Debra Mishkin Swiatek, MBA’91] at Booth. We were at the Graduate School of Business when it was still in Stuart Hall, and I met my wife on those steps. For our 25th wedding anniversary, I commissioned a painting of Stuart Hall, and that hangs over the fireplace at our summerhouse in Michigan.

How old were you when you were diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa?

I had it from birth, but I wasn’t officially diagnosed until I was 16. It was one of the most depressing days of my life, because the eye doctor said I would probably be totally blind at 35. I’ve avoided total blindness even to this date, but the disease is degenerative, and the slope of the curve is different for everybody.

Through the ’90s, you felt you needed to hide a disability if you could, whereas today people can be more open about it. I don’t even know if I mentioned it on my application to the University of Chicago. In job interviews, I would say, “I don’t have a driver’s license, but don’t worry about me. I’ll get to work on time.”

What helped you open up about your disability?

It was just the progression. By the time I was 35, it was impossible to hide anymore. I started using a mobility cane to get around.

In some ways, I wish I’d used it when I was 20, because with a disease like retinitis pigmentosa, particularly in the early stages, you can look somebody in the eye, and they know you’re looking them in the eye. And then when you say you’re blind, they’re like, “What are you talking about?” It was just too much trouble to try to explain the nuances. Once I started using the mobility cane, it became a lot easier for people to just say, “Hey, no problem. As long as you get the work done, none of the rest really matters.”

When did you start to merge your strategy work and your interest in accessibility?

Only about four years ago. My current CEO is such a curious, empathetic, and caring guy. It was more his idea. One day he said, “Why don’t you get more involved in making airlines accessible?”

I now have the dual title of chief strategy officer and chief accessibility officer. It has made a huge difference to have somebody in this role who sits at the executive leadership meetings and who presents to the board on a regular basis. It’s quite clear that at our company we’re highly supportive on this issue—the message doesn’t get diluted through senior vice presidents and presidents and directors and managers.

I don’t consider myself a disability advocate. I consider myself a professional who has a disability and therefore has some life experience that’s helpful in formatting the strategy to make our airline groups more accessible.

Addressing accessibility issues is often seen as expensive. How do you combat that?

We set forward six principles early on that have been a great guide for us: common sense; universal design; cooperation, not competition; shared responsibility; progress over perfection; and then the one you alluded to, low cost, high impact. So are we going to install something that’s going to help one customer a year and cost us $25,000? No. Will we install something that costs $10,000 a year and is going to help 10,000 customers? Absolutely.

Airlines are notorious for having bad profit margins, but I’m proud to say I have a budget of my own for accessibility. It’s not extremely high, but it’s unique in the industry. We’ve probably taken as many actions as airlines four or five times our size, and we have had just as much effectiveness, if not more.

What are some of those low-cost, high-impact changes?

We put Braille seat numbers on about 100 of our aircraft, as well as bigger numbers with better color contrast for low-vision people. That idea came from someone in our maintenance organization.

We’re piloting a project with our major airport in Bogotá to have autistic people come into the airport before they fly and get familiar with the check-in, the security, the boarding area—and the aircraft itself, if we can provide it.

We operate in countries where, unlike the United States, people exit on stairs, as opposed to jet bridges, about 30 percent of the time. We changed processes so that our operations people know, “Hey, if this plane has 10 wheelchairs, and this plane has one, let’s send the plane with 10 wheelchairs to the gate with the jet bridge.”

I’m really proud of this one: You know the people who push wheelchairs in the airports? I had a simple observation, because I use that service when I travel. I don’t need the wheelchair, but I need the escort. Usually, the gender is randomly assigned. I said, “You know, it makes a lot of sense to have males paired with males and females with females, because if I need to use a restroom and the person pushing the wheelchair is female, I’m less likely to vocalize that.” I saw an airport in New York recently put this into their mandate.

We’ve also done work to raise awareness with videos and booklets that we give to staff, so that people are comfortable with people with disabilities and not afraid to approach them. Most of us don’t get any training on this in school.

Have you gotten interest from other airlines about the work you’re doing?

Absolutely, and we call them as well. It works both ways. If I discover a great way to change a boarding process, let me call my friend at British Airways or Air Canada. We feel this is something that the faster the industry fixes it, the better for all of us.

It is time consuming to work cooperatively with all the pressures we have of just running an airline. But that’s the good fight we’re happy to fight.

What has kept you working in the airline industry for so long?

I have come to realize I’m a person who enjoys a bit of chaos. I like those kinds of challenges. This industry always has some airlines that are in trouble, and I’ve generally been attracted to them. I mean, the year I joined United Airlines, they had just had the first-ever billion-dollar loss by a single company. I made my contribution to that company being successful, and I’ve made contributions to the turnarounds at Continental Airlines and Air New Zealand. Going into situations that have something chaotic about them where they need some calm—I guess I’m good at that.

So the reason I’ve stayed in it is that the challenges have remained. Other industries have challenges, but this is where I’m probably best placed to use my personality, skills, habits, knowledge, and experience, and I even have developed my own perspectives on what makes an airline good or bad. It’s been fun.