After leading Los Angeles’ busiest airports, Deborah Flint is now in charge of Canada’s largest airport

Canadian-born Deborah Flint is an influential CEO in the aviation industry. Since joining the corporate world, she has served in various roles in the aviation industry and is credited with transforming some of the world’s busiest airports.

Flint is the President and the CEO of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, which operates Toronto Pearson Airport. The airport is considered the largest and busiest airport in Canada, according to blackwoman.com.

Prior to taking up the role as president and CEO of Greater Toronto Airports Authority in 2020, she was the CEO of Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), which owns and operates two of the world’s busiest airports in the United States — LAX and Van Nuys Airports.

She was appointed to the position in 2015 by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti to make Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and Van Nuys Airport (VNY) world-class airports. While there, reports said she led a $15 billion project to prepare the airport to serve over 100 million passengers a year.

“Deborah is an extraordinary leader whose ingenuity, patience, and uncommon commitment have helped bring LAX to the doorstep of transformational change,” Mayor Garcetti said in a statement at the time.

“She has put in motion all the key pieces of LAX’s modernization, from the contracts and groundbreakings for the Automated People Mover train and other state-of-the-art facilities to the team that will build the airport of the future to welcome the world in 2028.”

Flint is a graduate of San Jose University. Her career trajectory has mainly been in the aviation industry. In the past, she also served as the Aviation Director and the Interim Port Executive Director at the Port of Oakland in Northern, California. Prior to that, she served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank and is a director of the Honeywell Corporation.

When it was announced that Flint was leaving her job in Los Angeles to serve as President and CEO of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, she said: “It is bittersweet to be leaving LAWA, but, as a Canadian-born airport executive, I am looking forward to this homecoming and to leading Toronto Pearson, a rising and notable star on the international airport stage.”