CEO Speaker Series: Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Air Lines

Delta CEO Ed Bastian Shares His Playbook for Unconventional Leadership
By Alyssa Jhingree | Y-SIM Ambassador | Yale College ‘27

At a time when airlines face thin margins and volatile markets, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian has defied conventional wisdom by putting employees first, doubling down on culture, and reimagining stakeholder capitalism. His approach offers lessons for business students—and a reminder of why Y-SIM convenes CEOs to catalyze these dialogues.

Leading with People, Purpose, and Resilience: Insights from Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian at Yale School of Management
By Aashima Dhingra | Yale SOM MBA ‘26

Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Air Lines, joined students and faculty to share how Delta has built a century-long legacy around one principle: taking care of people drives sustainable success. Through candid reflections on the airline’s history, its pioneering employee profit-sharing program, and his hands-on approach to leadership, Bastian showed how a people-first model can fuel performance.

Ed Bastian

As CEO of Delta Air Lines, Ed Bastian leads 100,000 global professionals who are building the world’s premier international airline, powered by a people-driven, customer-focused culture and spirit of innovation.

Under Ed’s leadership, Delta is transforming the air travel experience with generational investments in technology, aircraft, airport facilities and, most importantly, Delta’s employees worldwide. A more-than-25-year Delta veteran, Ed has been a critical leader in Delta’s long-term strategy and champion of putting Delta’s shared values of honesty, integrity, respect, perseverance and servant leadership at the core of every decision.

Since being named Delta’s CEO in May 2016, Ed has expanded Delta’s leading position as the world’s most reliable airline while growing its global footprint and enhancing the customer experience in the air and on the ground. During his tenure as CEO, Delta has become America’s most awarded airline, being named the top-ranking airline in Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies 12 times.

Jon Iwata

Over a 35-year career at IBM, Jon Iwata held multiple leadership roles, including Senior Vice President, Chief Brand Officer, and leader of the company's global marketing, communications and corporate citizenship organization. He reported to three IBM CEOs during two decades of significant transformation. He was chairman of IBM’s corporate strategy committee. According to Interbrand, IBM became the second most valuable brand in the world during Jon’s tenure as Chief Marketing Officer.

At the Yale School of Management, Jon is a Lecturer in the Practice of Management and Executive Director of the Yale Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management. He previously was an Executive Fellow at the Yale Center for Customer Insights.

Jon is Executive Chairman of the Data & Trust Alliance, a not-for-profit organization formed in 2020 by CEOs of leading corporations to develop and adopt responsible data and AI practices. He is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and a director of the Ladies Professional Golf Association. He was appointed a Tech Ethics and Policy Mentor at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University in 2023.

Jon is an inductee of the B2B Hall of Fame and the Marketing Hall of Fame. He was named a Brand Genius by AdWeek. In 2023 he was awarded the Harold Burson Award, the Larry Foster Award for Integrity in Public Communications by the Page Center at Penn State University, and was named to the 2023 NACD Directorship 100 – the annual list of the most influential people in the boardroom and on corporate governance. He holds a B.A. from the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at San Jose State University.

Jon is co-inventor of a U.S. patent for a nanotechnology and process for atomic-scale semiconductors.