Ram Iyer

Bridging financial rigor, operational execution, and analytics at scale — building the finance function that drives EBITDA and readies the business for its next stage of growth. Finance and operations executive who builds the analytical engine behind strategic growth. Over 20 years leading at the intersection of FP&A, value creation, and enterprise operations — consistently turning a finance function into a competitive advantage, whether that means rebuilding a planning infrastructure from scratch, launching a new capability, or repositioning the finance organization as a genuine operating partner to the CEO and board.

The edge is a rare combination of financial rigor and operational fluency — equally comfortable modeling a capital allocation decision and walking a station floor to understand why the numbers don't match. Trained as an engineer, credentialed as a finance executive (MBA, NYU Stern; CFA III), and battle-tested across complex, high-velocity environments: legacy network carriers, ultra-low-cost operators, PE-backed platforms, and SaaS businesses. The consistent throughline is a track record of building organizations and systems that make better decisions faster.

EVP, Value Creation, Strategy & Analytics - Swissport International

(2025-10)

$1B+ aviation services, 50+ stations, 10K+ employees

• Founded the Value Creation & Strategy function from zero — recruited the team, designed the operating model, and wired governance cadences that convert planning data into tracked financial outcomes.
• Institutionalizing a value-creation operating rhythm — benefit realization tracked against targets, executive reporting cadence in place, and continuous improvement embedded across every station function.
• Unlocked $60M+ in value within six months — $55M new business pipeline and $5M in scope recapture — by fusing planning analytics with market and capacity intelligence.
• Developed a Commercial Whitespace framework to systematically surface high-margin growth opportunities — enabling the commercial team to prioritize incremental business that maximizes margin contribution and accelerates competitive wins
• Architected an enterprise BI portal that retired manual daily/weekly reporting — consolidating planning, rostering, and actuals into a single exception-based intelligence layer that tells leaders what needs attention, not what they already know.
• Engineered an end-to-end audit loop — labor planning through rostering to actuals — with proactive deviation alerts that put station leaders ahead of problems before schedules lock.

VP, Financial Planning & Analysis - Aeris IoT SaaS

(2024-04 - 2025-09)

IoT connectivity SaaS platform, $200M revenue – scaling to $500M by '27

• Spearheaded a five-firm investment roadshow in Q4 2025 — architecting the financial models and valuation framework that underpinned the company's pre-money story.
• Restructured commission architecture for a 70+ member global sales force and launched a deal desk — closing revenue leakage from off-book structures and sharpening SaaS market penetration.
• Built a finance function from the ground up — grew FP&A from one analyst to eleven, unified data architecture across business units, eliminated manual consolidation, and tied the 3-year strategic roadmap to investor-grade KPIs that held up under due diligence scrutiny.
• Instituted business-level P&L accountability — embedding financial ownership into product and commercial decisions and giving leadership clear sight lines into revenue and cost drivers across every line of business.

Senior Director, Operations Strategy & Contract Services - Spirit Airlines

(2019-01 - 2024-05)

ULCC carrier, $1B+ contract ops spend, 6,000 employees

• Managed $1B+ in contracted operations spend through a 40%+ network expansion — analytics-driven entry into 15+ new airports, 15 partner transitions executed without disruption, and $8M in rebates captured with 30% productivity gains.
• Generated $54M in ancillary revenue growth by coupling systematic pricing optimization with KPI-driven commercial planning — turning operational constraints into margin opportunities.
• Overhauled the operating model — integrating commercial and operational planning into a single data infrastructure that compressed cycle time and sharpened margin visibility across the network.
• Orchestrated network restructuring and vendor renegotiations — arming executive leadership with financial models that quantified every trade-off and drove fleet and route decisions.

Director, Resource Planning & FP&A - United Airlines

(2015-01 - 2019-01)

14+ years, world's largest airline by network

• Directed a 20-person team stewards of a $2B operations budget across 250+ airports and 25,000 employees — surfacing $250M in cost savings, ratifying a 5-year union labor contract, and deploying $50M in ramp automation ahead of industry inflection.
• Served as the analytical backbone behind multi-year capital allocation and labor strategy — scenario models that gave executive leadership the analytical confidence to make billion-dollar network decisions.

Director, Business Management - United Airlines

(2012-01 - 2015-01)

• Inherited a 95-person organization with a $550M budget, fractured team culture, and broken trust with internal stakeholders — rebuilt leadership, reset the culture, and within 18 months turned it into the highest-performing team in the division.
• Delivered $27M (25%) in cost reduction, secured $400M+ for O'Hare expansion, and transitioned 3,000+ employees to biometric scheduling without disruption.

Sr. Manager Enterprise Optimization / Manager Finance / Finance Controller - United Airlines

(2004-11 - 2012-01)

• Sr. Manager Enterprise Optimization / Manager Finance / Finance Controller — laid the analytical and financial control foundation across Newark and Chicago hubs; the cost-tracking, variance reporting, and FP&A infrastructure built here scaled with the business for a decade.

MBA - Finance - NYU Stern School of Business

MS - Industrial Engineering - SUNY Buffalo

BS - Mechanical Engineering - Mumbai University