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   Vol. 24  No. 24                                                        

Thursday May 15, 2025

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Donna Mullins


     As CNS Partnership continues in Miami, Florida with meetings and networking galore, here we spend a few minutes with Donna Mullins.
     Although Donna, as you read this, is enjoying a well-earned vacation, she is always a vital engaging factor at trade shows and events.
     Join us for some reflective observations up close and personal from the Vice President Kale Information Solutions USA.
     Donna has been lynchpin for the Kale Logistics drive to greatness ever since the Thane, Mumbai-based company burst on the scene, fresh as Listerine, with Donna and Amar More creating a great new future for the way cargo moves all over America.
     Here in her own write Donna, keen to share a very great adventure, invites CNS conferees on a sentimental journey. 
     “In early January 2019 I received an invitation from HJAIA to attend a workshop about Cargo Community Systems that was being presented by Kale Logistics on January 15. I, along with many of the air cargo stakeholders in ATL, attended the meeting and we saw something we had never seen before - coordinated cargo and data movement brought together in a single platform that connects all stakeholders and cargo logistics providers giving each Trusted Trade Partner the ability to have visibility of the cargo movement and share transportation updates on every shipment. 
     “In February 2019 a Steering Committee was established which included members from HJAIA, ground handlers, truckers, brokers, and forwarders.  This committee was very enthusiastic about the efficiencies that the Cargo Community System would bring to the air cargo industry. As one of the ATL Cargo Community System (ATLCCS) Steering Committee members I helped negotiate the MoU between Kale Logistics and the ATL air cargo community. We finalized the agreement and in April 2019 Kale sent the ATLCCS the final case study plan to execute a PoC (Proof of Concept) with Swissport ATL agreeing to be the anchor (ground handler) for the project.” 
     “On July 18, 2019 I, President/CEO of Mullins International Solutions signed a contract with Rajesh Panicker, Director of Kale Logistics to be their Sr. Consultant in the U.S. to help promote their Air Cargo Community System.
     “Being a former broker and 3PL provider, I was eager to introduce this "best thing since sliced bread" technology to the industry I grew up in. In fact, my first email to Amar following the signing of the contract started like this ‘First, let me say how excited I am about our partnership and the opportunity we can bring to the international logistics world.’ I still have that same eagerness and passion.  During my consultancy I helped to get stakeholders on board and represented Kale Logistics at many events. 
     “On November 14, 2019 the very first shipment was created and processed in the Kale ACS in Atlanta, GA. This was indeed a monumental event and a great milestone in the Kale ACS journey.  
     “Then, January 20, 2020 happened – the first reported case of COVID.  Almost everything halted on the ACS. People were trying to learn how to do their old job a new way and introducing something new was not anything the community had much of an appetite for at the time with the exception of a few initial participants in ATL who saw the benefit of the technology from the PoC. The implementation of the ACS would have been one of the most efficient and effectives ways for the community to reduce the face-to-face needs and to expedite those contact times in an extremely busy and strained air cargo environment. Yet still, both Kale Logistics and I continued with our vision to help optimize trade facilitation through technology. 
 Sheereedah Copening    “So much so that Kale asked me to open Kale Info Solutions USA and I accepted. In April 2020, I interviewed and offered a position to the very first Kale Info Solutions employee, Sheereedah Copening, (right) Customer Service Manager, with the plan for me to run their USA operations as Vice President starting in June of 2020.
     “Sheereedah and I worked remotely with stakeholders here in Atlanta to help them learn and navigate the system and the processes of the cargo data flow.  With thanks to our supporting participants, we have heard from many truckers how the system has helped them increase trips to the airport and increase other volumes as a result. The labor cost and fuel cost reduction obtained via the ACS appointment system is also a benefit the community has been able to receive.
     “Thanks to the excellent sales and marketing support from our headquarters in India, and our sales and support teams here in North and South America, we have had the opportunity in the past five years to provide our products – we do more than just Airport Community Systems – to a variety of cargo stakeholders. We have had several successful ACS POCs in both North (U.S. and Canada) and South America (we call it our NASA team); we have our GALAXY, GALAXY is our ground handing warehouse management system, product in the U.S. and Mexico; our LeMP, LeMP is our Logistics e-Market Place product, is starting in the U.S.; our PCS, PCS is our Port Community System product, is being implemented soon in several U.S. ocean ports; and our LCCT, LCCT is our Logistics and Customs Control Tower product, is being viewed as a new service here in the U.S. too as well as our e-comm platform; and we were powering the first automated CES in the U.S.  We also provide Agentic AI for chatbot and predictive analytics. When we say, “Kale – Technology that Transforms” – we meant it for the entire supply, value, and data chain community.

Donn Mullins Kale Headquarters. Amar More

      “In August, 2021 Kale Info Solutions was contracted to provide dock management technology to WFS cargo handling stations. We are very honored to be the trusted technology provider to WFS for our Truck Slot Management module of the ACS.  We started in JFK, one of their busiest hubs, and phased in the “Time is Money” program to all of their JFK facilities. WFS then rolled the program out to their BOS and ATL stations. Their plan is to gradually roll this out to all of their stations and we couldn’t be happier to be partnering with them in their vision to move more digital in their operations. 
     “In July 2021 we were awarded the ALM (ANC Marketplace – Kale Info Solutions) contract for our LeMP all-in-one hub for logistics platform product.  October 2021, we received the contract award for our ACS by the City of Philadelphia (PHL) and in August 2022 Kale Info Solutions was awarded the ACS contract by the Greater Rockford Airport Authority (RFD). This year, in February 2025 we were awarded the ACS contract by EL DORADO International Airport (BOG) to develop South America’s first Airport Community Systems.
     “Coming from the very fasted paced Customs and logistics side of the international trade and transportation industry I’ve been very accustomed to things happening fast – that cargo has to move and move today. Here in the SaaS world I’ve had to become accustomed to decisions and implementation to move at a much slower pace. Coming to understand software from a developer point of view is very enlightening when you’ve always been on the user side. Learning development (no I don’t write code) challenges and helping Kale with the UX/UI has been one of my focus points since I have been on the user side and have interacted with many different technology solutions to bring my experience to the developer’s table. Working with the clients to customize many of the functionalities for their business disciplines is what make Kale’s technology so appealing.
     “In the North American region, to me as a former Customs Broker who had to arrange deliveries of international cargo, the automation and technology is surprisingly slow to be adopted. With the U.S. being a technology giant, I can’t understand why companies, and governments, are not standing in line to implement ACS, PCS, or other cloud-based software that Kale Info Solutions offers. 
     “2025 is Kale Info Solutions USA’s fifth anniversary.  I am very proud to have met Amar in 2019 and to have the opportunity to lead a new company, a new solutions branding, and a positive change management for the international trade and logistics industry.  I have been very blessed that my Kale journey has allowed me to be involved in projects and proposals in other countries and regions, giving me an even greater sense of helping our global industry too.”
GDA/SSA


Geoffrey Arend, Bob Imbriani,Brandon Fried, Jim Foster Award

Ingo Zimmer

     Ingo Zimmer, CEO of All-Star GSSA ATC Aviation Services AG is waiting to see you in Miami at Cargo Network Services Corp. (CNS) Partnership Conference.
     Just like any top executive in air cargo today, he is fixing in his mind what will be said about the condition and power of his GSSA as it moves inexorably to the very top in every measurable estimation of quality and service.
     No matter the challenge today, Zimmer’s ATC has solutions in hand at the top of GSSA form in the very competitive business of representing the cargo fortunes of airlines in markets all over the world.
     “One sentence occurs to me all the time,” Ingo said, “and it’s a simple one: ‘Take a load off,’” he smiles.
     “With all the things freight forwarders have to deal with today, it seems reasonable, offering to accept any and all consignments right now,” Ingo said.
     “So let's partner up; beside the standard airfreight freight and consolidations it’s Full Charter, Part Charter, Co-Loads, Long Distance & Special Loads, what we call solutions business.
     "We care for it all, so let's talk about it now," Ingo Zimmer concluded.
GDA

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Jürgen Weber

     Jürgen Weber, former CEO of Lufthansa and co-founder of Star Alliance has passed away at the age of 83.
     Affectionately known as ‘Mr. Lufthansa’, Weber first joined the airline as a young engineer in 1967 and remained Honorary Chairman of the Supervisory Board until his passing on May 12, 2025.
     From 1991 until 2003 he led the company as CEO and from 2003 to 2013 he was Chairman of the Supervisory Board.
     Carsten Spohr, Lufthansa CEO, said Weber was “rightly” known as Mr. Lufthansa after dedicating his life to the company."
     In a tribute, Karl-Ludwig Kley, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, said that without Weber the “Lufthansa as we know it today would be unthinkable”.

GDA


FTM2025
Eleanor Jane Arend, Geoffrey Arend

     I was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1941 to my truly beautiful and loving mother, Eleanor Jane. During wartime with Dad in the Navy, our local super business Libbey Owens Glass hired the both of us to pose for a magazine ad for their glass brick. The advertising agency’s people put Mom in a Dorothy Dress (Wizard of Oz, 1939), as it was still on folks’ mind I suppose. The picture here tells you the story better than a thousand words.
     In addition to some money, we obtained several cases of glass brick delivered to our Toledo home. That brick has moved with us all these years; some of it was installed in our current home as solid basement windows, but that is not the only place where the shiny bricks managed to get a prominent, luminous function! The bricks’ legacy, which strongly relates to my mother’s memory brings back other recollections, meandering through my feelings to eventually reach my beloved wife Sabiha, the mother of everybody else in my family and my strong ally in my work.
     Let’s go back to the bricks, but not in Ohio . . . Later during the 1970s, when we opened a small office on the second floor of LaGuardia’s historic Marine Air Terminal (MAT) as part of our effort to save the “Flight” Mural in the lobby downstairs, we worked to restore the 1940s era original design of our allotted space. In that effort we noticed a slight outline of what appeared to have once been windows on each side of our entranceway door to our room.      It turns out – in true art-deco style – the outlines we thought to be “windows” were originally filled with glass brick. The idea in 1938-39 when MAT was created by WPA labor was to allow light to naturally flood into the inside hallway from outside windows.
     We dutifully replaced the glass brick on both sides of our entranceway and never quite understood why the Port Authority had allowed the glass brick removal, but during the years after the bi-state agency took control of all the NY/NJ airports in 1948, apparently changing things hell-bent for leather. This happened in an uninformed manner and MAT suffered thoughtless renovations, including the obliterating of James Brooks’s epoch giant 237 foot around x 12 foot high Roosevelt era, Works Progress Administration (WPA)-sponsored, mural “Flight,” which Jim affixed on Belgian Linen to the upper lobby walls of MAT in 1942. PANYNJ painted it over a decade later in 1952. To their credit, the Port Authority cannot be forgot to have kept up maintenance in MAT: roof, plumbing, etc. so the great building was able to continue service for all those years until 1980’s, silently awaiting its renaissance. The situation was set right by our campaign, endorsed and allowed at the airport by Port Authority LaGuardia Airport Manager Tim Peirce and Robert J. Aaronson, who served as Aviation Director for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey from 1981 until 1989.

Elizabeth Hanford Dole, Tim Peirce, Geoffrey Arend, Sabiha Arend

     On May 15th 1986, 39 years ago this month, Tim and I were feted and recognized for saving “Flight” and thus the MAT, at a Washington, D.C. Ceremony conducted at The National Historic Trust, in concert with The Federal Arts Commission and The U.S. Department of Transportation. On that date U.S. Secretary of Transportation, The Honorable Elizabeth Hanford Dole and Cynthia Grassby Baker, Chair of the Advisory Board for Historic Preservation, said thanks as they presented the highest award of the DOT, FAA and U.S. Historic Preservation to both of us. Sometimes as you age, thoughts drift back to seminal moments and I think the last time I saw Tim, was when he was no longer manager of the airport and its community that he truly loved. You may wonder what this has to do with writing on Mother’s Day . . . If you continue reading, it will become clearer . . .
     Tim was visiting the airport driving his comfortable older personal car. We both often talked collector cars as I had a restored 1940 Cadillac. I recall airport maintenance supervisor Herb Borelli driving that car on the ramp, loaded up with children and everyone enjoying a blast from the past on LaGuardia Kids Day.
     Tim, a fellow car collector, also had an immaculate 1930s Ford Model A tucked away in a small barn next to the lovely home he shared with his wife Cary and their two daughters Jennifer and Amanda in Connecticut. But now, as we met for the last time before he sadly passed away, gone forever was Tim’s signature managers’ car with all the antenna, buttons and sirens on it. Now Tim was driving down to see us in his comfortable older immaculate personal car. Last thing Tim said to me with a smile was: “Look after the MAT once in a while,” he cautioned.
     Tim was and rightfully should be honored as among a handful of the greatest airport managers to serve anywhere in the world. His understanding of how to balance the public agency and private sector, never overlooking the neighborhoods around the big noisy airport, was pure pioneering of the form, nothing less. His alliance with Helen Marshall, who represented LaGuardia’s fate as political leader of City Council District 37 next to and around LaGuardia Airport, was courageous and unique for that time frame, changing history for the gateway.
     Put simply, these two people laid down their swords and sought common ground as the pair coalesced and became the template on how to make airports coexist with communities in the USA, and I believe in many places around the world. I cannot say that this shining example of respectful coexistence and appreciation has been the norm in many other areas of the world, but there it was.
     Without Tim and Helen’s cooperation a generation ago that made the peace between the airport and the community, it would not have been possible for that recent eight plus billion rebuild of LaGuardia Airport itself. Later when Helen Marshall ascended to being elected and serving as President of Queens, a Borough of 3.5 million people in New York City, her road to the top was paved in no small part by her dedication and brilliance and the once upon a time collaboration with Tim.
     Now comes the connection with the other ladies in my life and family, give it another five minutes.
     Elizabeth Dole served as the first female Secretary of Transportation (1983–87); the first female executive of the American Red Cross (1991–99) since its founder, Clara Barton; and the first serious female contender for the Republican Presidential nomination (2000). Mrs. Dole, who we are happy to report, is still with us in 2025 at age 88, also served in the U.S. Senate from 2003 to 2009.
     Mrs. Dole appeared one day in the MAT, some years after this picture of the three of us was taken on May 15th, 1986, bustling through the station after an official flight into New York City with an entourage bound for some big-to-do in Manhattan. She saw me and stopped and we said hello as “Music for Airports” by Brian Eno softly floated above us via the old Pan Am marble encased public address system still working in the lobby.  “Are you looking after our Marine Air Terminal?”, she asked. “Every day, Madam Secretary!” I affirmed as she whisked through the lobby into a waiting limo.
Geoffrey Arend

A Postscript will drive you to a close: looking back 39 years ago at what stood out during our Washington, D.C. encounter, recall a lovely dinner with Tim’s brother Greg. My brother’s name is Greg, too . . . so when Tim’s brother tragically died quite young after we met him, we keenly felt the loss.      Let me also recall that after this picture here of us with Mrs. Dole was snapped we made our exit, waiting outside of the National Historic Trust Mellon Mansion in Washington, D.C., where we were both perhaps overanxious to get to National Airport (now Reagan) for an adult beverage and the flight home. We had teamed up appearing at a conference where I had spoken and Tim, with characteristic charm and effusiveness, just looked at the interviewers after my words and smiled “Ditto”! But as we waited, so full of ourselves with chests expanded to the max, in that moment we wondered where was my wife Sabiha who had accompanied us both to this grand event?
     As the ceremony ended, she was observed talking to Mrs. Dole, but we expected her to appear to meet our schedule. After maybe five minutes that must have felt like an hour, Sabiha appeared, walking out of the Mellon Manse, still talking face to face with Mrs. Dole.
     So there we were, so self-important, as we watched the two ladies hug before Madame Secretary departed. Turns out The Honorable Mrs. Dole, U.S. Secretary of Transportation was off to see President Ronald Reagan at a White House reception.  Prior to she had invited Sabiha to ride with her in the very small elevator in the building that was once a private residence, while all of us big shots walked down the stairs earlier. So in the elevator the Secret Service agent pressed a wrong button and during the wait Sabiha notices a spot on Mrs. Dole's beautiful camel's hair coat and the two ladies immediately went erasing the spot. Thus the delay at our departure scene, recalling a magic moment that felt like a bracing slap in the face, as us two big shots were reminded of the way some real heroes in life roll.
     This piece was written on Mother’s Day, so all the elements of the story flew back through space and time to occupy their natural positions by now: the glass brick, the Flight and the rest, all the ladies and men who made it possible to keep such Precious Memories . . .


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Publisher-Geoffrey Arend • Managing Editor-Flossie Arend • Editor Emeritus-Richard Malkin
Senior Contributing Editor/Special Commentaries-Marco Sorgetti • Special Commentaries Editor-Bob Rogers
Special Assignments-Sabiha Arend, Emily Arend
• Film Editor-Ralph Arend

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