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Ron Draper never envisioned himself as the CEO of the world’s largest general aviation manufacturing company. Sometimes, a lifetime of experiences simply makes you the right person for the job.

When you take the work ethic gained growing up on an Idaho farm and combine it with a passion for flying, an ambition to learn and a natural ability to lead, you get the perfect ingredients to be the successful president and CEO of Textron Aviation.

“I never dreamed that I would even be the senior vice president of operations when I started,” said Draper, who earned a degree in engineering management from the U.S. Military Academy and an MBA from Wichita State University. “I don’t think I ever gave being president serious thought until maybe a year or two before they offered me the job.”

Following high school, Draper’s ambition to learn and lead took him off the family farm and on to West Point, where he became an Army aviator. Following his military career, he moved to Wichita in 1999 to work at Cessna Aircraft Company with little thought to eventually holding the top position at one of Wichita’s largest employers.

“That’s not what I set out to do,” Draper said of becoming CEO. “I did want to be a leader, I did want to have influence, and I did want to be successful. But I wanted to do it in a way that balanced my family and my work. I worked hard and I was fortunate I had the right opportunities. Textron kept developing and investing me, and I had a supporting family who was game for all this is.”

Draper became president and chief executive officer of Textron Aviation in 2018 at the age of 50. The company is the largest manufacturer (by units) of business jets and general aviation aircraft, including the Cessna and Beechcraft brands, and is a subsidiary of industrial conglomerate Textron Inc.

Key Choices

Draper calls his route to the C-suite atypical. An outsider might see it as a series of key choices that put him on the path to CEO, preparing him for a role he didn’t know he wanted. Among those decisions:

• Choosing to leave the family farm in Idaho to attend the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, in order to afford the education he aspired to achieve.

• Selecting aviation from the U.S. Army officer branch options, where he would lead soldiers across the globe.

• Starting a job with Cessna Aircraft Company in 1999 at the end of his active service commitment, despite higher paying offers including a position with John Deere that any third-generation farmer would’ve had trouble passing up.

• Saying yes to leave Wichita after five years to move to fellow Textron company Bell Helicopter in North Texas, where he would lead procurement during a critical development phase on the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey, a tiltrotor military aircraft capable of vertical takeoff and landing.

• Making another move, this time to Textron Specialized Vehicles in Georgia, where he would assume his first executive role: vice president of Integrated Supply Chain for the maker of golf cars and other commercial and industrial utility vehicles.

• Picking Wichita again in 2011, when given the choice for his next executive role. Back in Kansas, he oversaw the manufacturing operations for all Beechcraft and Cessna commercial products as senior vice president of Integrated Supply Chain. Under his leadership, Textron Aviation brought seven different products to market.

Draper could have turned down any or all of those opportunities. Instead, he said yes and then figured out ways to find the balance he was unwilling to compromise. He gave up his two favorite hobbies— golfing and flying—for nearly a dozen years, but he continued making time to coach his sons’ sports teams.

He accepted a different job about every 24 months with Textron. Several meant moving his family to another state; one required working seven days a week for long periods; others entailed frequent travel while he had a wife and four young sons at home.

Through the years, Textron provided leadership development programs and courses that were helpful, though he said the best preparation for becoming CEO was saying yes to the diversity of work, from difficult and challenging projects to making decisions in business upcycles and downcycles to working in different industries.

“Without that, I would not have been as ready to be in this role,” Draper said. “It stretched my ability to handle stress, my ability to balance work and life and prioritize what’s important.”

Two sons are now in college and two are in high school, and he’s back to flying as a fixed-wing multiengine commercial rated pilot—because he loves it and for the familiarity it gives him with customers, suppliers and a variety of the company’s departments, from customer service to engineering.

In his four years as CEO, Draper said he’s especially proud of the focus he has given to cultivating a healthy and engaged workplace for Textron Aviation’s 13,000 employees worldwide, 10,000 in Kansas. The company’s culture is centered on four values: be human, be trustworthy, be collaborative and be legendary.

An integral part of the culture is employees’ pride and their role in the company’s legacy of giving back to the communities where they work, Draper said. Textron Aviation’s employee-led Uplift is an organization that assists employees and communities in all the company’s U.S.-based facilities’ locations. A majority of the funds raised support United Way (they are the largest annual contributor to United Way of the Plains), with remaining funds used to assist employees in financial need or contributed to support additional community nonprofits.

Draper is a contributor to Uplift, as well as many Wichita charitable causes. He also serves on the boards of the Greater Wichita Partnership and the executive committee of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association.

Draper sees his role as continuing the legacy of the aviation legends who built the Beechcraft and Cessna brands. Clyde Cessna formed his company in 1927, then his nephew Dwane Wallace led it for 40 years, followed by Russ Meyer. Walter and Olive Ann Beech started Beechcraft in 1932. The companies merged in 2014 to form Textron Aviation.

“It’s humbling to stand on the shoulders of those types of giants, and I feel it’s my duty to continue to build on their success,” Draper said. “How do we take care of our employees? How do we ensure that we have the right products, the right service, the right processes so that this company that’s been here for 95 years will be here for another 95 years? My role is to keep that going and advance it.”