Claire McLeveighn

The official who managed the City of Atlanta’s international relationships for six years has taken a similar job at the Atlanta airport.

Claire McLeveighn’s position as director of external and international affairs was terminated as a result of the city’s widespread budget crunch, but the connections she built there won’t go to waste.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, a self-sustaining municipal entity, has made Ms. McLeveighn manager for international affairs in its business development department.

The busiest airport in the world by passengers is also second in the U.S. behind New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in terms of overseas destinations, she told GlobalAtlanta.

When Delta Air Lines Inc. adds a few pending flights, that number will be close to 90, meaning there’s no better time to shore up and expand the airport’s ties with Atlanta’s foreign communities, she said.

And if Delta’s merger with Northwest Airlines Corp. gets Justice Department approval by the end of the year as expected, Atlanta could suddenly be connected with many other destinations through the Minnesota-based airline’s network.

“The airport being such a central component in the international life of not just the city but the metro area, both Mayor (Shirley) Franklin and (airport General Manager) Ben DeCosta recognize that now is the time to have a real international relations function here at the airport,” she said.

Ms. McLeveighn will work with Jeff Pearse, the airport's director of marketing and business development.

He said that her appointment will give the airport the added resources it needs to stay involved in Atlanta's international community and to build relationships with companies that decided to locate here in part because of the airport.

“There are organizations from all over the world that are striving for some kind of affiliation with the world’s busiest airport, so this gives us the resources to better respond and reach out to those foreign companies,” Mr. Pearse said.

Ms. McLeveighn's new position is timely as Atlanta's consular corps is growing and more travelers are using the airport as an international hub.

"While we remain primarily a domestic connecting hub, the fastest growing segment of our passenger base is international travelers," he said, adding that 10 million of Hartsfield's nearly 90 million yearly passengers are making global connections.

While Ms. McLeveighn won't replace Manuel DeBarros, who handles the airport's protocol issues for incoming international officials, she will augment his role by taking on projects the airport otherwise couldn't have handled, Mr. Pearse said.

One of those is a sister airports program that could first connect Hartsfield with airports in Seoul, South Korea, and Shanghai, China, which want to form partnerships to share best practices with Hartsfield, he said.

In her former position, Ms. McLeveighn handled the city’s dealings with the federal government, directed lobbying efforts in Washington and managed Atlanta’s relationships with other cities and states.

At Hartsfield, she’ll drop the intergovernmental aspect, and she’ll be promoting aviation synergies rather than municipal ones. 

But the core “facilitator” role remains the same, she said.

“My role just as it was in the mayor’s office is to be the central point of contact for Atlanta’s international community,” she said.

That’s a natural fit for Ms. McLeveighn, who has been a fixture at international events around the city and has represented the mayor’s office on trips overseas.

A New York City native, Ms. McLeveighn has a degree from Columbia University that mixes public affairs and international relations, and she is known for her ability to navigate the often-complex rules of dealing with delegations.

“She’s very knowledgeable about international protocol, and that’s some complicated business,” said Court Robertson, membership director for the Atlanta-Rio de Janeiro Sister City Committee.

Mr. Robertson said that Ms. McLeveighn went with the committee on a trip to many Brazilian cities including Rio de Janeiro in 2005.  Her presence as a sort of ambassador for Mayor Franklin helped build bridge the two cities just as the committee was revitalizing their 35-year-old relationship.

With Delta adding new flights to Brazilian cities including Recife, a city they visited on the trade trip, Mr. Robertson thinks it’ll help to have someone like Ms. McLeveighn heading up the airport’s international efforts.

“If it’s international and its building relationships, then she’s totally in tune with that.  I don’t know of anyone I’d pick better,” he said.

Lani Wong, chair of the National Association of Chinese-Americans, said Ms. McLeveighn has played a similar role with incoming Chinese delegations and was instrumental in showing the city’s support for Delta’s bid for a Shanghai flight.

“Often times when the mayor was busy (Ms. McLeveighn) was there to make our Chinese guests feel welcome, and that’s very important in building relationships with China,” she said.

Last week Ms. McLeveighn helped facilitate one of the annual “Airports As Economic Development Engines” conferences it hosts with CIFAL Atlanta, a joint training initiative between the city and the United Nations.

Ms. McLeveighn was heavily involved with CIFAL in her work with the city.  The conference focused on sharing best practices with airports in the Caribbean.  Hartsfield has sponsored CIFAL airports conferences on Latin America and the Caribbean for the last four years.

The sister airports program will extend that initiative.

“We are doing this through CIFAL but a more directed and formal relationship between this airport and other airports would just take that to another level,” she said.

She envisions the sister airports program as similar to sister city relationships. 

Just as the Atlanta-Nuremberg, Germany, sister city relationship focuses on the shared interest of civil and human rights, airports would also find focused areas of collaboration that would benefit both.

“With the sister city partnership, each one of them is based on a different set of circumstances and a different set of competencies, and I would expect that sister airports would be the same way,” she said.