Bill Lentsch
Retired Delta Air Lines executive takes the post in October
Hoping to apply skills honed by efforts to help employees and customers at Delta Air Lines, retiring airline executive Bill Lentsch was introduced June 23 as chief operating officer of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Archbishop Bernard Hebda said a long search, which attracted more than 40 candidates, ended successfully with Lentsch, who has lived in the archdiocese most of his life, accepting the newly created position effective Oct. 1.
“We have some good news today,” the archbishop told staff called together in a Zoom meeting to be introduced to Lentsch. A COO position is a historic move for the archdiocese, he said.
“We are grateful to Bill,” who will collaborate with an already strong staff to improve the archdiocese’s leadership and service to parishes, schools and other Catholic entities, the archbishop said.
“I’m really looking forward to working with all of you,” said Lentsch, 57, who with his wife, Kate, is a member of Assumption in St. Paul. Both grew up in parishes in St. Paul and went to Catholic schools. They have four grown children who also attended Catholic schools and two grandchildren. “We’ve enjoyed giving back what we can to the Church and to the schools,” he said.
Giving back now will include being part of an operations improvement initiative announced in January titled Project Isaiah. That move came after the archdiocese partnered with a global consulting firm to assess its organizational health and provide a framework for improvement.
Results of an extensive survey sent to staff at the Archdiocesan Catholic Center in St. Paul, parish and school staff and other stakeholders indicated ACC employees feel they belong and their work matters. The results also showed that many employees don’t understand the archdiocese’s direction and their role in it. The analysis also revealed there’s work to be done to better serve stakeholders, improve operational rigor and develop talent within the ACC staff.
In an interview with The Catholic Spirit before the June 23 announcement, Lentsch said he aligns well with the archdiocese’s mission. “I want to help make parishes and schools vibrant for my grandchildren,” he said.
Lentsch worked for Delta for 13 years, and before that, he worked 19 years as an airplane structural engineer and in other positions with Northwest Airlines, based in the Twin Cities. The two airlines merged in 2008 and Lentsch stayed with the company.
Lentsch will retire June 30 as executive vice president and chief customer experience officer at Delta. But Lentsch plans to sew up a few projects key to Delta’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that hit the airline industry hard, then spend time with his family before starting at the archdiocese.
For 13 years, Lentsch commuted nearly every week to Atlanta, where Delta is based, and back to St. Paul for the weekends. He was responsible for nearly 70% of Delta’s 75,000 employees, including airport personnel, flight attendants and reservation specialists. Lentsch helped Delta’s 130 airline centers around the world operate efficiently and put customers first. But the commute and more recent heavy workload brought by the pandemic were wearing on him and his family, and he wanted to spend more time close to home, Lentsch said. As he contemplated retirement, a search firm told him about the position in the archdiocese.
Lentsch will oversee offices at the ACC in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood of St. Paul, where ministries such as Catholic Education and Marriage, Family and Life are housed, as well as financial and human resources divisions.
A member of the board of trustees for The St. Paul Seminary and St. John Vianney College Seminary in St. Paul, Lentsch said joining the archdiocese as COO is a “blessing and an opportunity.”
“It is an opportunity to pay it forward a little bit,” he said. “To take the business and leadership lessons I have learned in 32 years and do what I can to help the archdiocese.”
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