Michael Silvestro

Michael Silvestro recently became the longest-tenured CEO in the fractional private jet industry after having assumed his current role just before the financial crisis of 2008. While attending Notre Dame, he was one of two non-scholarship football players in his freshman class to make the team which later won the Cotton Bowl. After Notre Dame, Silvestro spent two decades inventing products and founding companies in the footwear and sporting goods industries. Looking for a new challenge, he joined fractional jet company, Flight Options, founded by his Notre Dame roommate Kenn Ricci, and oversaw sales. He turned sales around after the dot-com crash, building the company into the industry’s second-ranked player and leaving only after Ricci sold the company to Raytheon. When Ricci reacquired Flight Options in 2008, he returned to the company, this time as CEO. In 2013, Ricci acquired fractional pioneer Flexjet from Bombardier and Silvestro became CEO of Flexjet as well. He is deeply involved in youth and children’s charities and he and his wife, Mary Lynn, adopted two orphaned Rwandan children in addition to raising their own sons.