Athena Kaviris

Athena is a trusted advisor, skilled negotiator and valuable business partner who combines global perspective with 20+ years’ experience at General Electric to provide strategic leadership to boards and CEOs.

She is the founder of Kaviris Executive Advisory Services, a human capital and business consultancy that provides integration, development coaching and organizational design; compensation, executive assessment, and succession planning; labor relations; and workforce safety and crisis management.

As Chief Human Resources Officer for GE Aviation, the company’s most visible and profitable division, she managed 450 HR staff globally. GE Aviation is a $30B aerospace and defense company with 50,000 globally. Athena provided leadership strategy, succession planning for middle and senior management, executive compensation design and managed significant change management initiatives. As GE’s Vice President of Labor Strategy for North America, Athena led a team of 30 that negotiated a four-year collective bargaining agreement with 11 unions, covering 6,600 union and 12,000 non-union employees, that came in 25% under budget and with no workforce disruption. She also chaired the global labor council to facilitate best practice sharing, communicate emerging issues and ensure organizing efforts were unsuccessful.

Today, Athena is active with Phoenix’s Desert Botanical Garden, a 140-acre experience dedicated to the education, research, exhibition, and conservation of desert plants. She currently volunteers her time with Foothills Animal Rescue, a cage-free, adoption-guaranteed not-for profit in Scottsdale, AZ.