Galley Support Innovation CEO Leads And Serves From the Inside Out

Editor’s note: This article appears in the latest magazine edition of Talk Business Arkansas, which you can read here.

Details can be pesky – last-minute chores that can stall out a project near its completion or that can make up the perfect complements that smoothly transform a vision into a dream come true.

For Galley Support Innovations CEO Gina Radke, 35, details are a driving force, both on the job and in her personal life. She feels equally strongly about second chances, as demonstrated by her company’s policies and her personal affiliations.

Radke has had a fierce independent streak all her life. After high school and college, sheer nerve helped her become promotions director for then-local radio station KURB/B98.5.

“They didn’t have the position at the time,” she recalled. “I made it up and said I would do it for minimum wage.”

At age 18, she met her husband-to-be, Wade Radke, through a mutual friend. “It was love at first sight, though we wouldn’t admit it until 10 years later,” Radke said. “We both have Type A personalities and people often wonder how we have stay married.”

The two have stayed happily married – for 16 years – and they work together to not only raise two sons (Stephan, 16, and Noah, 10) but also to nurture the business they founded in 2005 after purchasing the rights to a product line that had been in Wade’s family for 50 years.

ALL CUSTOM JOBS
“GSI is changing the way the aerospace industry looks at interior hardware,” Radke says proudly of their Sherwood-based aerospace manufacturing firm. “Every aircraft must have locks, hinges, latches, etc., yet nobody thinks to make or buy them until the last minute. We took these detail products from a last thought to a designer product.”

GSI is best known for its specialty custom latches designed to specification for customers like Boeing, American Airlines and Gulfstream.

“We’re not interested in selling everybody the exact same latch. That has been done for years,” Radke said. “Our business aviation customers spend millions designing the most luxurious aircraft in the world – with every bell and whistle you can imagine – and then are told to pick from three latches to place in every one of their highly visible cabinets. We changed that. Wade and his team sit down with aircraft designers to understand the design of the interior and help design a latch that has the same design as the rest of the interior.”

While Gina heads the business side of GSI, Wade serves as lead product designer, utilizing his degrees in computer science, industrial engineering and aviation management. Having served his country for more than eight years in the United States Air Force, he now dedicates himself to building the perfect design for each customer and building the perfect firm-to-customer relationship as well.

“Long-term success depends upon solid relationships from top to bottom. From your number one customer to your third- and fourth-tier suppliers, relationships are the key,” he said.

A CHANGE OF ORDER
Radke has been at the helm of GSI since 2008 when she stepped into the role through necessity. “Originally, I did sales and marketing and ran the office. When the economy slumped, Wade went to work for another company, so I became the CEO,” she explained.

She was determined to do everything she could to keep the company afloat and keep workers employed, but the learning curve was high.

“Here I was telling lifetime machinists how to work more efficiently,” she said. “I spent hours in online classes and used SCORE, AMS and every other manufacturing resource I could get my hands on. I learned to run every machine on the floor and have the scars to prove it.”

After the company stabilized, Wade returned and briefly held the role of CEO. Just three months in, he decided that his wife was better suited for the position and asked her to take over once again.

“I have been called ‘the toughest thing in a skirt,’” she said, adding that in truth she’s joyful and even bubbly. “I don’t try to be ‘one of the guys.’ I work hard and I accomplish more by being straightforward with a smile than by being overly bossy.”

Under Radke’s leadership, GSI continues expansion that will add 7,200 square feet of manufacturing and finishing space and equip the firm to approve their own products for aviation use.

“We are also focusing heavily on the commercial sector for the next few years, as well as increasing exporting,” she added.

SUPPORTING THE TEAM
With loftier goals than simply making a profit, GSI is also in the business of changing employees’ lives. Radke has learned from experience that there’s often more to someone’s story than can be seen on the surface. She makes it her business to look for the more hidden details that define the people around her.

She also believes in second chances and has benefited from a few in her own life.

“In my life, I was fired twice – from great jobs. I was too single-minded and competitive,” said Radke. “A team can do much more than one superstar.”

Radke’s team has supported the company, too, through their loyalty and hard work in the hardest of times. Once, after roughly two years of low production and high development (the latter doesn’t get paid until production), the Radkes were to the point of being unable to make payroll. “We told employees on Friday that if they came to work on Monday we could not promise them they would get paid,” she recalled. “We went home early that Friday and prayed.”

When Monday rolled around, every employee was present and it was a thankful moment. “That Friday our customer we had been working with brought us a check that covered the development, which got us through to when production could begin,” she said. “Our whole life is a second chance, so we want to extend the grace we have been given.”

The company creates an atmosphere where employees know their value and realize their work affects the entire team. The company offers free lunch once each week, a weekly Bible study, extra paid time off for counseling, child-care benefits and more.

GSI works with felons transitioning back into the labor force through its Second Chance Ministry, which gives people from treatment and other programs opportunities to be hired, trained and have a productive lifestyle.

Radke sometimes hires employees through the Union Rescue Mission, an organization she passionately began supporting after seeing the good it does.

“I got a call late one night,” she said. “A young family member was on the way to the emergency room. That night I began researching addiction clinics and rehabs. The cost was outrageous. I called a friend who worked at the Union Rescue Mission. He told me that Dorcas House [a home for battered women and children] had started a women’s treatment program. We took her the next day.”

Before long, Radke was asked to join URM’s board of directors and she has been active ever since.

During her first year, Radke discovered that three of her employees were homeless. “It changed my view on the homeless population,” she said. “It’s not just the drunk guy on the corner. These were professional, educated people who hit hard times or were recovering from long-term unemployment.”

Radke is also passionate about empowering others to be servant leaders. She supports local adoption, and she energetically promotes Arkansas’ economic development. Her success in championing these causes – along with her other interests, business sense and hands-on leadership style – leaves no doubt that Gina Radke is in charge, right down to the final, most complementary detail.