NATIONS hires aviation industry phenom Joshua Koshy as Chief Financial Officer

Joshua Koshy, recently hired as our Chief Financial Officer, has a name that is instantly recognized in the boardrooms of the aviation industry internationally. Beginning his career at Emirates Airlines, he helped to steward its finances from a company working with a couple of planes to a powerhouse global aviation brand. 

“I enjoy being a Day One person,” Joshua says in reference to growing with and helping to grow a company. He eventually rose to the rank of Senior VP of Finance at Emirates in 1994. He held various high-ranking positions at Emirates until 2005, when Air Canada came calling. 

Having recently emerged from bankruptcy protection, Air Canada needed someone with Joshua’s proven skillset to steward its finances back to profitability and file its IPO. He joined them as CFO and EVP, and for the next two years fulfilled his massive brief by working with the team at Air Canada to file the IPO - which was oversubscribed - and putting Air Canada back in the black. 

Joshua is humble for a man with his track record. When asked if he would mind his experience of turning Air Canada around being featured, he was quick to point out that “I assisted with it - it takes a large team to do what we did.” Technically, he was at the head of the effort, but it is this eagerness to acknowledge his team that undoubtedly has been a large part of his success. 

Unsurprisingly, after seeing what he did with both Emirates and Air Canada, other airlines made overtures to Joshua. Qatar Airlines and Green Africa Airways are just two more airlines that he helped to grow after leaving Air Canada. He then went on to be the founding Chief FInancial Officer of Aurum Leasing, an aircraft leasing company based out of Dubai. 

Shift to language services inspired by first job 

While at Aurum, Joshua met Scott Patles-Richardson, the chairman of NATIONS’ board. The two hit it off and he began working with Scott as a principal at his company, Indigenous Financial Solutions. When NATIONS began to show significant growth, Scott asked him to become the Chief Financial Officer at NATIONS, and Joshua agreed. 

“I very much see NATIONS as a Day One company,” he says. “Even though the company is thirty years old, the recent acquisition of it by Indigenous ownership and the rate of growth makes it full of potential.” 

When asked why the sudden shift to language services after a storied career in aviation, Joshua revealed that one of his first jobs was as an interpreter at his church. He still has a passion for languages, speaking three Indian languages and English. While he has worked for most of his life in the Middle East, he is building on the Arabic he picked up there and becoming more fluent in it now. 

Joshua is looking forward to charting a five-year plan for NATIONS which will see it achieve the same kind of growth he drove at much larger companies. We are fully confident that with his help, one day people will talk about NATIONS with the same reverence they have for Emirates Airlines and the other major companies he has worked with.