Flight Path

From his days in the Naval Air Force to his mastery of meteor burst communication technology, Ronald Willems’ path to becoming CEO of Beumer Group Singapore is one of happy coincidences and Space Wars.

- Jordan Murray

Though he spends most of his time managing Beumer Group, an international leader in the field of intralogistics, Ronald Willems never aspired to or actively worked towards becoming a CEO in the field. A brief glance of his resume reveals as much. Though he’s been in the industry for more than a decade and a half, his career began at the age of 16, when, after he attempted to attain his fighter pilot licence, he signed on to the Netherlands’ naval air force.

“It was a bit of a coincidence,” Ronald tells The CEO Magazine. “I joined because the government would subsidise my technical tuition if I signed up.” Enlisting in the late 1980s, Ronald flew aboard the Lockheed P-3 Orion, an aircraft built to detect and destroy enemy submarines. Serving as an in-flight technician, Ronald was tasked with the job of studying the complex machinery that went into the million-dollar aircraft’s submarine detection capabilities.

Direct combat was rare for Ronald. The former Soviet Union had collapsed by the time he actively served, which meant the Netherlands, a NATO ally, was without a war to fight. While he was still involved with high-profile military intervention in Yugoslavia, he admits he never fired a single missile.