May 8, 2020
2020 Marks 47 Years of Teekay Spirit
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the world, we were not be able to celebrate our 47th year in business among our colleagues. Instead, we decided to virtually connect and reflect on what it means to have #TeekaySpirit and how our values continue to shape our path.
Each member of our Senior Leadership Team took the time to reflect on one of our SPIRIT values and talk about why it was important to them. Here is what they each had to say:
- Safety and Sustainability – Kenneth Hvid, President & CEO, Teekay Corporation
- When I joined Teekay 20 years ago it was clear to me that Safety and Sustainability was a real priority. I was taught that it was the first item on any agenda, whether a departmental meeting or a Board meeting. I was taught that we do not compromise on safety for commercial gains. I have followed this through my career. Safety and Sustainability go hand in hand, you cannot have one without the other. And as we find ourselves at a turning point, it will be a beacon moving us forward as we define Teekay’s new ESG framework. In some ways this is the easiest value to describe, it’s our license to operate and if you work at Teekay you know that we will not compromise – and that’s really what a core value is all about.
- Passion – Kevin Mackay, President & CEO, Teekay Tankers
- Passion defined our Founder, Torben, and passion is the lifeblood of our organization. I work with people every day who want to be the best and bring passion to their work every day. For me – it’s a shared passion. A passion for the tanker industry, a passion for the tankers themselves and the people that live and work onboard them. Ever since I was 15 years old, when my father took me onboard a VLCC to do a special survey, I’ve had a passion for tankers running through me every day. And the other element of passion is around the Teekay brand. I’ve spoken to many of you during my time here around the passion for this great tanker brand. It’s what gets me up in the morning, it’s what excites me, the joy of working with people that want to be the best and bringing passion to work every single day. For me, it’s an easy choice: passion is what runs through this organization and I hope that it always will.
- Integrity – Art Bensler, Executive Vice President, Corporate Secretary and General Counsel
- Torben clearly understood the importance of this concept when he founded this company. His word was his bond, and his word was as good as his contract and it’s something that has been woven into the fabric of Teekay even after his passing. Even early on, it was understood that if we were to claim integrity as one of our core values, we needed to integrate this into the very fabric of how we approach our customers, our employees, the regulators, and all other stakeholders. For me, this value is of fundamental importance in my role as general counsel. It’s simply not up for debate. It’s not up for negotiation.
- Reliability – Mark Kremin, President & CEO, Teekay Gas
- Reliability is like trust: it’s something that builds over time. No matter what the challenge, and we’ve never faced a wider challenge than COVID-19 – we have proven that Teekay can be counted on. We all know now what it means to be confined to some extent for a few weeks or months. But imagine all of our seafarers who are doing the same, in a smaller space and away from family. Yet despite all that, our fleets are delivering cargoes as reliably as ever. Everyone at Teekay – both at sea and on shore – is to be commended and thanked for contributing to Teekay as a company that can be relied on any day, in any weather, any time, no matter what.
- Innovation – William Hung, Executive Vice President, Strategic Development
- When I think about innovation, I think about the origins of Teekay. Torben’s vision to maximize economies of scale using Aframaxes instead of Panamaxes was innovative, creative, and created a new market for us to build our business on. We’ve carried this throughout the years by providing creative solutions and leadership to our customers, our partners and our shareholders. Today, we’re still innovating. Innovation is what we do every day – we just call it continuous improvement, which is in our DNA.
- Teamwork – Vince Lok, Executive Vice President & CFO
- I have first-hand witnessed tremendous teamwork over my 27 years at Teekay. I see teamwork embodied as part of our culture. We have countless examples of how we overcome seemingly impossible tasks when we all come together. The most recent of which is successfully launching a whole new enterprise financial system, remotely, in the midst of a global pandemic. We always trust each other to get the job done.
A lot has changed since our founder Torben Karlshoej incorporated the company on May 8, 1973. However, our bold ambitions shaped by Torben’s values remain the same. To everyone who has been a part of our journey over the last 47 years, thank you for helping us build what Teekay is today, and for living with #TeekaySpirit. Through living our values, we can continue to deliver the world’s energy with excellence.