It is very common for aviation to run in the blood of a family for generations; however, I am the first pilot in my family having my Private Pilot’s License. It is unusual I have realized for someone with no family in aviation to enter the field. I hope to make this a legacy in my family. Flight is beautiful, the aviation community is welcoming, and the weathered pilots are great mentors; this is the best field to make a legacy for a family. Through my own journey, the encouragement of fellow aviators, and my future plans for my family, I hope to make aviation the definition of my family. There is no real legacy in my family. My grandparents included a roofer, a painter, a secretary, and a mail-woman. My parents were a missionary and a stay-at-home mom. Besides my father’s studies for the ministry, I would in all reality be a first-generation college career student. I am starting college this year to continue my path in aviation. Having always intrigued me, aerospace engineering will be my major. To understand how aircraft and spacecraft are built will be invaluable knowledge to have and highly looked on by the airlines when I apply to be a pilot. I will be minoring in aeronautical science in order to receive all the licenses and ratings required to pursue any path in aviation. I will also participate in AFROTC with the goal to become an Air Force pilot. After the Air Force I will go to the airlines. Already being in aviation, I have had the opportunity to meet many good pilots. Some of them I trained alongside were also new to aviation, but the majority came from families who had many pilots. One young woman worked with her dad as pilots running tour flights over a nearby volcanic island. She worked hard the past few years to get her ratings and licenses and will be applying for the airlines later this year. She has been a great encouragement. Another older pilot I met is new to aviation herself and is working to get the ratings she needs to be able to fly for the company she works for giving them a new mode of transport. A young man I met who is working through all his ratings has also been a great encouragement to me as I have trained to become a pilot. There are many pilots I look up to who love to encourage the new ones like me. With no legacy in my family, I intend to make aviation and engineering the legacy for my future generations. When I have a family in the future, I intend to raise my kids around planes and teach them from a young age about the field. I will have a plane of my own in the future that perhaps my children can train in. The aviation community is so welcoming and protective it is the perfect place for young people to grow up with good influences and plenty of adventure. I plan to give my children the chance to do their first solo on their sixteenth birthdays, to have their PPL when they are seventeen; I hope to give them all the opportunities I missed by not being in an aviation-focused family. My own journey encouraged by fellow pilots will lead to a beautiful legacy in aviation and engineering for my family. I have dreamed of having this legacy in my family and am thrilled to have the chance to make this dream a reality for my children in the future.

Money was a constant problem through my high school years, but I tried to be a high achiever despite financial struggles. I packed in many extracurricular activities and maintained my GPA to a high standard while working, studying, and learning to fly Despite being homeschooled, I did every extracurricular activity I could – winning the regional science fair, playing sports (tennis, squash, and running), powerlifting, interning at a power station, working five different jobs, and learning to fly. My last year of high school was especially difficult and taxed my time management skills to the limit; but despite the struggle, I started the year with a 3.99 GPA and graduated with a 3.97 GPA. Through school I took every chance I got to lead. It was difficult and often when I led, I acted like another teammate; but as I got more experiences I found myself encouraging my team to work together and everyone to participate. As a result of this improvement, I realized that I went from usually being on a losing team to being on a much more competitive and accomplished team. Being homeschooled I did not get a lot of team leadership experiences, but I did get chances to improve my own responsibility with my biggest jobs having me work alone and through learning to fly. In becoming a pilot I learned to be in charge of an aircraft while flying to a high standard and communicating with the other aircraft and air traffic control. This experience greatly improved my ability to communicate especially through explaining thought processes and different scenarios and solutions with my instructors. I also mentored a fellow student pilot/high schooler recently by encouraging her to keep going even when it seemed hard and by explaining how I mentally and financially made it. Another mentorship experience I had was through a fellow homeschooler who was uncertain of what to do when she was to finish school. I sent her resources on colleges, SATs, scholarships, and more. Now, having added in her own research, she has a plan for when she graduates. In my last year of high school, my usual day consisted of starting classes at six in the morning, finishing two classes then going to work at eight, coming home and finishing classes before lunch, studying through lunch, then going to the airport for a flying lesson and studying, then training to pass my Air Force fitness tests for my USAFA and AFROTC applications, then sitting down with my family in the evening and studying until bedtime. Half-way into the year, I took a three-month online calculus course to improve my math skills; and later in the year I picked up a second job for three months that had flexible hours doing data entry on my laptop for an insurance company. I would fit this course and job into any free time I found. Any other free time was spent studying for my SAT and applying to colleges. The year ended well with me scoring a 1340 on my SAT, graduating with a 3.97 GPA, earning my Private Pilot’s License, receiving my two Senators’ and Representative’s nominations to USAFA, and being accepted to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University where I will be attending this year. Some things had to be sacrificed so I could achieve what I did, but it was all worth it to be where I am today and to have the skills I now have. These experiences shaped me as a person and exposed me to a lot of new and diverse experiences that I would not give up for anything.

Aviation is becoming a hot topic lately with the industry recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic only to be hit hard by the inevitable pilot shortage. The men who became pilots back in the day when it was the cool-guy thing are now retiring, and unfortunately there has not been a huge push for young people recently to pursue a career in aviation. Most pilots are closely related to other pilots, but what about those of us who have no pilots in our family tree? It is a field too often forgotten by us, especially by women. Being a woman in aviation has been an incredible experience from the moment I decided on this route in life, to experiencing what it means to be a woman in aviation, and to helping promote more women in aviation. At thirteen years old I was panicking. I had recently lost interest in the medical field and now had no idea what path I wanted to pursue in life. Then I visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and it hit me. I wanted to fly. For the next many years, I held onto this dream and a new passion for engineering. This all culminated to the climax of my childhood when at seventeen I stepped into the pilot’s seat of an airplane for the first time and truly caught the flying bug. From that point I knew I would never be happy on the ground again. Before the end of my last year of high school I became a fully licensed private pilot. Now I am going to college to study aerospace engineering and aeronautical science to make myself into the best pilot I can be. Being a woman in a man’s field has been nothing new to me. My first job was on site at a hydroelectric power station. At sixteen I was the only girl among the tradesmen. Stepping into aviation as one of a few girls and many guys felt like home by the time I was a student pilot. It felt good to be different, to be breaking the mold and getting out there in fields where girls shy away from or are discouraged from too much. The men were mostly a great support to me as a young woman in aviation; these good men far outnumbered the macho, chauvinistic ones. It was a good environment with the support from good men and women already established in the field who mentored me and protected me from the negative aspects. This is the kind of accepting environment I want to support as I make my way into aviation. As a pilot I have done everything in my power to promote women in aviation. I gathered together nearly ten women in our small community who were pilots of varying levels to create a chapter of Women in Aviation International. We are still currently working on this. I have also been supportive of all the new girls who started learning to fly while I was there. One in particular I have mentored to help encourage her in her pursuit of her license and in how to financially make it the whole way. I always have been and always will be enthusiastically in support of women entering aviation. How I decided on this path, how I feel as a woman in aviation, and how I have support other women in aviation has majorly shaped me for who I am. I would not give up these decisions in my life for anything and am proud to be among and to support women in aviation.