Now that a couple of weeks have passed since we had  our conference in Louisville, I have had some time to reflect on my year and a half as the ISA+21 Chairwoman, now President. It has been a very busy, creative, frustrating, chaotic and rewarding time to be a member of the Board of Directors.  Like most things worth doing in life, as one reflects on the journey, it is oftentimes easy to forget the busy and the frustrating and the chaotic and be left mostly with the rewarding. This year and a half long journey for me as your President has been no different. There have been some big highs and some pretty big lows but, ultimately, when I reflect on this time, I am mostly left with a deep, at times overwhelming, sense of pride- not in myself, but in all of you!

This year and a half has been a very busy one for your Board of Directors. After a fantastic conference in Sydney,  we found ourselves facing some decisions regarding where we wanted to go as an organization.  We realized that we had an opportunity to expand the influence of ISA+21 at a time where other industry stakeholders were, finally, showing an interest in increasing the number of women in our profession and the industry as a whole.  Our interaction with Qantas in Sydney and the interest shown by the airline’s leadership to partner with us in this endeavor made us realize that we could have a seat at this very important table and become a more influential voice in helping to get more women on the flight deck. The question really was how to do that, without losing our identity as a group of whose primary focus has been supporting each other through camaraderie and travel and supporting aspiring female airline pilots through scholarship programs.  We realized that, for a mission to be successful, its goals need to spelled out, put into words in a mission statement. And “ISA+21 is the Global Voice to Inspire, Support and Advocate for female airline pilots” was born.  Everything we have done as part of what the Board calls our “Transformation project” and everything we do as an organization going forward will support our mission in one of the three pillars: Inspire, Support, Advocate. While most of the work on our Transformation, such as website, logo and merchandising design, was done behind the scenes at the Board level, we always knew that we would never be successful without the support of the membership.  The support and positive response has been amazing! We are so pleased at the feedback and engagement from the membership over the last couple of months as we have introduced our mission statement, our logo, our website, our merchandising ideas, social media campaigns.  What is even more exciting is the feedback we have gotten from you on our vision for the future of ISA+21, a vision that you clearly share!  Together, we will make this vision a reality, of that I have no doubt!

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that, even in a time of transformation for ISA+21, some things never change. We had a record year for our Scholarship program, giving away $100,000 in Support monies to aspiring female airline pilots. We also, in spite of great challenges amid a volatile time in our industry and our world, had an annual conference with over 80 participants, either in person or virtually.  While it was heartbreaking that our non-US members were unable to attend in person, many attended virtually and almost one third of our in-person attendees were first time Conference attendees, many of whom had just received furlough notifications. As you all know, in addition to COVID disruptions to our Conference, we also were in Louisville during a period of civil unrest, which caused some last minute changes to some of our events.  After a cancellation of our Wednesday night event, the Brown hotel opened their restaurant to us, cooked us dinner and then allowed us back into our rooftop meeting space for what turned into an impromptu dance party. At one point, one of the servers who was delivering ice, said to me that he was sorry that our plans had been “ruined”. I looked around the room at our members, dancing and laughing, and immediately responded that our plans weren’t ruined, they just changed and that no matter where we are and no matter what we are doing, as long as we are together, we are having fun!! That, ladies, is the HEART AND  SOUL OF ISA+21! That is what make us great ; that is what will bring us continued success as an industry influencer.  That is who we are.