It it's a it is an evolution, and so you have to relearn how social dynamics work. Every classroom I would sit in during that experience after about first year, I was the only woman in the entire classroom. And and so you kinda stand out. You you question you question your role. You seek out mentors, and you seek out others who may look like you who have succeeded. Several years later, I had an experience where when I was a young professor, I went to a conference, and same thing. The professional conferences were all like that. Like, it was it was all men. All the panels were all men. There were very few women. And I remember the first time I saw a woman on stage, speaking as sort of an aviation leader, and I was so excited. And and so I, you know, after the the session, I I, approached her, and I said, oh, I'm so excited to see a woman on the panel. This is really, really cool. Do you have any advice for me? Because I'm still new. And and and she had said, there are only two types of women in aviation. You can either be a a b word Mhmm. Or a doormat. And she's like, nobody's ever called me a doormat. And then she walked away. I was like, oh my gosh. Like like, are these these are the two options that I have. Because between those two categories, like, I I have more of a gentle personality. Like, I was like, is that is that the only path I have? And and and so that was that was a real, I guess, an interesting insight, but it stuck with me for so long. And it took me you know, now I've been doing this for twenty years, and and I would tell the young women coming up behind me to say that it's possible to be a leader and to have impact by leveraging the strengths of who you are. And so just because those came before you, maybe they epitomized, certain personality characteristics or attributes that that you wouldn't see alignment with, that you don't have to change or compromise who you are to find success. Like, you can you can create your own path that's true to who you are, But it's tricky when you're young and you have, you know, these big questions about what your role would look like.

I love that story. I just imagine you standing at the side of the stage all excited, and then she walks away and you're like, okay. I guess we're not gonna be best friends. Like

I remember calling my husband like, oh, no. I think I'm a doormat. I was so concerned. What does this mean? Yeah. That that stuck with me for way too long. So

you talked about, yeah, that that gender disparity. So have you seen them so you were a professor, what, at twenty four?

Mhmm. Yep.

Have you seen the makeup of your classes change over time?

We've always seen, and there's research around this as as well, that there there's a higher proportion of women that join university based pilot programs versus just because you don't have to get a degree to be a pilot. You can go to the airport and and flight train directly. But we see that there's always a higher percentage of of women and people from from other backgrounds, in the university systems. And so we see like, I think maybe when I started, it was, you know, fifteen percent, and now we're maybe in my class, maybe thirty percent women are sort of in in that range, which is much higher. Because if you look at the airline pilots around the world, only about five percent are women.

And why do you think that is?

That's a hard question that nobody has a good answer to. I think, you know, we often in aviation look at other fields. Like, there was a time medicine and law, for example, where we're not very open, to women being involved, but they've made tremendous strides forward, and and they've sort of equaled out, that imbalance. But aviation has been a really hard, parallel, and I I've heard stories sometimes. Like, for example, I have friends who are airline pilots, and they will have maybe a passenger question if they can be a mom and be an airline pilot because of the travel involved. And there's an interesting discussion there because people don't often challenge the flight attendants. Like, can you be a flight attendant and a good mom? Even though the flight attendants have the same travel schedule as the pilot. And so so you wonder, like, well, is it really about the travel, or is it about the leadership role and that authority role? And I don't know. And and none of the research has shown and there's research that, you know, compares men and women and their performance as pilots, and there's nothing showing women perform more poorly. But there is research suggesting that people don't respond as well to to women in that role.

Man, that's fascinating. Yeah. So I wanna get to the sustainability because I'm wondering how you again, this is probably the part of your talk that I had never thought about. And I'm guessing too that sustainability wasn't a part of the conversation when you were starting out in aviation. So how did it evolve and become a big part of what you do?

Yeah. I can say with certainty that I went to one of the best aeronautical universities, internationally, and the environmental impacts of aviation wasn't part of the curriculum. But just before the pandemic, I had a really striking experience where I teach a really big first year class, about two hundred students, and I had a group of them kind of reluctantly come to the front of the room after a lecture, and they're very identifiable on campus. My students, they're, you know, they're wearing pilot uniforms often on campus or they have their aviation hoodies. And they had come to the front of the room and said other students on campus had called them out, in sort of the cafeteria and said, why would you wanna be a part of aviation? Why would you wanna be a part of an industry that is contributing to climate change? You should be embarrassed. And it struck them so deeply, and it struck me so deeply because I've been in the aviation world my whole career, and no one had ever asked me that question before. That it really was sort of this next generation who was challenging. Can you love aviation and the planet at the same time? And when they asked me that question, I always sort of had the same response, which is that, you know, we can be really proud of the good that aviation does in the world. Like, I think if you rank the economic impact of aviation relative to the countries, we would be roughly equivalent to, like, the twenty sixth largest country in the world. Like, we have massive economic impact, employment impacts, and cultural impacts. Like, aviation really does bring the global community together in a way that wouldn't be possible otherwise. But the reality is that for us to have a balanced perspective of the future, we also need to have our eyes wide open and be completely transparent to recognize the negative environmental impacts of our sector. And so that's kind of the message I had given them is that, you know, you should be proud of the good, but you can only really be proud of the good if you're also doing everything you can to work towards reducing and eliminating the harm and the negative. And that's really what sustainability is. That sustainability is about optimizing the good and working to reduce and eliminate the harm.

Hey. It's Bob, and I'm taking the growth mixtape on the road in a series of keynote speeches inspired by the stories of my amazing guests. At their core, these signature talks are about how to get you and your teams off autopilot and stop settling for small incremental improvements. This isn't gonna come from spewing business advice. My podcast is full of people that have done incredible things, and every one of them struggles with self doubt, imposter syndrome, and the crippling fear of judgment that holds so many of us back. They've also found ways through it by rediscovering their creativity, their curiosity, and the confidence to do scary things. Imagine the power of bringing these vulnerable stories to life live and on stage to help you and your teams hit your targets, find your voice, and be the rock stars you are. Book me for your next event at bob mathers dot c a. Now back to the show. It's so interesting. I think the part of that that resonated with me, I guess, personally, was that sustainability is this interesting thing. You know? I care about the planet. I care about the world that I'm leaving to my kids. But I like travel, and I've got things that I wanna do. And it's never occurred to me that that I might make trade offs, or I should be thinking about those two things together. And I don't know. How do you think about that? Because that's not something that you know, it comes down to this conflict. How much are you willing to change for the things that you say are important?

Yeah. Well, I think I I would agree with you that that is that is sort of the position I was in as well. I'm like, Haitian is a source of inspiration for the world. And, you know, it's it's this amazing community of people that I care about, and and it's I like, over and over and over again in my life, it had been reinforced that this is, you know, a passionate, innovative, creative community of people who love aviation. And facing that stark reality that there is a negative impact of the sector is very hard, specifically for aviation people. And so when you're talking about the impacts, like, what we saw is the rise of the the flight shaming movement, and there's, so, you know, some really creative billboards that have been put up around Europe, strong marketing campaigns, you know, really calling out the industry for greenwashing, you know, saying that they're doing something for the environment, but in reality, not acknowledging, those those impacts or, you know, things like advertising something like maybe they got rid of single use plastics, but they're not considering that they haven't met any of their emission reduction goals. So so, you know, really highlighting one element, but not not being transparent about talking about the other. And so for myself, I never studied sustainability, or environmental protection, but it struck me that the long term viability of the sector that I care about is in question. And so I started asking myself during the pandemic, you know, really hard questions about what are the biggest challenges facing the future viability of our industry. And that's really what sustainability is. People think of sustainability, and I did previously as well, only in terms of the environmental impacts, but sustainability means the ability to sustain. It's it's the ability to meet our needs today while not sacrificing or compromising future generations' ability to meet their needs. So literally to sustain, the activities that we're doing. And and that's why when you think of sustainability, it's about the environmental impacts, but it's not the environmental impacts while sacrificing the economic viability of the sector nor the people in the workforce in the sector. And and the way that I often explain this to my students is, like, imagine tomorrow we had a perfectly net zero aircraft, like, with the you know, someone waved a magic wand, and we have this new plane that will take you across the ocean and produce zero emissions. But if it is so expensive that nobody can afford it, that companies can't find profitability in operating it, and we don't have any pilots or maintenance engineers or air traffic controllers or airport staff to sustain that infrastructure for that new technology, we would never realize the benefits of it. So so this is where sustainability is. It's it's people, profit, and planet. It's about trying to find the combination of these three factors towards that goal of being able to sustain for the long run.

So you talked about sort of that technology piece. Is it that that the technology will become available? It's just that this complex ecosystem of regulations and is not gonna be able to react fast enough, or is it, or is it the technology you we can't even envision what it would take to create a net zero aircraft?

Yeah. Is it ever I must admit, I'm, I'm sure I was promised jet packs by now. I'm a little discouraged that in twenty twenty five, we're still not flying around with jet packs. I'm sure that was part of the plan.

Yeah. Although, if I've seen people with jet packs, they don't seem super maneuverable. So I think maybe it's They

don't seem to be loving it as much as I thought.

Maybe maybe it's good we don't have a whole bunch of people just all over the place, which I feel like they there may be some accidental, situations that that wouldn't be a good outcome on that. But I think that, you know, that's where where I sit. So University of Waterloo has Canada's largest pilot training degree program. So we take in hundred and student a hundred and twenty student pilots each year, and and that's been the real fuel behind a lot of the research that we do. So in twenty twenty one, I founded, the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Aeronautics or Wiza. It's a research institute embedded in the university. And if you can imagine, what's possible if we have hundreds of student pilots on campus who can support as research participants in one of the leading research universities in Canada, if not internationally, you can imagine what's possible. And, you know, we have researchers who are touching everything else we've spoken about, you know, electric propulsion and hydrogen and and, you know, how do you integrate electric planes into training and, all sorts of different things. We have now, more than a hundred and fifty professors who have joined as part of the institute, and they're all sort of using their creativity and innovation and imagination to think, like, how my research expertise links into this problem. And and it goes back to that sort of mosaic concept that we will never achieve sustainable aviation with just one person or or one idea or one technology. It needs everything. It's a movement happening all at the same time.

I'm glad you mentioned the institute because it's it does feel like we started this conversation, or at least I came into this conversation expecting to hear that this was kind of hopeless. But, you know, we're just gonna keep burning fuel, and we're find a way to save the planet and other industries. It just it's not gonna happen in aviation. There's just it's too big a problem. It does sound like there's been tremendous progress, and there and we're moving in the right direction. There is there is hope.

I think there's hope, but I'm a I'm a diehard optimist. And so I I feel like, you know, with this much passion and excitement and innovation, all of this coming together, I think that that's what you need to to do something positive in the world. And and Waterloo is really special in that sense. Like, we have a lot of pieces here in our region that that make us really unique, and that's just one city of you can imagine how many around the world. So I think there's reason for us to be optimistic, but, it's also like I said, there's more questions than answers. But when you have,

I think, all of that passion and excitement moving in that direction, I am optimistic about the future. One question that I've got, and I'd love to get your perspective on this. So when you started, you talked about just it seems like aviation is the only thing you've ever really wanted to do, flight school at fifteen and your first solo at sixteen, etcetera. When I hear that story, it sounds like somebody that's just found something they love to do early on in their life, and they just never wanted to do anything else. And it seems like a bit of a dream that you would find this passion in a world of people that are kind of, you know, maybe my age or, like, you know, I'm still trying to find my purpose. What am I gonna do with my life? I've and you seem to have found it and never wavered, but I have a feeling maybe it's not that simple. So what don't I get about that journey?

I think that any journey probably has more failures than successes, more more pivots than than than what you expect. And, you know, I'm a person who works a lot with seventeen, eighteen, nineteen year old young people and often reflect that it's crazy to think that we ask people at that age to make decisions that impact the rest of their lives because people change and evolve so much. And I would say today that while aviation is the core, that I see myself as a teacher. I think that's that's the skill set. That's the passion that I never expected when I was a teenager, but being able to work with people who share that passion and to help them, have a future and avoid challenges that you've experienced. And and, like, that that I feel is something that I would have never anticipated, but I feel like it's who I am and what I meant to do. I I can joke that, like, when I started teaching when I was twenty four, you know, I remember being sick to my stomach before every lecture. Like, I was terrified. I remember, like, sweating through my clothes. Like, it was it was you know, I was scared, and it took, like, years. And then I remember the very first time I taught a three hour lecture, and everyone's eyes were up the whole time. Like, I had their attention the whole lecture. And I remember driving home and calling my family. I'm like, you won't believe what happened today. Like, I had I had their attention the whole time, and it was this huge it was like a hard earned kind of epiphany of, like, like, that feeling is so, so fulfilling. Like, you feel like I've I've communicated and I've supported, these people in a way that that hopefully is valuable to them. I tell my students, put your heart and soul into where you are today, but the reality is that you never know what the future is gonna hold. And you probably will have to pivot, and you'll probably encounter barriers and obstacles and all sorts of challenges that you can't expect now. But if you keep working and you keep moving and you keep pivoting instead of giving up or or letting go, like, you never know where you'll end up, but you'll probably feel like you're where you're supposed to be.

Wow. That's beautiful. I love that. And I know exactly how your students felt when when you were delivering your first ever three hour lecture, and all eyes were on you because that's exactly the feeling I had watching you, talk about all of this when we met. And, god, it's just been such an enlightening and thoughtful conversation, and I really look forward to reflecting on it because you've just opened my eyes to a dozen things that I know I knew nothing about, and now I know one percent about,

if that makes any sense. Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you so much.

Can I ask you one last question? Mhmm. When you talk about helicopters, they seem like a ridiculously complicated way to get off the ground, and it's a wonder that these things that we haven't come up with a better idea by now. Yeah. What would surprise people to know about helicopters?

Helicopters are I would describe them personally as significantly more complicated to fly than an airplane. So in an airplane, you know, you you take off and land, and, statistically, the take offs and the landings are the highest risk, you know, portions of the flight. And, then a lot of the time, you know, once you're in a cruise portion in a fixed wing flight, you can you can trim it up in a way where you could, you know, take your hands off the controls and, you know, you're still working, you're taking notes, you're you're doing different things. But helicopters, your both hands and both feet are all working all of the time, and and it's it's a coordinated, process where, you know, I still can't talk about it without putting my hands in those positions. I'm like, you know, like because you it's almost like you can't verbally articulate it, that you sort of need the that psychomotor muscle memory to in order to tell a story or or to explain what's happening. But the world's changing, and what has really changed is integrating a lot of that drone based technology. That's where that question becomes, well, will they fly more like a helicopter, more like an airplane, or is it gonna be very automated? And we're looking at maybe self flying, eVTOLs in the future autonomous. And and there's all different kinds. So some of the some eVTOLs are planned to be autonomous, some are piloted. That being said, while helicopters, I would say, are harder to fly, they teach you sort of this dynamic between speed and altitude. Like, there's there's almost nothing that you know, the trade off between the two that that teaches you as well as flying a helicopter. And I would argue that there's nothing like the sense of freedom when you're flying in a helicopter that you could go anywhere. So when I when I was, sixteen, I flew a helicopter, and I, landed it on my my grandparents' front lawn. Oh, yeah.

It was

funny because then there was some media there, and the media I thought it was, like, the coolest thing because I like, helicopters are amazing. But the media did an interview and and the the commentators were talking afterwards, and they're like, imagine that, flying helicopters and still wearing braces. And I was like, oh. That's so cool. But, but it's you know, I guess my, my advice to people is that, you know, hard things are can be really fun. If you follow your passion, you know, it's amazing what, you know, is a chore, but can feel like, some very fulfilling and exciting.

There I could talk about this for hours. I have so many questions. You've been amazing, and, I've absolutely loved every minute of this. Thank you so much.

Absolutely. Thank you. It was a pleasure.

The Grow With Mixed Day podcast with Bob Mathers is produced by Bespoke Projects. Music by Jean Michel Walter Cronkite. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to follow and rate us. When you do this, it helps to raise our podcast profile so that more people can find us. If you wanna connect, you can find me on LinkedIn using the link in the show notes.