Emily Gonzalez

I would say my mother, 100% my mother. My mother immigrated from Cuba in 1995. She was not college educated or anything like that, but it was very important for her that I had the opportunities that she didn't have. My mother always supported all of my wishes, all my desires, especially academic and career-wise. I'm from South Florida, but I went to California for college. That was hard for her - I'm her only daughter and her only child, but she's always been really supportive and never made it about her, even if things hurt her, like seeing me go all the way to California and being away for 7 years. I eventually moved back, but anytime I would tell her about the things I wanted to do in the future, my dreams, that I wanted to fly planes someday, she never shot that down, she never said that that was too hard or that it was impossible. She just said, yeah, you can do that. That was her approach to any interest that I had. If it wasn't for my mother being so open-minded about all of these things, I don't think I'd be here today, especially in our culture, because sometimes something like engineering or anything that's STEM-related, some generations within our culture do see that as more like a man thing, like a man's job or a man's role, but my mother never brought any of that into the discussion. She was always there.

The best advice I've ever received is when somebody once told me: do not write yourself off, let them make the decision for you. The context of this was just looking at roles that I wanted, but I felt like I was too young or too inexperienced, or maybe I was looking through the description and I fit into parts of what they described in the role, but not 100%. But someone told me that, and I took that advice to heart, and I've always just applied to everything. I've always cast a very wide net, and if there's something I really wanted, I applied for it to see where it goes. I mean, this position, for example, I didn't think that I would get it. I thought I was too young or too inexperienced. I went ahead and applied and they gave me the call, and I did land the role, so I think it's just go for it, you never know what's gonna happen.

I would say don't be afraid to speak up. You know, this is a male-dominated industry by far, the aerospace engineering industry. If you were hired, if you were led into the room, you were led into that room for a reason. There's no reason why you should keep quiet or not speak up during meetings, especially if you have something to contribute. Sometimes you feel this pressure, and maybe you have to shut up because you could be too young, or because you're a girl, or a combination of both. But you were hired for a reason, so don't be afraid to speak up.

I think some of the challenges that I'm seeing are with AI. It's so new, but everybody's trying to implement it and find the best use for it. I think it's a challenge in the sense that you have to be very careful with how you use it. I think there's a lot of concern with data leaks, privacy, that sort of thing. So figuring out how to use the AI tools while maintaining cybersecurity, I think is a big challenge right now, especially to use it in the way that would be most beneficial to a lot of these teams. I mean, you have such delicate information in your hands that you work with every day, real flight data, stuff that if somebody wanted to cause harm to the commercial aviation industry or a particular flight, getting their hands on this kind of data could be really dangerous. In terms of opportunities in the field, in the United States at least, the DEI initiatives have been scrubbed, so internal programs that had to deal with DEI are also gone. So now there's nothing really forcing the industry to be inclusive, but I think it's an opportunity because as a woman in this industry, you can be a focal point for DEI. You can be a mentor, you can be an inspiration, you can organize events that are women-centered, and there's nothing stopping you from doing that. There's power to be taken back into the individual's hands to bring this community together and present more opportunities for those that maybe don't have it as easy.

I think the intersection of both my personal life and my professional life is integrity. I am who I am, regardless of who's looking around. Both in my personal life and in my work life, that's just how I am. I like to be very honest. I like to not break any promises in the sense that if I set a deadline, by that deadline, I'm delivering. I think this quality has been something that's taken me further into my career.